Bonfire Revelation: We Need a Bat House

Tonight, we decided to have a campfire in our own backyard. Andy got some wood, and we raided the fridge to figure out what we'd grill.

I collected remnants of last week's CSA box in hopes of a yummy grilled veggie salad. I found zucchini, a few orange beets, a fennel bulb, and some broccoli. I decided to spice this up and then put some leftover marinara sauce over it. Yum!

If you've never made a grilled veggie salad, I highly recommend it! You will need a grill basket. Grilled vegetables are super delicious because grilling gets all the yummy veggie sugars cooking, so your vegetables end up tasting delectably sweet. A good cookbook to start grilling vegetarian style is The Vegetarian Grill: 200 Recipes for Inspired Flame-Kissed Meals, although once you get started with vegetarian grilling, you'll soon realize it's as easy as throwing vegetables on the grill with some olive oil, and later dressing it with a sauce or topping of your choice.

The bonfire was beautiful tonight, dinner was wonderful, and the sky was clear. We even saw a few deer frolicking in the wheat field behind our house. The only annoyance were the State Bird: Mosquitoes. We have them in excess this year due to the undulating night rain storms throughout the last few weeks. Guiltily, we sprayed on our OFF. It seems we've been going through a bottle a week lately, and quite honestly, I feel like crap about it. We've tried more natural methods such as citronella to prevent getting bit, but nothing makes being out in our yard bearable quite like OFF.

Luckily, we saw a few bats flitting around as well. We've decided to get a bat house. I've read that one bat can eat up to 1000 mosquitoes an hour. What a perfect solution. Now, we just need to figure out how to get this new project started. Do any of you have a bat house? Does anyone have some advice for bat house newbies?  We'd appreciate any thoughts, suggestion, or advice that you have for us.

Working with Live Cultures: Homemade Yogurt

Two years ago, while exploring the Viroqua Co-op's amazing book section, we stumbled upon a gem: Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation. Since then, both Andy and I have read it cover to cover, enjoying the exciting philosophical food discussions and the innovative and classic fermentation recipes.

Among the sauerkraut, pickles, and kimchi recipes is the classic yogurt recipe. We experimented with the book's directions, but over time, have come to develop our own methods to achieving super creamy, fabulously delicious, and perfectly smooth homemade yogurt.

So what is yogurt anyway?

Yogurt is milk or cream that has been fermented with a good, live bacteria at a consistently warm temperature. Yogurt is a nourishing food with many health benefits: it provides calcium which makes bones stronger, prevents both yeast infections and urinary tract infections, and it provides the body with vitamin B2, which can be somewhat difficult for vegetarians to obtain.

And why make your own yogurt?

Well, for one, making anything by yourself makes you more self-sufficient and is more sustainable. And two, by making your own yogurt, you're able to control how much fat the yogurt contains and you're able to support local dairy farms by purchasing their milk or cream. We use Blue Marble Farm's Milk (Barneveld, WI) or Sassy Cow Creamery's Milk (Columbus, WI). Depending on our mood and for what we will use our yogurt, we use 2%, whole milk, or sometimes a combination of the two.

Homemade Yogurt

Ingredients:
1 quart of milk
1 Tbs. of yogurt starter (take a Tbs of your favorite plain yogurt: be sure it contains live cultures)

1. Heat a quart of milk in a heavy pot until it starts to foam, but not boil (180 degrees F). Use gentle heat, and stir frequently to avoid burning the milk.
2. Remove from heat. Cool to 110 degrees F.
3. Mix in starter yogurt.
4. Pour into sterilized jar(s), and cap it/them.
5. Place jars in an insulated container, filled with water. We like to use an old fish aquarium with insulation wrapped around the outside. To heat our tank, we use hot water and a submersible heater. Other people we know use a cooler. No matter what you use, the water must be consistently around 100 degrees.
6. Check yogurt after 8 to 12 hours. It should have a tangy flavor and some thickness.
7. Refrigerate when done.

Heating up the milk.
Cooling it off.
Yogurt Starter
Our insulated contraption.
Keeping them consistently warm.

Morning Breakfast with Homemade Yogurt

1/3 cup Nature's Bakery Peanut Butter Granola (or granola of your choice!)
1/4 cup of yogurt
1/2 cup of plain, unsweetened hemp milk
seasonal, fresh fruit (or frozen and thawed in the winter!)

Mix yogurt and hemp milk until the consistency is completely smooth. Add the granola. Chop in the fresh fruit, and voila ~ the best breakfast around!