Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [99]
Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: Minuscule
Cost comparison: Home-whipped cream is half the price of a canister or plastic tub.
1 cup very cold heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract, optional
Pour the cream and sugar into a large bowl and beat until soft peaks form. If you want to use vanilla, add it after peaks have formed. Serve immediately.
Makes 1¾ cups
CHAPTER 17
DRINKS
I wanted to make wine. I tried to make beer. But for those ambitious beverage projects I think you might need a garage, or a basement. We stored our beer-in-progress in our pantry and every time people went in or out, they knocked the air lock off. We lost track of how long the beer had been sitting there and my husband eventually poured it into the ivy. But there are plenty of less ambitious drinks I have made at home, both alcoholic and not.
LEMONADE
Lemonade is mostly water, which flows freely and cleanly from First World taps. Is it the wisest use of dwindling fossil fuels to truck cartons of lemon-flavored water hundreds, even thousands, of miles? The Newman’s Own lemonade at a supermarket in California, where lemons grow like kudzu, is manufactured in Washington State, where lemons don’t grow easily, if at all. If you buy lemonade, the green choice is probably concentrate. Homemade lemonade tastes brisk and sharp and clean and can be as sweet or tart as you want it to be.
Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: I enjoy squeezing lemons almost as little as I enjoy gutting turkeys.
Cost comparison: If you have a lemon tree, lemonade is effectively free, but if your lemons come from the supermarket, it costs between two and four times as much to make lemonade as to buy it.
1 cup sugar
10 lemons
1. In a saucepan over low heat, dissolve the sugar in 1 cup water. Cool completely.
2. Squeeze the lemons and collect the juice in a pitcher.
3. Stir in about half the syrup and taste. Add more until you get the sweetness you desire. Measure your liquid and add an equal amount of cold water to the pitcher. Chill. Serve. Drink.
Makes 1½ to 2 quarts
SIMPLE SYRUP
The sweetener used in the lemonade is called simple syrup, and it turns up in many cocktails, like the Lemon Drop and the Old-Fashioned. I was puzzled one day when I saw a bottle of simple syrup at the supermarket. Made by a company called Stirrings of Nantucket, it cost more per ounce than Bacardi Gold. You can buy a 12-ounce bottle of Stirrings simple syrup for $5.99 or you can put 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves, which costs $0.22. Store in a jar in the refrigerator.
GINGERALE
Soda is surprisingly easy to make. For this ginger ale you need a funnel and a clean, empty 2-liter plastic bottle—a rinsed-out plastic soda bottle is perfect—with a screw-on lid. I don’t like commercial ginger ale because my mother believed in its healing properties and gave it to my sister and me when we were home sick from school. This recipe makes an extra-spicy, slightly tart ginger ale that, unlike Canada Dry, brings back no memories of the stomach flu. This is more appropriate in a Dark & Stormy rum cocktail than the sickroom. Be warned: you’ll have some sediment in your homemade ginger ale.
Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: Amazingly simple
Cost comparison: $1.59 for a bottle of homemade. $1.79 for Canada Dry.
1 lemon
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger (from a 2-inch chunk)
1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
Cold tap water
1. Place the funnel in the mouth of a 2-liter plastic bottle with a screw-on lid. Juice the lemon and strain the juice into the bottle through the funnel.
2. Add the ginger, the sugar, and the yeast. Don’t worry if some of it gets stuck in the funnel—the water will flush it out. Now pour in enough water to fill the bottle. Cap tightly.
3. Gently