So for awhile now I’ve been making much more of our snacks and meals from scratch. I make dinner pretty much every night and I’ve been trying to eliminate as much processed food as we can. This is due in part to trying to eat clean, but also to reduce the amount of packaging/waste I create.

I bought a book last year that I loved, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making, I was inspired but still, it looked like a lot of work and lets face it… I am lazy!

Well today I got in a mood to play around in the kitchen and make some snacks and had a GREAT time.  A lot of this was pretty basic stuff but it was really cool to show it to my kids. And also to show them that sometimes disasters happen in the kitchen, learn from them and tweak your recipe!

Today we managed to make: butter, buttermilk (really by default because it is the leftovers from butter), fruit snacks, granola bites, cheese crackers, potato chips, compound butter, buttermilk pancakes and smoothie pops.

Yes it was a lot. Yes I was in the kitchen for 4+ hours. And yes I still have a sinkfull of dishes I will deal with later!

We had a couple of fails in there, the first batch of potato chips and the fruit snacks. The potato chips burned, the fruit snacks don’t taste like anything.  Second batch of potato chips we couldn’t stop eating hot off the sheet pan and I will revisit the fruit snacks with a stronger fruit juice.

Pretty but they don’t tast like much… Mckenna wants me to try them with lemonade. Its a really simple recipe, 1 cup juice with 4 packs unflavored gelatin. Microwave for 1 min and pour into a mold. Pop out when set. Target had this one in the dollar section. I was mad they didn’t turn out because I haven’t bought my kids fruit snacks in probably two years because 1)they are crap 2) they are individually wrapped crap.

Next up potato chips, which were a fail turned into a victory!

First thing to do, borrow a mandolin from your always accommodating neighbor! Then warn your son approximately 8,000 to NOT TOUCH IT!

Easy peasy, cut potatoes, soak in salt water, pat dry on dish towel, toss with oil and salt, cook in oven. The first batch got way too toasty way to fast.

The ones on the left were burned, the ones on the right were delicious. It was a fine line to try not to cross! These would be much easier in a deep fryer but, no, I don’t need one of those in my house. EVERYTHING would be going in the fryer!

Butter wasn’t too exciting I guess. Next time I am going to make him shake it in a jar! Rotten child. Okay it was a little tedious, watching the mixer go isn’t too exciting. When the cream turned into whipped cream that was kind of exciting until I told them it was salted whipped cream. Eeew, not so much. I was wrist deep in butter at the end so didn’t take any pictures of the process. Once the whipped cream breaks you will see the butter solids separate from the buttermilk. Food is magic, I am telling you. Drain the buttermilk into a container squeezing as much out of the butter as you can, I got a cup of buttermilk from my pink of cream. From there keep kneading the butter with cold hands rinsing it under cold water until it isn’t releasing any more liquid.

But no, we couldn’t stop there could we? Got to make it fancy! We went with the compound butter, Omar picked strawberry, Mckenna was vanilla-cinnamon-brown sugar, and I went with pesto. They are all DELICIOUS!  The pesto one went right onto some french bread that Omar and I were fighting over!

The other two butters as well as the buttermilk? I had other plans in mind for them. (Oh yeah, I also made a ready pancake mix!) Buttermilk pancakes for dinner with some yummy homemade butter on top. We didn’t even need syrup these were so good!

Tiring but really fun as well. I think the kids had a good time seeing how easy it is to make something out of a few humble ingredients. I am looking forward to making a few more homemade items, especially mozzarella and toaster pastries.