Days of my Life #51

Nutty Cheezus Christ on a cracker!

Daughter has perfected her cracker recipe. This is a good thing. Why? Because one must use all of the Buffalo …I mean sourdough starter leftovers. The crackers are imbedded with a most delightful blend of spices, seeds, and herbs, cut, then erratically splattered with salt and baked. They are also full of butter. Think pie crust crackers. Mmmm. Yum.

Alas we cannot live solely on homemade crackers and sourdough bread. Lord knows we’ve tried. Now we are embarking upon lactose free cheese, aka nut cheese… because both daughter and I have woefully discovered we are severely lactose intolerant. Poo. This is a big BUMMER since our palates love the moo juice and it’s many offshoots but our bellies and attached organs do not. Is this TMI? Tough. I’m writing. You’re reading. Get over it.

Well, phooey and nuts to teats, and by the way that was not meant to have a sexual inference …but on second thought. Anyway our digestive systems are telling us to forego dairy and head for the trees. We, collectively decided that a foray into nut-cheese production was our only and hopefully best solution…later to experiment with ice nut lollies, nut milks etc.

And there’s such a huge selection of tree fruit seed from which to choose: almonds, cashews, coconut, pecan, Macadamia, walnut, Brazil…and on.

So, here we are, or rather I, am now currently gathering recipes and items to begin the process. Sure, sure, we could so easily just hit the grocery store and purchase the various products but they are not only expensive but often times meh. Besides we are an adventurous gastronomical duo, willing to fuck up now and then as we plod through to achieve soft ripened success.

And boy do we like to experiment. Why just the other day my friend Lynn gave us two humongous bags of whitish green grapes freshly picked from the vineyard where she regularly volunteers. After eating a few raw yet delicious grapes we decided we might juice them. So I took one of the bags out of the fridge and began to ninja the little juicy balls, then put the pulp through a fine strainer. Alas the juice was only moderately good which compelled us to google “things to do with grape juice, seeds and pulp”.

I proceeded to squeeze out as much juice as possible from the seeds and pulp, now with muslin bag in hand, to hurry the process, after which daughter said “Hey, Let’s make molasses from the juice and flour from the pulp”. I responded in the affirmative and continued to pour the juice into a pot and began to cook the juice down til it was golden brown and very thick. That done we spread the pulpy mixture on baking sheets and set them to dry slowly in the oven at a low temp. We have yet to juice the other bag of grapes, the process being ridiculously tedious, and I do not like doing the same thing for too long. Maybe I can get “her” to do it this time. I figure we’ll make some thing with the grape flour and come up with something strange for the rest of the grapes. In the meantime…

Back to the the nuts and cheesy stuff. I’ve ordered cheesecloth and various accoutrements like agar and tapioca flour and nutritional yeast, etc. to ease our way into lactose free heaven since there is no way I’m gonna just be eating plain ole crackers anymore. With the left over “milk” I’m planning on delving into concocting whatever is on the dairy free horizon. Because I’m determined to use it all.

Oh, except one little thing… I figured you might be wondering what I’m gonna do with the shells of the nuts that I’m using. Nothing. I’m buying the nuts already shelled. As I said I do not like doing the same thing for too long

Tune in.