Cream Cheese Powder, Garden Stuff and Other THis~N~That

[Music] hello friends heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and i'm here today for a mid-june this and that video and i think i've been doing pretty good at keeping up on these weekly but i'll also be covering some garden updates on this one but anyway if you're new this and that is simply me covering a whole bunch of different topics to lead you back to videos i might already have to just give you some updated tips and also to let you know some specific videos that will be coming out down the road so let's get to the topics of today i want to start off talking about the cream cheese powder now if you've been following me long enough you'll know that i've been stocking up on some different dairy powders now powdered whole milk is something i've always stocked up on and through the years learned to use it more and more in various different things yes we love fresh milk but having some powdered milk and other dairy products on hand just been really handy and also helps us to be able to spread out the fresh things that we do keep stocked up on like the butter and the cream cheese so i will link to a couple of different videos i have on the dairy powders i think i have one on the heavy cream powder i have one on the butter powder and then i have one just on milks in general that i stock up on i'll put all three of those in the description box down below if you're curious and i plan on down the road the more i use this i will do a separate video just on this because hopefully by then i'll used it in enough things that i can give you some more ideas i was really hesitant for a long time on trying the cream cheese powder and had assumed incorrectly that it might had some of the couple other unsavory greedy ingredients so far with the hoosier hill farm the only one that i've tried that had citric acid and i can't remember something else added to it that's one of those questionable ingredients was the white cheddar powder which i love and will still use it on occasion but because of the ingredients i really limit my use of that one but then when i got looking closer at the cream cheese and seeing the ingredients which i will post right here i was really impressed and with that alone and thought you know what i'm gonna go ahead and give it a try i'll just try one to start with and i like to get them through the subscribe and save on amazon because i can save more money doing it that way plus getting free shipping now that i know i really like this i'm going to be upping the amount i get per month until i get a good stock of it in hand so anyway i just got this in the other day for the june subscribe and save and uh just have tried a little bit of it messed around with it only a small amount but enough to know i'm really liking it now of course like any powdered dairy product it is going to have a little bit different flavor than your fresh items of that same thing but to have something on hand that is easy to work with has a longer shelf life and you don't have to keep in the freezer this is just really excellent just like any of the other dairy products and yes you can take these out and like i've done with many of them if you're wanting to get it out of the plastic container just put it in a quart jar put your little liner of some kind whether it be a piece of cloth paper towel or coffee filter over the top of the powder vacuum seal it into a jar that's going to get it out of the plastic and help up the shelf life though i don't know the exact shelf life people ask me this all the time the package is going to say one thing and it's always going to be much longer than what the package says i've had powdered milks stored up for many years are still in excellent condition so i don't worry about that now how i've tried this so far one thing i tried doing was doing kind of half and a half blend with the white cheddar powder because the white cheddar powder is like really salty where this is not salty at all and so that did actually help kind of smooth out mellow out that flavor of the white cheddar cheddar powder and then the other thing i did was simply and you can do any of your herbs and spices that you dehydrate up yourself from your own garden and i have lots of that kind of stuff as well but i do still like to stock up on some other things such as this three onion soup dip mix that i get from mother's products and i do have a link to them down below i love this stuff it works so good in so many things it's easy just to open it up and toss them into soup or dip or whatever so what i did the other day since i do like making a dip i have a recipe for i think it's a salmon dip in that one i you can use any seafood or whatever you want in it i've done it with clams because my son loves a clam dip but i like using salmon or steelhead in it and uh same idea you but using fresh cream cheese and throwing some of this and a few other spices in i thought well i didn't have any cooked salmon ready to go or anything like that so i just made it like just with these simple ingredients just the cream cheese powder no special measurements i just throw stuff together and see how it turns out and then some of this in there and what i'll do is i'll go ahead and blend some up in front of you just so you can see how i do it i never followed the directions on the package but they do have a direction so you know exactly how much water to add but when you're talking something like a dip the amount of water you add is going to depend on other dried ingredients you add to it or how thin or thick you want it to be all i did was take oh about a big tablespoon or two of the cream cheese powder i sprinkled in some maybe i don't know maybe about a teaspoon or so of the three onion soup dip mix again you can use any dried onion garlic thyme whatever sounds good to you i'm going to go ahead and sprinkle in a little bit more and then i like to put my water in just a separate smaller container than pouring it directly from my jug since we use filtered rain water and we store it in gallon jugs like this i usually get too much water if i use it straight from there so i just pour it in there i do this same thing when i'm if i'm actually mixing up the butter powder into a butter which is something i rarely do i use it for many other things so and you can check out that video to see how i use it and then just keep adding it and stirring it until i get the consistency i want and this actually turned out really good when i did this the other day we had some leftover organic late july tortilla chips from when my son and his and my daughter-in-law were over the other day i tried those and this was really good so there you have it it's just super easy to do and again you can just get fancy with it add some black pepper some red pepper however whatever you want in there and create a very quick and simple and tasty dip with this cream cheese powder i haven't made cheesecake in forever but i do want to try this in making a cheesecake but i'm going to start by making a real small cheesecake to start with if that works well and has a good flavor that might be just all the more reason to keep stocking up on that cream cheese powder but this would also be excellent in your smoothies if you like to make some kind of milkshake or smoothie where you like that cream cheese flavor i can see that being really good in there or even in your homemade popsicles or creamsicles i might try that patrick isn't a big cream cheese person but as mild as the flavor of this is he probably wouldn't mind it used in various different things i could also see this being an option to use in making a tiramisu which i have not done that in years either but tiramisu uses a mascarpone cheese which is very hard to find around here and if you do it's very expensive but you can make a good tiramisu using a cream cheese and ricotta cheese blend but i'm thinking if i use the cream cheese powder i might be able to get a decent texture and consistency by doing it that way okay so since i was just talking about creamsicles i wanted to share with you finally broke down in order these are far more expensive than the ones i've been using for years but every summer especially i'll do this a lot of times through the winter too but especially in the summer i make patrick mostly there for patrick i'll have one once in a while but i'll make him some creamsicles based on whatever fruit we have on hand and usually some heavy cream that i keep frozen so i'm going to be doing a recipe video soon and i haven't decided yet but i have some frozen cantaloupe and some frozen honeydew melon both things that i got organic from the misfits market and i cut them up the honeydew melon i should have taken a picture of it it was that big it was massive i have plans on making some creamsicles with that and the cantaloupe those both make really excellent creamsicles and i will do a video on that so anyway um been using the zoku ones for years and been happy with them they're bpa-free but again they're still plastic and for the first time we had one of these things break on us last year and i thought well now that i'm getting in that time of year i like to make the creamsicles i'm gonna finally invest in the stainless steel ones i've been wanting for a long time so how these work i haven't used them yet but you fill you got your rack here that holds the popsicle mold you pour your mixture into the mold you put your your bottom or top in this case since it's upside down on there and then you're going to take your bamboo sticks which are washable and reusable and just insert it in in there and then freeze it until it's set and then when you're ready to you to eat them once they're fully set you want to just warm it doesn't matter which ones you use you just want to warm that up in your hands to loosen that up and you should be able to slide that right off and the nice thing about that is maybe you don't want to eat a whole popsicle or creamsicle all at once you can stick it back in there and put it back in the stamp and then the thing i was happy about is it also came with extra little i don't know what you'd call these washers gaskets or whatever that go in there to help hold that stick in place and also prevent leakage there it actually came with this little sponge that is made specifically for using in these i didn't even know it came with that so that was pretty that was pretty cool now beans that these are stainless steel they're going to be a lot more expensive than your zoku plastic ones but if you're trying to get away from plastic i do recommend this it does come in two sizes i'd initially thought about getting the tin but i wasn't sure how much freezer space it was going to take up and i prefer having two smaller ones so i might get a second one down the road if i'm happy with these we'll see once i do that video on the recipe some of you might remember i did a more updated video on a hair oil treatment my other one is like four years old now or older than that maybe so it's been almost five years since i started my channel but i'm just about finally i'm running low on the my original one that i had made and this is just i use this sometimes in my hair on the ends mostly i use it for my scalp it was just to help uh when i went through that whole change going off the thyroid medication and i lost a whole bunch of hair and then going through the change of life my just everything was all happening at once and so i made the hair oil treatment it's just my own recipe so i could rub it into my scalp and help increase my hair growth and it's really helped quite a bit i don't even use it all the time anymore which is part of the reason why it's taken me so long to work through it but anyway here is my my last recipe i will link to this down below so i have a lot of herbs from my own garden here plus some red pepper and i do grow hot peppers but um i do also stock them up on red pepper flakes and you can check that recipe out i did not add any essential oils to this and i may not i'm gonna try it without the added essential oils but uh in that recipe video i do talk about some options for essential oils that you can use so i'm straining this out and i want you to see the color see how dark that is this is from the herbs and the red pepper you don't have to use all of the herbs i used in here i don't even remember what all i used i do know i put nasturtium flowers in here and i believe i use sage and rosemary as well which is one of the reasons why i would normally use like sage and rosemary oil in there but essential oil but i'm gonna try just using the infused oil this way from my own herbs so that you know i'm not using up the expensive essential oil and i think that this should be good enough i mean just looking at that deep color tells me it's been very well infused i mean it's been sitting in here since november so anyway i'll be topping off my jar now look at the difference in color of course this is thinner so it's going to naturally look lighter but i can tell still that this one is far better infused than this one so again if you're interested in my hair growth oil recipe go ahead and check out that video i'll be linking to in the description box down below you guys know i've been watching the baby the grand baby three days a week and sometimes i have to plan the meals for patrick so that he can have something to eat because a lot of times i just don't have the time needed to put a lot of time into a meal and so this is where either i make a big meal on sunday and or saturday make a couple of bigger meals that can get him through the three days or i fall back on stuff that i can't and so something i tried for the first time it's been a work in progress now i've made i've done the canned meatballs this is my own meatball recipe and then i just i pressure canned them i believe 75 minutes uh i do have a a basic meatball recipe i'll link to down below with the water in there some people do it without the added water but i like the idea of having water in there in case i want to use it as to make a gravy of some sort and so what i did what i've been doing one of patrick's favorite things is to have like a white gravy with meatballs that you serve over rice and i'm thinking i have an idea i thought about this a while back well usually when i make biscuits and gravy in the morning for patrick there's always no matter how small i make the batch it just seems like there's always leftover white gravy from the biscuits and gravy so what i started doing was every time i would make that or make anything else that had a similar type white gravy and there was leftover i kept putting that little bit of leftover into a glass bowl with a tight fitting lid a snap lock container and put it in the freezer until it was full and then the other night i thought now's the perfect time to use up this gravy out of the freezer and so i pulled it out let it thaw i took one of my jars of the meatballs and poured the whole thing in there the just the water that was in there and everything because the the white gravy always tends to thicken up even more once it's sat even after it was frozen and thought it was very thick anyway so adding more liquid to it was perfect plus we got more flavor from the meatballs in there and it turned out great it was super easy and all i had to do was cook up a side of rice to go with it and some vegetables i do usually use vegetables in my gravy and also in the meatballs as well so you can check out my recipe there so that was really wonderful and then just a couple other things to remind you yes you can dehydrate up ground beef this is going to take up less space than your can just plain ground beef that's what i have here and this is nice to have on hand but i have found that i do like using the dehydrated ground beef better for adding to sauces like spaghetti sauce or or any kind of soup or anything i want to cook it into then the canned ground beef but this has its benefits too it's just a way to make more freezer space you can take your ground meats start canning dehydrating making meatballs or even making a meat loaf and canning the other thing i always forget to talk about when i'm talking about dehydrating your herbs and in your cloth liners and half the part of the reason i forget to talk about it is it's something i always mean to do and forget when you have a dehydrator like this where you've got your heat and fan coming from the top and you're using this method take an extra one of your liners and lay it over the top of that top tray so that when you go to lift the top of it off especially if you still have it running and you're just going to peek at stuff this having this on there will help prevent any of the herbs from getting sucked up into the motor as well as just keeping them all in place and not send them flying all over the place so what i have here is some time now this all this time right here is from the pots that you saw in my last this in that video that are on top of our old wood stove out there and then this this one is just a common garden time that i'm growing out front that i've had for years and i wanted to show you this because yes you can harvest and use those flowers now like with oregano and other herbs in this mint family the flowers are going to have much more mild flavor but you can still eat them they're still good they still taste like thyme and you can choose to make tea out of this this would make a really good tea using the flowers so if your time has already started flowering and you're trying to figure out what to do with it cut it up and just harvest it and dehydrate it i'm gonna actually mix all this together but since i harvest these from two different places that's why they're separate plus i wanted to show you this or just start using those flowers and make tea thyme tea is very healthy for you and it's very tasty it's one of those teas like peppermint that i don't mind having it as a tea by itself without other added things because it's just very tasty since i started my channel i've been doing usually every summer i'll do a few videos just on herbs there are video pro herb profiles i have quite a few out there but i have tons more i still have yet to cover i do have one out i think it was last year the year before i did on the time that i will link to down below and usually any of those videos i'm covering the benefits as well as the uses some of you might remember i did this video on these lanterns still very happy with them of course i haven't had to use them as much lately but they're a battery operated lantern um we have a lot of fuel lanterns oil lanterns gas lanterns and so on but i've been really happy with these especially for a safer lantern to have on hand and don't have to worry about any kind of fuel odor now especially now with the grand baby and it's just a pretty little lantern but anyway in the video i was talking about the rechargeable battery that it does come with and it's a battery like this i decided to start hunting around for this particular battery and the one that came with the lantern was a 3 800 milliamp and so that's going to tell how long that one battery can last at a full charge and i was having a really hard time finding the 3800 i did finally find some 3500 at a place called battery junction and but they were all on back order and i waited three months and still didn't get them in while i did it recently did some looking around on amazon again because i it's like i really would like to have some backup batteries because rechargeable or not eventually the batteries are going to give out and what i found was really surprising and yes made overseas most of your electronics people are made overseas if you have a computer or a phone it's most likely been made overseas or a flashlight anyway so what i found was i could get this flashlight and it's a pretty decent and bright flashlight we're always needing flashlights around here and it was 25 for the flashlight and it came with rechargeable batteries and they were the right type of battery eight of them even even though the flashlight only needs one came with eight of these now when i was gonna trying to order those ones through battery junction they were a lower milliamp and it was gonna cost me a total of thirty three dollars i finally just canceled my order where i paid 25 for this and got eight of these batteries plus a flashlight so even if the flashlight is cheap and it gives out in a short amount of time i got my money's worth just on the batteries alone so if you're interested in that and you're wanting some backup batteries like this these by the way are 5 000 milliamp hours so that means it's gonna last even longer than the ones that came with this lantern itself and by the way the lantern does have its own charging port oh and the other thing this came with was a little charging dock for two of these batteries at a time so that's great so i went ahead and ordered another one because we always need flashlights and like i said it was worth it just for the batteries alone the other thing was i i have a video coming out you would have just seen one i did on laundry tips random laundry tips that i mentioned my homemade laundry soap well since making that video i have i did a little more research and because i'm always trying to find ways to better things i've come up with my own recipe for a better laundry detergent no soap at all and it's working better and i don't have to worry about soap scum building up inside my washing machine and very happy with it and eve cheaper and easier to make than my last recipe so if you're interested that video will be coming out in a few weeks be watching for that i'm so thrilled and excited to share this recipe with you not only has it been better on my on cleaning my clothes and better on my washing machine the other uses this is a multi-purpose cleaning powder is what i'm calling it it's working better for those things as well and then back here i started an orange mint vinegar so this is organic orange peels from our misfits market oranges plus mint from my garden because i have tons of mojito mint i'm always trying to find more ways to use it now a couple garden related things before i close out this video so you might have caught a glimpse of it in the last this in that video but patrick just recently made me a saloon style gate to going off of our deck into the main garden area well that was the for the purpose of keeping the chickens off the deck we tried putting a board out up you know kind with that i have to step over when i'd go out into the garden and that would help kind of uh deter them but there's one that one chicken that one chicken that will always come up get into my pots on my deck pull out some of my plants and of course make messes on the deck and so he got me those the little gate built i'm actually in the process right now of working on editing that video it's two hours worth of video i have to go through his videos always take the longest to edit so sometimes two to three days editing his video but i'm working on it right now so if you're interested in how he built it and maybe doing something similar be watching for that video to come down the road but anyway i'm loving the gate he made it literally like saloon doors where you can walk through it either way because the the hinges you got makes it swing both ways it's great so i don't i can walk through that gate with stuff in my hands i don't have to use my hands to open the gate and it's keeping the chickens off the deck and then another thing was my daughter-in-law my newest daughter-in-law marlene she came over yesterday she and justin both work at the local store here and she saw this firefly garden light it's a solar light and she saw that and she bought it and brought it by just because she knew i would like it and i just thought it was cute and i wanted to share it with you and so now i have so many of those little cute little things that she's got me in the back i decided to hang it out front off the juniper around the strawberries there anyway my garden is is doing so much better we got we getting some spurts of warm weather my blueberries are finally starting to do a little bit better my my tomatoes are still doing excellent and my potatoes i think they're the tallest i've ever seen them get i piled some grass clippings on them but they just they just keep exploding so we'll see what kind of harvest we get in at the beginning of july is when i plan on harvesting those but of course you want to watch the plants you wait until the plants start turning yellow and looking like they're dying then you know your potatoes are ready to harvest okay well that's it i know these videos are getting a little longer than i like them to be but anyway i hope you enjoyed it and you just kind of see what's going on around here this week and remember to watch for those videos to come as well as checking out the videos i'll be linking to in the description box down below alright well thanks for watching take care and god bless

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 4,123

Rating: 4.9597588 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs, prepping, preparedness, food storage, preserving

Id: CfJMXpYhi3M

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021