Healthier Tuna Salad Sandwich

Hi! My name is Rina aka Mama Bear from Gotta Little Space. You might recognize me as a former monthly Make It From Scratch carnival host! Stephanie invited me to contribute to the MIFS blog and I am super excited to do so!! Thanks Stephanie!!

I love food. A lot. My husband does, too. So does our 2 year old - and his tastes are pretty strange for a toddler! We love trying new things, and being in the kitchen with my hands in a mixing bowl or stirring something up on the stove is where I'm happiest.

Some time ago we realized that eating processed, fake foods wasn't for us (but don't get me wrong, we enjoy our rare fast food moments - and I'm all about salt and vinegar potato chips!). So we decided to do our best to eat fresh, local, as un-tinkered-with foods as possible.

We're planning a fairly adventurous garden in the backyard of our first house, and we're lucky enough to live in an area that has a massive variety of other fruits and veggies to supplement (and can, and freeze, and otherwise preserve!).

Last year my family took all of us kids to California for a vacation, and my husband and I decided we were going to try and drop a bit of weight so we wouldn't be embarrassed to hit the pool or wear clothing to beat the heat.

Enter the ChangeOne plan: an eating plan that wants to teach you how to lose weight simply, safely and forever. You can click here to view all of the ChangeOne posts (about the plan, recipes, our experience and of course, our weight loss) on my personal blog, if you so desire.

It worked really, really well for us. My husband and I lost a combined total of 40 pounds in about 3 months - and we ate more while doing ChangeOne than we did before (and we were gaining weight then, certainly not shedding it!). Unfortunately though, once we returned from California, despite our best (half hearted?) efforts, we strayed from eating properly - and we've both gained back a bit of weight.

So here we are, starting back up on the ChangeOne plan. We're excited about it because we know it works, and we enjoy the food. One of the lunch recipes provided is for this tuna salad sandwich (see the picture at the top of the post, click to view it on Flickr). It's really delicious on a grainy, whole wheat bread - add some crunchy lettuce and a few tomato slices, too!

Tuna Salad Sandwich
Serves 2

1 can white or light tuna in water, drained
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon plain yogurt
1 tablespoon low fat mayonnaise
1 tablespoon pickle relish
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon minced onion
3 slices whole wheat bread
lettuce and tomato slices

Place tuna in a bowl and combine with the lemon juice. Add the yogurt, mayo, relish, mustard and onions and combine well. Line 2 bread slices with the lettuce and tomato (if desired). Top each with half the tuna mixture and the remaining slices of bread.

Variations!
Tex Mex: replace the relish and mustard with salsa.
Indian: add 1 teaspoon curry powder and 2 tablespoons raisins.
Italian: replace the yogurt and mayo with fat free Italian dressing.

Guest Post - How to Develop Creativity When You Don’t Have It

Today's guest post is contributed by Shannon Wills, who writes on the topic of x ray tech schools. She welcomes your comments at her email id: shannon1wills@rediffmail.com. I completely relate to this post. My natural creativity ends in the kitchen. Developing creativity elsewhere is something that I am working on. Thanks for the helpful tips Shannon.


I was always of the opinion that you could never develop creativity – you either have it or you don’t. I’ve always believed that you’re born with the creative instinct, that it is an innate ability and that there is no way to artificially induce it. But then, my relationship with a very talented and creative friend changed my perception and understanding of this ability. I don’t have an iota of creativity in me when it comes to working with my hands and making stuff. But I realized that if you are clever enough, you could trick creativity into making a home inside you, even if it is only on a temporary basis. And if you’re looking for ways to do this, read on:

• Copy without guilt: One way to get into the creativity game when you’re a novice is to copy your creative friends without any guilt whatsoever. I’m not saying you must steal their ideas, just that you could follow their lead and accord credit where it’s due. When you begin to learn by copying, you’re getting the hang of it. This forms a platform or lays the foundation for you to develop your own creative ideas.

• Learn by association: When you hang out with someone who is creative, you begin to learn by association. You start to think like they do and you’re often inspired by their work. You begin to learn about the practical side of creativity – the materials you could use and the tasks that can be done without too much effort. And when you really want to develop creativity, you’ll find that it comes to you when you persevere.

• Don’t be afraid to experiment: The best part about creativity is that there are no rules or standards. So in essence, anything goes. As long as you’re using your brain and coming up with new ideas to make your own stuff, you’re good to go. So don’t worry about gaining approval or praise from anyone else when you try to get creative. It’s all about gaining confidence in yourself and your newfound abilities.

• Know that even geniuses struggle: And if you’re having trouble once in a while or even more often than not, remember that even the best of creative geniuses are not free from mental blocks that hamper the flow of their creative juices. Give yourself time to learn, time to experiment, and time to grow as a creative thinker and doer, and watch the difference in the way you make things from scratch.

Guest Post: Homemade Yogurt

Today Katie from Kitchen Stewardship shares how to make homemade yogurt with tips and hints for success.

I’ll bet a lot of people are apprehensive about making homemade yogurt for a variety of reasons:
1. too much time
2. too complicated
3. afraid it won’t work out
4. growing bacteria just sounds scary and dangerous

My job is to dispel all your fears and teach the no dishes, no fuss way to make homemade yogurt. Here’s your motivation:
1. At current prices of $1.99/gallon for milk and $2-3 per 32 oz. tub of plain yogurt, I save $6-10 every time I make a gallon of yogurt, which I do every 2 weeks or less. That’s about $200 a year off my food budget.

2. Nutritionally, I can be totally in charge of the ingredients. No high fructose corn syrup or fake foods for my family. Just the health benefits of yogurt, thank you!

3. Environmentally, I save about 100 32 oz. plastic tubs from going into landfills or being recycled every year.

4. If you compare to the little plastic presweetened cups, the savings are immeasurably greater in every category. For example, the last time I read the nutrition facts on a 6 oz. yogurt cup, it contained about 45 grams of sugar. One teaspoon of sugar has 4 grams, and an 8 oz cup of milk has 12. I don’t think I could add enough fruit to make 45, so I guarantee you can cut your sugar intake…significantly…by using plain yogurt!

How Much Time Does it Take to Make Homemade Yogurt?
Grand Total: 15 minutes active work, an hour and a half that you’ll need to be at home.
• 5 minutes to pour milk into jars
• a few minutes over the next 20 minutes to check on temperature
• a few minutes to move the jars to the fridge
• wait an hour
• 5 minutes to stir in the starter
• a few minutes to get the jars in the freezer and then the fridge

How Complicated is it?
The basic steps:
1. Heat to sterilize the milk. (185 degrees)
2. Cool milk to proper incubation temperature. (90-120 degrees)
3. Add starter yogurt.
4. Incubate at warm temperature 4-24 hours.
Click here for raw milk modifications and experiments.

Let’s get started. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but here’s the easiest method, in my opinion. I realize this post looks very long, but it’s just because I want to hold your hand through every step to take the fear out of the process, which is really simple once you read through this and try it once.

Supplies necessary:
• Glass jars (quart canning jars or empty mayo or spaghetti sauce jars work great)
• Milk (any, from skim to whole)
• Candy thermometer, but I can show you how to do it without one too
• Pot large enough to hold your glass jars
• 2 Tbs of plain yogurt per quart of milk (Buy the freshest yogurt possible at a store and make sure it has “live and active cultures”. I prefer Dannon. I know it has the three top cultures that I’m looking for to help the gut. The little cups are often on sale for 40-50 cents.)
• picnic cooler
• bath/beach towel
• timer

Prep:
• Run jars and lids through the dishwasher to sterilize. I just cap them and put them away until I need them (assuming if no air gets in, no bacteria will either). They should be totally dry before capping. If you’re a real baby stepper, just put this step on your to-do list for this week, along with “print and read yogurt directions”. Then NEXT week you can tackle “make yogurt” on a day of your choosing!
• Get out picnic cooler and clean bath towel.

How to Make Homemade Yogurt, The Easy Way
The very first time you make yogurt will take a little more attention, because you’ll have to check temperatures to figure out the timing with your refrigerator. After that, it’s a piece of cake!
1. Put your sink washcloth in the bottom of the pot. This will prevent the jars from breaking if they start shaking when the water boils (especially if you forget about them).
*Added bonus: You know how sometimes even after washing your dishrag, it still smells sour? This will knock the stink right out!

2. Pour milk into your jars to about an inch from the top.

3. Place jars into the pot and fill pot with tap water around the jars.

Milk ready to boil in the pot. You can see two mayo jars, one canning jar, and a spaghetti sauce jar.

4. Put candy thermometer on edge of pot. Cook on high heat until boiling (now your thermometer is sterilized). Sometimes I put a spoon in there too so I know it’s sterile for stirring the yogurt starter in.

5. Move thermometer into one of the jars; turn heat to medium-low or so, just enough to keep the water boiling.

6. When the milk is at about 185 (you can’t burn it with this method, so if you forget it for a while, it’s OK!) turn off the heat and put lids on the jars.
The no-thermometer method: When a “skin” appears on the top, you’re at temp. Just scoop the skin off and throw it in the sink.

7. Cool the jars of milk in the refrigerator. Optional: Take starter yogurt out and let it sit on the counter. This ensures that it’s not too cold when you mix it into the warm milk. You can also cool the milk in a sinkful of cold water with ice. It works in about 20-30 minutes with water just halfway up the sides of the jars at my house!

8. Put a lid on your pot of boiling water and arrange the towel in the cooler so you can put the pot in there without melting anything, then close the lid, towel and all.

9. Your goal is to get the milk down to about 110 degrees. Incubation happens between 90-120 degrees, so you have decent wiggle room, but 105-112 is optimal. At my house it takes 50 minutes.

The first few times you make yogurt, you’ll figure out what your fridge can do. Keep your thermometer sterile and check after about 45 minutes, or leave the thermometer in the jar for the first time only and check at intervals, keeping in mind that opening the fridge will change the temperature in there just a bit, so adjust next time when you simply set the timer.

No-thermometer method: You can learn what the jars feel like from the outside. I’ve found that I can’t hold onto the jars with bare hands for more than a few seconds, it’s still too hot. Give it 5-10 more minutes and check again. 118 degrees is the temp at which enzymes and yogurt bacteria die. It’s also the temp at which humans say “ouch!” God built in a way for us to know when our food is too hot for our health! Another way to check the temp of the milk is to use a clean spoon and drip a bit onto your wrist. You want it to feel warm, but not painful. Remember that your body temperature is about 98, and your goal is approximately 10 degrees higher. If you do have a thermometer, I would recommend the first few times to use it and your wrist so that you know what 110 feels like for future reference.

*If you miss and it gets too cold, just heat it up again in the pot on the stove. It’s just milk at this point, so you’re not out anything!

10. Stir in ~2 Tbs. plain yogurt for each quart of milk. Stir gently; remember that you’re dealing with living organisms and you don’t want to knock them senseless! More is not better; too much starter can make bad yogurt. Again, these living organisms need room to reproduce. If you ask too many to live together, it’s like making tenements and living conditions aren’t as nice for your friendly bacteria!

11. Get those lids on again and nestle your jars in the cooler. Keep them wrapped in one half of the towel and take the lid off the pot to let the heat out, then close the lid of the cooler to keep the heat in.

My yogurt jars happily nestled in the cooler, ready to incubate. Before I close the lid, I'll wrap the towel end from the right around the jars.

Keep the cooler still, more or less. Jiggling will affect the consistency of the yogurt. Don’t let the kiddos “cooler-race” in the kitchen! If you have no room in your kitchen, put the cooler in another room and leave yourself a note to remind you when to take the yogurt out.

12. You have to make a call on whether you check your yogurt temp every hour or so (you can add more boiling water to the pot if the temp is getting too low) or just let it go and see what happens. Keep in mind that again, when you open your cooler, you’re affecting the temperature. I would recommend leaving it alone, and as long as your cooler is tough enough to keep the heat in the first time, you will never have to babysit your yogurt. This is NOT rocket science!

13. Incubate 4-24 hours. Shorter incubation makes sweeter yogurt, longer is more tart. Also lower incubation temperature makes sweeter yogurt and higher makes more tart. I’ve had good success between 4 and 8. I forgot it once when my goal was 4 hours and found I liked it better at 6. I forgot it once at 6 hours and found that 8 is fine, but I liked 6 better. More recently I read that after incubating a full 24 hours, almost all the lactose is eaten by the bacteria, making the yogurt extremely digestible. I tried leaving one jar for 24 hours, and it wasn’t too bad. I usually shoot for about 16 nowadays. Experiment to see what you prefer!

Note: If you incubate longer than 8 hours, I would recommend setting a teapot to boil and pouring the contents into your pot. For 24-hour-yogurt, I add boiling water before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning. I’ve never “checked” on the temp of my yogurt - I prefer to leave it alone - and I’ve had no problems.

14. When the time is up, put the jars into the freezer for about an hour. This improves the texture. No room in the freezer? (I did have a broken jar once when I put it directly into the ice.) Just go right in the fridge. If you forget the yogurt in the freezer, it’s fine. Yogurt can freeze! Just thaw in your fridge.

Note: Don’t get too interested in what it looks like until the yogurt is cold. I have a feeling stirring, and definitely shaking, the jars at this point hurts the process.

15. That’s it! You have created yogurt!

What Does it Look Like?
Most of the time, the finished product will have a yellowish “whey” around the thicker yogurt. This is normal! You can pour it off (into your soup, preferably - there’s protein in that whey!) or stir it in, depending on what consistency you want.

See the whey? Looks gross, but it's just what you want!


8-hour yogurt on the left, 16-hour on the right. The 16-hour yogurt is a bit thicker, but not appreciably so.


The Easy Clean up
Lay out your towel to dry and use it for your showers. Air dry your pot and cooler and put them away. Your only “dishes” include a spoon and a thermometer (maybe). Nice!

When your yogurt is cooled and ready to eat, take out a few Tablespoons for a starter for your next batch. Store it in a clean container and date it (I use a glass baby food jar that has been through the dishwasher). Best practice is to take your starter out first so that it’s the least contaminated by folks dipping out yogurt throughout the week.

I’ve found that I can make a batch every one to two weeks or so and the starter is still plenty strong. I might buy a new starter at the store every two months. If my yogurt starts getting runny, especially twice in a row, I can solve it by buying a new starter.

Visit Kitchen Stewardship’s Easy Homemade Yogurt for serving suggestions and troubleshooting tips, plus nutrition notes on skim vs. whole milk and organic milk. Katie @ Kitchen Stewardship shares weekly Monday Missions to challenge you to take baby steps towards being a better steward of God’s gifts of your health, earth, time and money.

Guest Post - How to make a hot plate

Kimahn from Oh!! I like that!! shares a tutorial with us today on how to make your own hot plate. Kimahn's blog is full of pretty useful thing. Be sure to stop by.



So I had this idea to make flat marbles into a hot plate.. But Mark (my beloved) said that he thought someone had already done that! I dared not look!! So to me, this is as original as can be :P

Here we go..

Materials...

• A base for your hot plate. I used a rectangular piece of wood. (I would have used a circular shape if I had one.)
• Paper and Pens. I decided to draw my own designs. You can of course use paper with a pattern on it ready for you to cut.
• A circle hole punch the size of the flat base of the marbles. Or scissors will do the job.
  
• Glue. Use a silicon based glue, as this is great for using on glass.
  
• Flat Glass Marble. I used 48. (I also unintentionally ordered clear glass marbles that have an iridescent look to them. This wasn't my plan, but it kind of looks good anyway - so just make sure you get what you want)

1. Prepare the Paper Circles...



If you decide to draw your designs, make sure you make a few extra for mistakes you might make.



I decided to do a Paris love theme.. about a year ago, my husband proposed to me in Paris on the Arch de Triumph.. oh sweet memories!

2. Glue the paper circles to the marbles...






I experimented with a few different ways for the gluing process, and found it was easier to put a dab of glue on the paper and press the marble down on top. This way you can see where the glue is spreading and push the glue where it needs to go.

3. Prepare the Base...



You don't have to paint the base, but I thought a red would compliment the red highlights I made in my images.

Once the paint has dried, simply glue the marbles in place!!

And...

Voila!!



Alternatives...




(obviously hadn't put the marbles on yet!)



This was made using small wooden buttons. I actually really like this one! And over time you might get nice brown burn marks on the tops of the buttons for a loving used effect.

So there we have it! Try it yourself. It's a great craft to do with a friend, and one that you will be able to use most days!

Planter Boxes - Guest Post

Today Chad Chandler shares with us the planter boxes that he built as a finishing touch to his porch remodel. I think the boxes, and the whole porch in fact, turned out beautifully. Chad blogs about the various remodeling projects he has tackled and throws in some cooking posts for good measure. Thanks Chad for this great post. 

We’re finally close to finishing the front porch. After we built a side table and footrest to go with our rocking chair, all we had left to do was build some planter boxes to flank the steps and give us a little privacy. I took care of that this past weekend. This was the original plan:

It’s designed to look like the terracotta pot is suspended by the upper lip, but it’ll really be sitting on cross bars inside the box.

Here is the inner bracing for the two boxes:

Once the pot is filled with soil, it’ll be very heavy. Since the lower braces are going to have to support all of that weight, I added corner supports and a cross bar. When the box is finished, I’ll add perpendicular cross bars for extra support.



Next I added 3/8″ plywood sides to form the boxes and got ready to cut the pieces for the top.

This is a neat little tool. It’s the two points of a compass that can be attached to almost any yardstick for making large arcs and small circles:



I had to guess a little bit on the circumference. I don’t have calipers large enough to measure the pot’s width. I guess I could have measured it with my wife’s measuring tape and worked backwards to get the radius, but I was told there would be no math. Anyway, it worked out fine.

Here are the planter boxes after I’ve caulked the inner joints, filled in the screw holes, and added an accent piece to hide the joints on the top:



I routed a mild curve around the outside edge of the top pieces and added the other cross bars on the inside:



I painted it with several coats of flat, exterior, white paint, and carried the planters and the pots to the front porch. I just set the plants in the pots to see how it all looks. My wife and I will actually plant them sometime this week.



The decorative cut-outs in my original design were supposed to mimic the ornamentation on the porch swing (and the shutters). But after some thought, I decided it was too much. You know, less is more and all that. I wanted the terracotta pots to noticeably juxtapose the white paint, and I think I got the effect I was looking for. The problem is that the steps aren’t centered, and having these boxes on either side puts an exclamation point on that flaw. As someone who’s a stickler for symmetry, this drives me crazy.

Still, the planters are serving their purpose. They act as a natural barrier to give us a little more privacy while keeping the space open:



I know it all looks jammed together in the picture, but the porch is bigger in reality. It’s fun to look at now. Aside from the Adirondack rocker, I made everything on the porch. Even the railing.

Make it from Scratch will be featuring guest post every Friday while Kellie takes a hiatus. Would you like to be featured here? Please email makeitfromscratch at yahoo.com

Help Wanted

I want to extend a thank you to everyone who participates in the carnival, and especially to those of you who host it. Of course, we all greatly appreciate those of you who simply enjoy reading the carnival. Thanks to all of you. But we could use some more help in the hosting department. 

Hosting the carnival takes a little time, but is easy. You get to preview all the fantastic entries. You also get a nice spike in the traffic to your blog while introducing new readers to your space. Check the hosting schedule at the Blog Carnival page for available dates. Click the link for more information on hosting. Please email me to get on the schedule. 

And while I'm asking for help. . .

A huge thank you to Heather who has shared so many wonderful and easy craft ideas with all of us! We would love to have more bloggers participate here. Guest posts are welcome. Simply email an idea or article for consideration. 

If you would like to host a carnival or contribute a guest post, please email me at makeitfromscratch at yahoo.com

Thanks so much to all of you! 

photo credit: e50e

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Our posting schedule allows plenty of room to include guests posts. We welcome you to share your made from scratch ideas. Here are a few guidelines.

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We are looking for basic projects or recipes, things a beginner could do.

2. Pick a good topic.
While all how to, made from scratch, do it yourself, articles are welcome, priority will be given to those on topics that we do not cover as frequently. We cover food and crafts on a regular basis.

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