Yogurt and chili, not necessarily in that order...

Hey!

All's well her in the PNW and we're well within budget plus a few other good things.

This week I've made a chicken & white bean chili for the big meal o' the week and it has turned out deliciously if I say so myself. Another batch of yoogurt has come through very well and I believe it will be just too easy going forward. It's all been pretty easy so far, a bit of mindfulness about what we're eating, what we have in the current larder and what we need to fill in. Tonight I had a burger on whole wheat toast and I'm (almost) ready for another week of work and brilliant sunshiney weather - oh wait, we live in Seattle, we don't have sunshiney weather and in fact today even saw more snow flakes, briefly but even as close to the water as I am we have a few evil little flakes a floatin'.

This week I tried another lovely little Italian number from Fattoria di Bibbiani called Treggiaia, consisting of 90% sangiovese and 5% each of caniaolo and cabernet sauvignon. It's got lovely fruit, a bit of acid to keep things interesting and comes in at $10 on sale @ the local natural foods market. This is where I've been finding the best, most interesting of the bargain wines although this market tends to have high prices regularly, the specials are worth looking into... I would buy this one again but it is still not the best of the low pricers I've had so far but more about that in another post. This one went very well with the burger tonight and will yield another couple glasses during the week.

Chicken and White Bean Chili

1 lb dry navy beans

Soak overnight, boil in ~ 6cups water for ~40 mins and drain 1/2 the cooking water
Heat

1 Tbl peanut oil in a large stock pot

Dice

1 large onion (~12oz) and

Mince

8 cloves fresh garlic and add to the oil

Sweat over medium low heat unit nearly all moisture is gone

Add
4oz can fire roasted green chili (Ortega, etc) diced (whole has better flavor so dice these yourself)
1.5 lb roasted chicken, pulled from the bone and broken or cut into .25 to .5 inch pieces
1 Qt chicken stock
.5 C La Victoria salsa verde
1 tsp El Yucateco green habanero salsa
1 Tbl Pico Pica hot sauce
1 Tbl cumin
.5 tsp kosher salt
.5 tsp black pepper

Stir and simmer all together over low heat for about 90 minutes and serve

The yogurt chronicles

OK, the yogurt has gotten pretty simple, today I made the same recipe as I have in the past couple weeks and strained it for 2 hours at room temperature through doubled muslin layerd in a colander. I caught the drained whey and will save the 3 cups I got for bread making as it is sweet and has a lot of the protein from the milk / yogurt. The yogurt is nice and thick, maybe even too thick so I'll see what it is like after 1 hour next time but it is so very good and doesn't need any sweetener and I like this Greek style yogurt anyway. Here are some photos of my yogurt rig and the finished product, notice how lovely it is on the spoon...

Milk in my yogurt "maker", I like these jars from IKEA for this as I had them around, they are inexpensive and fir in the microwave for heating the milk and in the heating pad for fermentation

Milk at the right temperature for fermentation

The rig without...

...and with...

And insulated for the 6 hour journey to thick and rich yummy goodness

Finally ending here >>>>>>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<< where it counts

Hasta...