Mozzarella cheese~ Tomato basil jam~ Real Homestead cooking ~Small Homestead.

Hello friend,
This week on the Homestead, we made some tomato basil jam with the tomatoes coming from my garden. I also made 30-minute mozzarella cheese, which was a little tricky, but it turned out pretty good; we had to try it, of course, so we made a homemade Marguerite pizza! We hope you enjoy this week’s video.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth P. Xo
💜💜💜
Email: thepeacockhomestead@gmail.com
Blog: https://thepeacockhomestead.wordpress.com/blog/

Hey there friends. It’s Liz from the Peacock Homestead. So, in this week’s video, I’ll be cooking from scratch. I’m going to be preserving a few of my tomatoes. So, I’m making tomato basil jam and a margarita pizza. And the twist is I’m making homemade mozzarella for the first time. It kind of turned out wonky, but it tastes super delicious and it melted really wonderful. So, if you’re interested in that kind of thing, let’s get into the video. Speaking of cheese, we are trying the traditional cheddar that I had made back in June. I think it was June. It looks like it mended together really nicely. It has some mechanical holes in it. Tom and I are going to try a little slice of this. And then I was gonna package it up in little triangles. So, the flavor I got was a mild cheddar. It was nice and smooth, but I think it needs to go in the cheesecake for just a couple more months and it will have that traditional cheddar flavor. So, hopefully soon. But that’s exciting trying our cheese. And hopefully in a couple months we’ll be able to try a different kind. So I have them all packaged up and I’m gonna pop them right back in the cheese cave. I’m actually really excited to try the Griier and the Yarlesburg cheese. I can’t wait to try those. So, I finally have enough tomatoes to make this really amazing recipe. Um, it is called tomato basil jam. And I got it out of this book, The Better Homes and Gardens Complete canning guide. It has freezing, preserving, and drying. So, the recipe calls for about 2 and 12 lbs of tomatoes peeled. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to double the recipe. So, I got about 6 lb of tomatoes in there, and I’m just going to peel all the skins off. Then, I’m going to add 7 cups of sugar, a half a cup of lemon juice, and towards the end when I know the jam is going to pass the freezer test, I’ll add my basil. So, I’m probably going to add 3 tablespoon of basil. And I grabbed some out of my garden from the back. I have like a kitchen garden or what I call an apothecary garden and I actually have different herbs and spices all around the house and another apothecary garden further back in the yard. I’m trying to find different recipes in order to use my basil cuz I love to pop open a can in the winter time and just enjoy the beautiful basil that we had in our garden this summer. So, the last time I made tomato jam, I used cinnamon and nutmeg and like a pumpkin pie kind of spice. So, that was really totally different from this. And this tastes so amazing. It tastes kind of like a strawberry jam, but it’s not. It’s really unique. And my husband and I really love this jam. So, I’m probably gonna have to make another batch of this. So, here I’m just getting the rings on fingertight. And I’m gonna steam can these for a good 20 minutes. This steam caner has definitely been a blessing. I make my cheese with it cuz I can fit four gallons of milk and I can all these beautiful jars of food with them. So this week I decided just to make a couple loaves of sourdough bread and I was going to pop one in the freezer and we are going to enjoy one of these for this week. The Hobs has been asking me to make some sourdough donuts cuz I haven’t made those in a while. So I think for the next video I’ll probably making some sourdough donuts. those cinnamon and sugar ones. Those were pretty tasty. But this is what the bread looked like. It turned out really good. So, I’m happy with that. And I’m going to pop one in the freezer for later. And now for making mozzarella. So, I’m definitely not a pro at this, but it turned up okay. It definitely was edible and it melted really nice. So, I’m happy with the results cuz I made a beautiful pizza with it. So, what you need is citric acid and then I have some animal renet here. I have a little measuring spoon, a teaspoon, and then some noncllorinated water. And then I have that already mixed up. So, it’s one teaspoon of citric acid. And then I use about a4 cup of water. I’m going to get that all in the pan with the milk and give it a good stir. And I’m bringing this milk up to about 90° F or 32° C. There’s a little troubleshooting note on the bottom of page 93 and it tells you that if the curd turns to the consistency of ricotta, try another brand of milk. But I don’t have another brand of milk. I use Savalot milk. And I’m sure it was highly pasteurized at a very high temperature, but that’s okay. I made it work. So here I’m just adding 1/4 teaspoon of liquid renet and to 1/4 cup of noncllorinated water. And I’m giving that a good stir and stirring up and down like the book says. And then I’m going to let this sit for about a good 20 minutes. And now the 20 minutes is over. I am cutting the curd. And then I’m just going to start slowly stirring. You see how it looks like ricotta a little bit on the top? I kind of have some nice curds underneath. So, I am not going to worry. I’m just going to continue because sometimes you just try to trust the process and just keep going or as Dory would say, just keep swimming. So, I’m just taking a slotted spoon and I’m pulling out all the curds. And I’m going to let that drip dry. And I’m going to come back and squeeze some of that way out, but gently. And then in another pot, I’m going to get some water boiling around 180°. And I think that’s where it went wrong cuz it was really hot and it was burning my hands. So, I didn’t really want to kind of roll with the ball and stretch it that much. I have my slices of cheese going in there. And we’re just going to let it marinate for a little bit in the water. And then I’m going to pull these out and make balls. I’m definitely going to be wearing gloves cuz it’s really hot. I think it was kind of too hot. And I have kind of a stretch there. It’s supposed to be really stretchy, but I didn’t quite get that stretch. But that’s fine. And then in the bowl on the stove, I have some cool water with some ice cubes. And as soon as I’m done forming these balls, I was going to let them cool in the ice water for about 15 to 20 minutes. And then I’m going to add a couple teaspoons of salt to that water. And I’m also going to pop it in the fridge. And then later on I was going to make a margarite pizza with these. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] My tomatoes have been trickling in from the garden. So, I’m just going to pop these all on the window sill and let them get ripe. So, this week I also made a batch of banana bread cuz I had of course some bananas that were going to go bad. And in this recipe, I use my leftover apple butter from the cinnamon rolls that I made last week. And I just used the recipe, my homestead apple banana bread on my blog, the peacockhomestead.com. And I doubled the recipe. So, this is going to make two loaves of banana bread. I’m just going to pop one in the freezer for another week. And then we were going to keep this one out for breakfast and dessert and whatnot. We really like to have banana bread with coffee in the morning and an afterdinner dessert. [Music] [Music] We eat a lot of pizza here, but that is okay. I love making pizza and just different pasta dishes. It is super fun and especially when you make mozzarella for the first time from scratch. You definitely want to try on a pizza. It would probably be good on a lasagna or a chicken parm as well. We have We will definitely have to try that. This is the pizza sauce that I canned last year. I used Roma tomatoes. I got my tomatoes from the Amish and they definitely grow the best tomatoes. That’s one of the tomatoes from the garden that’s going to be going on top of the pizza. So, I’m just slicing up my mozzarella. I did store the cheese with a couple teaspoons of salt in the bag. So, that added a little extra flavor. So, I’m just adding my tomatoes and the mozzarella. And then the cease to resistance. I am going to be snipping some basil on top of that. I got my oven preheated to 425. I’m going to cook it for about 15 minutes and check the bottom. It’s usually pretty good in a 15minute bake. Basil is definitely turning into one of my new favorite culinary spices and it is actually a medicinal herb as well. It’s beneficial in heart health, respiratory health, and it boosts your immunity. All right, let’s get this little beauty in the oven. And I can’t wait for this house to smell like a pizzeria. [Music] I have to say it looks pretty fancy. I can’t wait to dig in. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. This week I decided to make myself some protein balls. So for the recipe I just wung it. But basically I used almonds, dates, I used some sun butter, some peanut butter powder, and quick oats. And I found a little bit of chia seeds left over in my spice cabinet. So I just decided to add those in there as well. So, in there I have about I would say 11 dates, one cup of oats, a cup of smashed almonds, and I also have a cup of sun butter, two teaspoons of chia seeds, and I also added two tablespoons of the peanut butter powder as well. Oh, and do not forget the chocolate chips. I added about a/2 a cup of chocolate chips and I rolled them into 2 to 3 in diameter and they were delicious and I bring them for snacks for work. Two of these bad boys will definitely keep the hangry monster away. For dinner on this night, I have a bunch of chicken thighs here. I put salt and pepper on both sides. And then I’m going to take some leftover plum barbecue sauce that I had in the fridge, about half a jar. I’m just gonna slather the barbecue sauce all over the chicken and get it in the oven. And I’m just going to reserve a little to put on towards the end just to make it so it looks like that beautiful barbecue chicken look. And it tastes really good, too. So, I got some beans. This is probably one of the last batch of beans that I’ll probably be getting out of the garden, but that’s okay. We really enjoyed them this summer. So, here is what dinner looked like on that night. We just cooked a little bit of rice and put the beans over that. And the chicken definitely was the star of this dish. [Music] This week, my hubs actually requested me to make my sourdough Pop-Tarts cuz we had little bits of jam throughout the summer of making all of my batches of jam. I just had little jars left over. So, I decided that I was going to make a batch of Pop-Tarts and get them all used up and then I’ll have my jars back. So, I have little bits and bobs of jam. I have some peach jam, blueberry jam. I have blueberry basil jam. I also had tomato jam and just a little bit of the strawberry rhubarb jam left over. So, I’m going to get these all filled. I actually got about 10 this time out of the recipe. I usually get eight. So, I’ll have to make sure that I roll them out really good next time or every time. So, the key to having all of the jam stay in the middle is making little vent holes on top. So, I just kind of remembered what a pop-tart looked like with all those little bitty holes on top. That is so it vents because it’s going to bubble and then you can crimp the edges and all of the jam will stay right in the middle, right where it’s supposed to. So, I’m just brushing some milk around the edges. And then I’m going to fold them over and crimp the edges with a fork. I’m going to brush some milk on top. Just a thin layer of milk and poke holes with the really sharp knife. A few holes in each Pop-Tart. And then the ceued res. I’m going to add the pink sparkly sugar. The really great thing about these Pop-Tarts is you can flash freeze them, store them in the freezer, then pop them out and bake them fresh, or you can bake them and take them out and just enjoy them as is. They turned out really delicious. And I think next time I’m going to be making a glaze. And that’s it, friends. That’s all I have for you this week. I hope you enjoyed the video. Many blessings and I will see you on the next one.