One important aspect of “survival” and self-sufficiency is being able to cook tasty food that is both inexpensive and simple to prepare.

Recently I was going through a bit of ‘food fatigue’ where my usual dinner fare just wasn’t exciting me, and I found myself wanting to pick up BBQ or something on the way home. As someone who follows a (s)low-carb, no grain diet, I really needed something besides my usual chicken, eggs or beans.

I had some ground beef in the freezer that I pulled out for dinner, and figured I’d do meatloaf or something with it. As things went into the mixing bowl, I must have grabbed a jar of inspiration because what happened next was nothing short of brilliant.

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1/3 lb bacon (roughly 1/3 of a package), chopped
• 3 tbs or to taste chopped dried onion (I use my LDS onion!)
• 1 tbs garlic powder
• 1 tbs or so salt
• few shakes of black pepper
• 1/4 cup catsup or 1/2 can of tomato paste + splash of vinegar
• squirt of Siracha
• 8 oz goat cheese (or in a pinch, cream cheese will work)

Line a square or rectangular cake pan with parchment paper (for easy cleanup). Preheat oven to 350°.

Mix all ingredients other than goat cheese in a large bowl as if you were preparing meatloaf. Then while it sits for a few minutes for everything to meld, make marble-sized balls of goat cheese (pretend it’s playdough) on a plate. Then make a ball of meat and form it around your marble of goat cheese. Place in baking pan.

Bake in oven until tops of meatballs are lightly brown, roughly 20-30 min (okay I didn’t time it, I just eyeball them).

And.. eat. No sauce needed. (Really!)

If you want to get super fancy, add some chopped fresh cauliflower, mushrooms, onion and garlic to pan and allow these to roast shoulder to shoulder with your meatballs. Even better than meat and potatoes!

Makes between 10-12 meatballs.

Usually, yogurt making is fool-proof.

This week I made nine pints of yogurt using my food dehydrator, since the outdoor daytime temperatures aren’t anywhere near 100°, which is necessary for porchgurt.

I have an Excalibur 4 tray dehydrator like the one in the image here. I take out the trays and there’s just enough space to fit nine pint canning jars. Excellent!

As it turned out, I had a gallon of raw milk that I had planned on using to make cheese but as it turned out,  I hadn’t gotten my act together to make that happen. So my fall-back plan was to make lovely raw milk yogurt.

What I learned from the experience is that yogurt-making is easy, but it’s not entirely foolproof.

As I usually do, I scalded the milk and then added a spoonful of starter yogurt when the milk was about 100-110°. I stirred and then lightly shook the jars to distribute the culture, and placed them into the dehydrator. What was a bit different was that I had turned the dehydrator on 115° and left it for about 12 hours (overnight). Usually I don’t leave it so long, and I think maybe the heat was higher than the last time (I was trying someone else’s process). Sadly, however, this batch – all nine jars of it – turned out to be a bit grainy, along the lines of the texture of ricotta cheese, rather than smooth and luscious like every previous batch.

From a review of websites I found afterwards, I think the combination of the temperature and length of culturing was the problem – it adversely affected the proteins in the milk. This was also my first attempt at yogurtizing raw milk, so it may have been a bit more tempermental.

At any rate, it’s disappointing, but at least it’s still edible.

I also used this batch to try making greek yogurt. I took a strainer and lined it with some cheesecloth folded over a few times, and dumped one of the pints in. I then placed the strainer over a bowl and stuck it in the fridge. In the morning I had very thick, nearly spreadable, yogurt, and a pool of whey. The whey of course is loaded with nutrients and protein, but I really don’t care for it as is, so some went into the dogbowl (he loved it!) and the rest made its way into my breakfast smoothies.

So it wasn’t the best of all yogurts, but it’s good to mess up from time to time, so you can learn more about the process.