Needed Ingredients and Supplies

- a gallon of whole milk
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup of apple cidar vinegar or lemon juice
- a big pot
- strainer
- cheesecloth
- food thermometer

Preperation

Heat the milk to 180 degrees, then back down to 100. When it gets to 100, pour in the acid and clumps will start forming and you’ll see the yellowish whey.

Cook for just a few minutes more, then pour it into a strainer lined with cheesecloth.

Hang it somewhere (this is my banana tree contraption) with something under it to catch the dripping whey because it’ll drip for a little while longer.

Let it completely drain, then gather up the corners and gently squeeze out the remaining whey.

After 12-24 hours, you can take it out of the cheesecloth, separate it into clumps, then use it in a recipe. You can herb it up for a cracker spread, or use in cheesecake. I will add sour cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla and a touch of lemon juice to this cheese, mix and then bake it.

Ingredients

- 4 chicken breasts
- BBQ Sauce (we recommend Sweet Baby Ray’s)
- Bag of Frozen Corn
- 3 large baking potatoes
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- 1/4 milk

Preperation

First peel and chop the potatoes. Put on the stove boiling in water over high heat. Chop breasts into tender size pieces and place in casserole dish. Cover with BBQ sauce and put in oven at 400 for 30 minutes. Make the corn about 10 minutes before the chicken is done. Drain and mash potatoes and add milk and butter. Salt and pepper to taste. Yum yum! Add BBQ sauce to the chicken and enjoy!

The grand spice of cinnamon gives our lives so much flavor. Be it the spice to our sweet, or the zing to our savory, many of our favorite dishes just can’t be done without cinnamon. Cinnamon has a long and rich history as a spice in many different foods and cultures.

History of Cinnamon
In the beginning there was Moses, using Cinnamon in holy rituals. Then crusaders brought back stories of cinnamon being fished up in nets at the source of the Nile at the end of the world. It was one of those type of things that was really hard to get, and its origin known only by a few, who kept the secret to protect their businesses.

When cinnamon was first brought into Europe through the spice trade, wild stories where invented on how the merchants actually got the cinnamon. They would create these elaborate far off dangerous lands that required a lot of work and bravery to traverse. Or of cinnamon birds who built nests out of cinnamon sticks. Arabian men would have to climb up tall trees and fight with these birds just to get a few pieces of the precious spice.

In reality cinnamon was growing in plentiful amounts in Sri Lanka, and today that is still where most of the world’s cinnamon is grown.

Cinnamon Today
Cinnamon is a spice used around the world today, in nearly every society. It is harvested from trees up to 35 feet tall using a method that has been used for centuries. The roots are cropped, and during the next growing season shoots sprout up from these roots. The shoots are cut, the bark removed, and what is left is dried out and ready to be used.

Mexico is the world’s top importer of cinnamon, and it shows in their food. Almost any Mexican dish that uses chocolate will include hefty dusting with cinnamon as do most of their desserts. It is used in the United State for many different types of dishes, including the patriotic apple pie.

It is utilized in the health sector for its antioxidant content and its reputation for reducing stress.Studies have shown that taking cinnamon can help with type 2 diabetes (read more here) and high cholesterol.

Cooking with Cinnamon
Cinnamon can be used in a wide variety of dishes from sweet to savory.

Savory Cooking: Cinnamon is used in venison (like in this Spice Venison Casserole), beef (like in this Cinnamon Beef) , and chicken  (like in this Greek Chicken) dishes, as well as many middle eastern and Indian curries (like in this Indian Pilaf).

Sweet Cooking: From crispy treats (like these Cinnamon Sugar Crisps) to soft chewy cinnamon rolls (like Alton Brown makes) cinnamon is a great way to add complex spice to your sweets. Snicker doodles are a variation of the sugar cookie that includes cinnamon and is geared toward pleasing the adult palet with more flavor layers than the sugar cookie.

Substitutions: Cassia is often sold labeled as cinnamon but has a sweeter taste and comes from a completely different plant. It is usually lighter in color than real cinnamon. Nutmeg, cloves, ginger, allspice, and cardamom can sometimes be used to make up for the spice, but none of those are quite cinnamon. In most recipes, if you need cinnamon, its a good idea to find some.

Storage: Cinnamon goes stale quickly so your best bet is to buy small amounts. It’s the type of spice that a little goes a long way, and the fresher your cinnamon, the better the taste. Sticks can be stored in a air tight container someplace cool and away from sunlight.

Cinnamon gives us a spice to life that you really just can’t find anywhere else. Now get cooking!

Why make it from scratch? Because only silly people pay someone to mix four ingredients together, let it sit and get stale in a box, and then claim it is the best way to make pancakes. Don’t fall for it! They are just mixing flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt; then charging you a three times as much!

I remember making pancakes as a little kid, and I remember my dad telling me some very important pancake advice that I for some reason forgot when I started making rubber pancakes my first year of college. But, after many failed attempts and wasted syrup, I have come back home with some pancakes that rock. All the knowledge I have gained along the way follows, and I hope that it helps you create something magical in the morning.

First, lets get our food stuffs together:

Ingredients

• 3 cups all purpose flour

• 1 ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 3 teaspoons baking powder

• 3 dashes of cinnamon

• 3 tablespoons of sugar

• 3 cups buttermilk

• 1 egg

• 5 tablespoons melted butter (plus a little for our pan)
• Splash of lemon

Next we want to heat our skillet.

What to cook pancakes on…

The surface you cook your pancakes on makes a huge difference on how your final pancake will turn out. That is why pancakes from places like The Ol’ South Pancake House have a different texture and consistency than when you make them at home in a frying pan. They use a large flat griddle that cooks the pancakes evenly while giving them room to do their thing. This is hard to accomplish in the home kitchen because most stoves and pans just don’t have the heat distribution of the electric griddle.

So your best bet is something like Presto 07045 Family-Size Cool-Touch Tilt’N Drain Electric Griddle. But, if you don’t have a griddle laying around, and you need pancakes like, NOW, have no fear.

Second best is a stove top griddle, but we want to look for something that holds heat well, so we don’t experience any changes in temperature, and something nice and flat. Non-stick is a must in this situation. You can use enough butter to keep your cakes from sticking, but going light on the butter will make for fluffier pancakes. Using a lot of butter will add a crisp to your pancake top and bottom, and while good for some applications, I prefer the fluffy.

Make our Mix

The great thing about pancake mix is that it stores well. If you wanted to x10 the recipe and store it for future use, you could do so saving yourself a step in the future and making morning pancakes easy as pie. Just used 4 cups of your mix and skip the next step.

To make my mix I simple combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl with a lid. Then I give it a good shake to make sure all my ingredients are mixed together well. This also sifts the ingredients a bit, fluffing the whole thing up with a little air.

Making our Batter

Once we have our dry ingredients, form a little crater in the middle to hold all our liquids. Add in all the liquids and prepare to stir. When it comes to pancakes, less stirring is more. Over stirring your batter makes for tough pancakes. We just want to stir well enough to combine our ingredients, about 10 or 12 seconds. There will be lumps in our batter, and this is just what we want. These lumps will vanish once we start cooking, and by not stirring to much our pancakes will be nice a fluffy.

Time to Cook!

Before we start ladling our batter we want to check out griddle and make sure it is the right temperature. Get your hand wet and sprinkle a few drops of water on the surface. If you see the water do a little dance across the surface, your temperature is just right and ready for pancakes.

Take a small piece of butter and throw it on the griddle, making sure the entire surface is covered. Then ladle about 1/3 cup pancake batter onto the surface. Try to use a smooth motion so you don’t pop the bubbles forming in our batter, and by slowly pouring the batter out, you end up with a more evenly cooked pancake.

Once you see bubbles on the top of the pancake, you are getting close. As soon as those bubbles start to pop, slip a spatula under your cake and give it a flip. Cook the pancake for the same amount of time on the other site, and set aside covered by towels to keep warm.

Final Touches

Once your pancakes are cooked, add syrup, butter, and a side of bacon and you are on your way to pancake heaven. Other variations of this recipe include adding fruit. If you are a fruit lover, there is nothing better than a blueberry pancake. Hey, even strawberries are pretty good for those of you who don’t do the blue.

I hope you enjoy these pancakes…what do you think?

“2010 will be our 50th year in the business, and we are kicking it off with the most aggressive promotion in the history of our company,” said Domino’s Chairman and CEO David A. Brandon. “This is the biggest product introduction we’ve done since…well, pizza.”

Many are meeting this with harsh criticism of Domino’s, saying things like any change will be better then what they currently serve. This comment from The Consumerist was especially harsh:

“You’re way too fricken polite. Domino’s pizza is utter crap.”

Changes to the dough include more garlic and parsley baked in to the crust. The sauce is supposed to be more sweet and bold, whatever that may mean. And the cheese is now made with 100% mozzarella and a hint of provolone instead of whatever it was they were using before.

When they roll it out do you think you will give it a try? Have you had the new pizza yet? What do you think?

The History of Molasses
Since the discovery of sugar, molasses has been its cousin in crime, sweetening many types of foods. In the beginning it was primarily used in the making of Rum. It was cheaper than refined sugar and was used as the primary sweetener by many.

By 1920 refined white sugar had gone down in price and took over as the dominate sweetener. In 1919 a large Molasses storage tank in Boston collapsed filling the streets with the sticky syrup and killing 21 people. (learn more here>>)

Molasses Today
Today molasses costs nearly twice as much as white sugar, but is still used widely. It is used to make rum and other alcohols, as well curing plants such as tobacco. It is added to cattle feed to provide carbohydrates and other nutrition. Blackstrap molasses is even sold as a nutritional supplement in health stores.

Plus it is a popular ingredient in many modern recipes.

Cooking with Molasses
Molasses is a wildly useful ingredient. It can be used to make cookies chewy, or to make salt meat dishes more savory.

Molasses can be used in many different type of recipes including cookies, sweet potatoes , baked beans, or even turkey glaze .

Substitutions: You can substitute normal sugar for molasses but it won’t have as strong of flavor, so you may want to up what ever spice you are using to compensate. You can also use brown sugar and still get some of that flavor since brown sugar has a little molasses in it. ¾ cup sugar mix with ¼ water should do the trick for every 1 cup molasses. When using brown sugar you can use a little less water. DO NOT substitute blackstrap molasses for normal molasses because the flavor is MUCH stronger.

Storage: Molasses usually comes in a glass jar. It doesn’t require refrigeration, and since it is so thick it is hard to move, you your best bet is just to store it in the container you bought it in.

So now that you know your thick syrup sugar friend, lets get cooking!

Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups brown sugar
- ¼ cup molasses
- 3 cups flour
- 1 ½ sticks butter
- 3 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons ginger
- 2 teaspoons cloves
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon baking soda
- ½ cup white sugar for rolling cookies

Makes 18 cookies

Preparation
Making cookies is all about the love, so make sure your in a good happy mood before you begin. First, take our butter and stick it in a bowl. Using a mixer if you have one, or a big brute stirring arm, make the butter soft. Stir in the brown sugar and molasses until you have a sugar butter that is creamy and smooth. Next add our eggs, and make sure they are combined well. Add our cinnamon, ginger, and clovers and blend well. Next add our baking soda, and slowly add the flour one cup at a time, blending well after each cup.

Once we have mixed all our ingredients well we want to stick them in the freezer for 15 minutes to make it easy to work with.

While we are waiting for our dough we can preheat our oven to 350°, and coat our cookie sheet in a thin layer of spray or oil just to keep them from sticking. Also stick our sugar in a bowl.

After the dough is ready we want to form it into 1 ½ inch balls and roll them in the sugar. Place them with expanding room for our 4 inch cookies.

Bake in the oven for 9 ½ minutes and then remove. Let sit for 10 minutes to finish and cool. Serve with milk or eggnog and feel your soul fill with warmness.

It still needs a little bit of adjustment, but I think it came out pretty good.

Ingredients
- 16oz Rotini
- ½ white onion
- two cloves of garlic
- 3 tablespoons of butter
- 1 ½ cup Half and Half
- 1 cup milk
- 6 oz Mozzarella cheese
- 2 oz Asiago cheese
- 1 package cream of mushroom soup mix
- 2 cans tuna
- Parmesan cheese

Makes 8 servings.

Preparation
Boil the Rotini for about 5 minutes. I like to leave them a little al dente so when I add it in with my cream sauce it doesn’t end up mushy. I also start my onion and garlic in some butter on medium heat in a large skillet (big enough to hold all our food).

Once our garlic has browned a little bit I add in my butter and melt it down. Then I add my milk and half and half. I then take my Rotini and toss it in. Follow that up with my tuna and soup mix.

Let it simmer and thicken for about 2 minutes, and then add in our cheeses. Stir until our sauce is nice and thick.

I usually like to make some type of Italian toast at this point. Once everything is done stick some on a plate, cover in Parmesan, and serve nice and hot.

Making Brown Sugar
Brown sugar is generally made by adding molasses to white sugar. If you add a little molasses, say 1 teaspoon per cup, you end up with light brown sugar. If you add more, say 1 tablespoon per cup, you end up with dark brown sugar.

It is made this way because it is easy to control the amount of molasses, making manufacturing cheaper and more predictable. Chemicals are sometimes added to make industrial handling easier. While not perfect, this provides cheap high quality brown sugar to the masses.

If you are wanting something a little more natural, you can go for something called Sugar in the Raw. If you take sugar before processing, and extract the straight crystals, you end up with a brown sugar with natural molasses running through the actual crystals. While more expensive, this process doesn’t require any special chemicals, and is considered a more healthy alternative because of the high mineral content and lack of foreign substances.

Using Brown Sugar
Cooking: Alton Brown once said, during a Cookie episode of Good Eats, that varying the amount of white sugar to brown sugar will give you different texture end result. More white sugar gives you a crispy result, and more brown sugar will give you a moist chewy result. So, when cooking think about what you want your end product to be, and adjust your sugar use. Check out these recipes that use Brown Sugar>>

Storage: Brown sugar can easily become clumpy, hard, and nasty if not stored properly. All that molasses can easily turn to rock if you let the moisture escape. Store in a air tight container, and try to only buy the amount you need at the time. If you get too much, the best thing you can do is cook more stuff with brown sugar. But, if you must store, air tight in a room temperature will work best. For extended storage, try adding a slice of apple to keep things moist.

Substitutions: So if you must go without the brown sugar, you can either make you own like we talked about above, or you can add sugar and molasses separately. Using regular sugar may work, but you might end up with something crispy and dry.

So know that you know your brown sugars, lets get cooking!