Tasty day

Just got done with a lot of cooking... but none of it was really that work intensive.

The list:
Chai Base (fresh ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, black peppercorns, cloves, Darjeeling tea, water)
Yoghurt (whole milk, one yoplait cup of yoghurt as starter, mason jars)
Apple Sauce (Apples--peeled,cored,diced, ground cinnamon, and some lemon juice)
The chai turned out well and I have about 6 cups of mix in the fridge, just waiting for some cold person to heat it up with some milk (and cream) and honey. Once I come down off of a prednisone-induced manic episode I will type up a recipe--not like I really have one written down anyway. The stuff I make at home is a good rendition of the Yogi Tea Black Chai bags that I get at the store, but much cheaper. It will be even better if I can get my hands on some Assam tea instead of the darjeeling, but that involves a trip to the city.

The yoghurt recipe is taken lovingly from The Frugal Girl's Blog where it can be found. It is very basic and makes a little over a gallon of yoghurt (yogurt?). I found that it is nice and easy to make yoghurt cheese and Greek style yoghurt with this recipe, so that I no longer pay $0.83/oz or more and instead only pay $.030/oz if I make it myself--and that is when milk is not on sale and when store brand yoghurt is! Big difference, and I like the texture better on it too when I strain it to make it nice and thick. It is a good thing that we like yoghurt in this house though, since I now have a gallon of it in the fridge... I give it till Wednesday till it is gone.

Finally the applesauce is basic: peel, core, and dice apples. Add in 1-2 tsp of lemon juice per pound of apples to keep it nice and vibrant and also add tartness (less needed with granny smith apples or other tart apples). Cook on low, stirring occasionally, until the house smells of apples and the pieces are mushy. I cooked mine down with some ground cinnamon, but it is just as good made without too! I have used a potato masher to get chunky sauce, but this time I used my immersion blender to make a smooth batch--mostly because the masher went M.I.A sometime between yesterday and today.

So there you have it. My cooking day as it stands. I am sure that eventually I will come down from this high of usefulness and crash hard... but for now I am going to put it to use (and make sure that nothing I do needs much attention to detail or I will have to redo it once I am back to normal).