*
*
*
*
I have no control over those ads that appear at this web-site. The sponsored visual presentations are not mine. Thus, I am reluctant to post pictures, memes, or images here at this page, they can become lost amongst the advertising.
Here’s how you can read this Post without unwanted ads: Select All, Copy, then Paste to Notepad or other text application.
*
*
DRAFT … in progress … done.
‘Sharon’s Cooking Class’
(22 May 2024)
*
*
Dear Reader:
I ate plenty of yoghourt as a child growing up during the 1960s. Usually ‘fruit on the bottom’ stuff. I didn’t know much better that that was not *Really* yoghourt, it was more of a junk food – high in sugar, low in nutrition.
I had allergies during my childhood. Continual runny nose, not enough handkerchiefs or tissues to wipe my nose. Dunno what were my allergies; my father didn’t take me to a physician to be tested, he bought a bottle of pills that didn’t do much.
My father, Slim, and I moved to Greece during my 10th Grade and 11th Grade school years (1971 – 1973). My allergies came with me.
Dunno what it was, but beginning October 1971, I really began to suffer. I remember that I mostly gave up, leaning out of bed to allow the mucus to flow, to allow the blood to flow into the trash basket when I experienced a bloody nose. I missed much of school during October and more so by November. I remember several of my Pinewood school-mates sending handmade ‘Get Well’ cards to me.
Somewhere along the way, one of the Greeks asked my father and me about whether or not I ate yoghourt with honey. Well, yoghourt, yes, but not with honey, we hadn’t heard about that back home.
I began eating yoghourt with honey. My symptoms lessened during the subsequent weeks and months.
I wasn’t eating store-bought yoghourt or store-bought honey. Nope. This was raw, homemade yoghourt and honey. People explained this to me. Yoghourt contains the nutrition of the foods digested by the dairy cows, honey contains the pollen and flower nutrients. The combination of fresh yoghourt and honey acts as a vaccination against air-borne particles that lead to allergies.
I’m not a scientist. I do know that, whatever it is, it works. I have been without any of my childhood allergies since 1971. I can stand next to blooming trees and flowers, smell the sweetness, and experience no allergic reactions.
Our second year at Greece is even more memorable about my eating fresh yoghourt with honey. We went to get groceries most Fridays after school. My father bought several tubs of fresh yoghourt, still warm from the cooker, and fresh honey. I’d eat a tub of yoghourt with a spoon or two of honey each day after dinner. We also learned from our Greek friends that yoghourt is good for digestion.
My father, Slim, and I lived at Maggana, Greece, for our second year. Grigori was our landlord where we lived our second year. Check out my post about home to see a picture of our residence – an apartment over Grigori’s warehouse.
>
(https://slimandme.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/safe-at-home/)
‘Safe At Home’
30 Jul 2015
Memories of places where I lived – places that I called home.
<
I remember Spring 1973. I remember the wonderful aroma of picked chamomile flowers stored right underneath our apartment.
*
I ate yoghourt when we returned home stateside – the ‘fruit on the bottom’ junk was mostly all that was available at the grocery store, so I looked for ‘plain’. Fresh yoghourt was not to be found. I didn’t do honey. I’d put dry, morning breakfast style cold cereal into the plain yoghourt – that was delicious. Sometimes I added jelly or jam for a touch of sweet.
A few years later, my father bought a yoghourt making device for me – it was something of a heating pad with spaces to set glass containers in it to heat the cooked milk with starter. I could cook the milk, add starter to the milk, pour that mixture into the glass containers, let set overnight for eight to 10 hours, and have my own fresh yoghourt ready to chill inside the refrigerator. Yummy!
The yoghourt maker could make only six small glasses of yoghourt per batch. Instead, sometimes, I cooked the milk, poured the milk and starter into a large bowl, kept the mixture warm inside the oven overnight, and woke up to plenty of homemade yoghourt to chill inside the refrigerator, to eat as much as I wanted, to not be limited to six small glasses.
Without any recipe, usually I got yoghourt, sometimes I got cottage cheese, sometimes I got sour cream. I was happy with whatever was the result.
*
I got lazy and didn’t make yoghourt for quite a while. At least I found decent store-bought yoghourt – plain milk and cultures only, no junk ingredients.
I’d buy the large tub – plenty to eat, plenty to mix with salad.
I didn’t eat much yoghourt for about a six months, maybe eight months, didn’t bother to buy any. Then I noticed the price for the large tub of yoghourt – $7. Yowch! Last time when I bought yoghourt the price was $5. I already considered $5 too much, $7 is way too much. The price for a gallon of milk is $2.30. How dare they charge $7 for what would use one-half gallon of milk ($1.15)! Never mind!
Apparently, the store outpriced its large tub of yoghourt. They no longer sell it. Their small tub is correspondingly overpriced, but the store still sells it.
I decided now is the time to make my own yoghourt again.
I didn’t use any recipe for my first batch a couple weeks ago. I remembered that I needed to heat milk to not quite a boil, allow the temperature to drop, add starter, allow that mixture to keep warm til it sets. That worked. Yummy!
I browsed the Internet for actual recipes. I was making yoghourt correctly, close enough, other than guessing the specific temperature. The cooking temperature is 180°F, the warming temperature is 115°F. I have a cooking thermometer for this task.
I used my homemade yoghourt starter to make my last fresh batch of yoghourt a few days ago. Success! With this success, I can skip paying $7 for a tub of yoghourt as starter.
But Bestie Alana is not too keen to try my homemade yoghourt.
Next, I need to learn to make cottage cheese and sour cream.
*
*
*
*
My father made homemade sourdough starter. He’d bake bread or biscuits, or make sourdough pancakes. These were my father’s weekend specials – Saturday pancakes or Sunday biscuits.
He had his starter sourdough for several years. I kept it after he died, but never made sourdough bread or biscuits or pancakes.
I probably lost his jar of sourdough starter through the intervening decades.
*
*
*
*
I remember seeing dried citrus peel sold as a bulk item at the ‘health food’ stores. I didn’t buy any, not seeing any point buying something that I could prepare by myself.
For several years, I dried orange peel and grapefruit peel, kept them in jars. But I did nothing with any of that.
A couple months ago, Bestie Alana and I were walking to get groceries. We passed a home with a lemon tree filled with lemons. I asked the resident for permission to pick some fruit. Finally, I decided, I will explore drinking citrus juice made from peel.
I also bought oranges and grapefruit, to save the peel and use it to make juice.
I chop citrus peel to brew into juice – orange peel, lemon peel, grapefruit peel. I chill the cooked peel as a drink. The juice is delicious.
I add some cooked peel as a salad topping, or mix into a salad, for a tangy citrus taste.
These are a few methods of getting every bit of value from the orange, lemon, or grapefruit.
– Sharon
*
*
*
*
**
*
*
Dear Reader:
Thank you for visiting this post today. Please return for the next episode.
Thank you for reading my comments, for viewing and reading comments from other resources.
Thank you to the Resources who contribute to this page.
Acknowledgement and credit goes to those who create their news reporting, social media content, essays, and images provided for you here.
Please take note of the specific and the random memes and screen print images that may be attached to this article, that I present throughout this web-site. They add to the essence of this post.
Please visit those references when I add them to these essays. The contributors work hard and tirelessly to bring about sense from the non-sense.
These posts being Public, I permit you to Share these contents at your own web-site or Social Media, with appropriate crediting.
*
Thank you to T-central.blogspot.com for listing my ‘Slim and Me’ web-site with them. Please check them out for plenty of good resources.
(https://T-central.blogspot.com)
*
BeHuman Campaign
(https://www.BeHumanCampaign834662950771/)
(https://www.facebook.com/BeHumanCampaign)
*
This ‘SlimAndMe’ web-site is my primary Internet presence.
*
You can occasionally read an alternate, abbreviated version of these posts at my social media page.
*
Additional Resources:
1.
This is Crooked Drumpf’s Amerika.
(https://www.facebook.com/414507242439358/posts/732780587278687/)
DNC War Room
1 Sep 2020
Shared with Public
*
*
*
*
*
*
Slim and Me 