Here’s a little secret (that’s not really a secret): if you find yourself with excess dairy — think: buttermilk, whey, cultured cream cheese-that-was-supposed-to-be-butter, kefir, yogurt, clabber — make pancakes. And if you have crazy-nuts piles of ricotta? All the better! (I typed “batter” — touché, fingertips.)

These days I’ve been banging out panny-cakes on the regular, thanks to the heaps of dairy clogging up the fridge. Also, it helps that it’s brr-cold: we’re all moving a little slower in the mornings, and I’m there to make them since I don’t go running when it dips into the low 20s. Farmer Boy pancakes are my kids’ favorite, but I’ve switched to ricotta pancakes because, well, that’s what I’ve got. (Used to be, ricotta was an expensive treat; now it’s a by-product that I have to work to use up.) Plus, ricotta pancakes are fast to make, nutritious, high-protein, and versatile, the pancake version of kitchen-sink veggie soup. 

First time I served ricotta pancakes, my younger daughter got all upset because there were little bits of ricotta speckling the pancakes, oh horrors. (Never mind that the pancakes were light and fluffy and didn’t taste at all like ricotta.) Next time I made pancakes — Farmer Boy this time — and she asked what kind they were, I said I wasn’t going to tell her because she’d just pitch a fit and I was tired of hearing about it: I made pancakes so eat the damn pancakes, end of story. So she took a pancake and grumpily began eating.

“How are they?” I asked.

“They’re not as good as your regular ones,” she said. “Farmer Boy’s better.” 

“Ha! These are Farmer Boy pancakes!” And I danced a happy (to her: irritating) told-you-so jig.

And this, my friends, is why I don’t kowtow to picky eaters. 

(I did, however, make one change in order to make the pancakes less offensive, so I guess I am a leedle bit accommodating: I’ve taken to whirling the ricotta in the blender along with the eggs, milk, and fat prior to combining the wets with the dry. This way, no one has any idea there’s ricotta in the batter but the pancakes still have their signature lofty-lightness. AREN’T I SNEAKY.)

I’ve been making these pancakes so regularly that I taped the recipe to the inside of the spice cupboard. They are endlessly adaptable. For part or all of the flour, sub in some whole grain flours like einkorn, whole wheat, cornmeal, chickpea, barley, or rye. In place of some or all of the milk, use a mix of other dairy such as whey, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk. For the fat, use leftover bacon grease, melted butter, coconut oil, sour cream, olive oil, whatever. Or, you can switch into dessert mode and add lemon zest and juice, plus a splash of vanilla. Sky’s the limit!

One more thing. When you go to mix up the batter, double or quadruple the dry ingredients, weigh the total amount in grams, divide by the number of recipes you made, and portion it out accordingly. Next time you want pancakes, there’s your mix. You’re welcome.

Ricotta Pancakes
Adapted from Cooking Classy.

To watch: Making Ricotta Pancakes on YouTube.

¾ cup ricotta
1 cup milk 
3 eggs
1 tablespoon fat
1½ cup flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda

Whirl the wet ingredients in a blender until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the wet to the dry and stir to combine, taking care not to overmix. Fry on a greased skillet and serve with butter and syrup. A single recipe makes eight large pancakes.

This same time, years previous: how we homeschool: Milva, Samin’s soy-braised beef short ribs, what kind of stove should we buy?, the quotidian (1.26.15), first day of classes, housekeeping, five things, movie night.

Quotidian: daily, usual or customary;
everyday; ordinary; commonplace

The plan.

Wineberries, yogurt, banana, berry jam.

This airfryer thingy is FUN.

Hypothesis: the cracks, in this case, may be due to undercooked curds (boo-hiss).

Moon and stars.

They posted and I couldn’t resist.

Good luck with that, buddy.

Speed, with The Knee Advantage.

This is why I shuffle when I walk.

My kids: Whoa, Granddaddy was handsome. (That smolder!)

Messy and clean: a study in duality.

Team research: on the hunt for new lids for our oddly-sized gallon jars.

Whoop, they did it!

This same time, years previous: overnight baked oatmeal, a new routine, the women’s march on Washington, blizzard of 2016, hobo beans, home education series: in which it all falls to pieces, rocks in my granola, what you can do, the quotidian (1.23.12), corn tortillas.

It all started Saturday night when my husband and I drove across the county to pick up a few five-gallon buckets of leftover milk from a dairy. The next day, the snowstorm. So there I was, snowed in with my family and buckets upon buckets of dreamy, creamy milk.

For a couple hours each morning, it’d be a flurry of activity. Making a new batch of kefir. Washing jars. Skimming cream. Milking Daisy, labeling and chilling the fresh milk, and cleaning up. Playing fridge (both barn and house) tetris with the jars and buckets, brines and creams, yogurts and kefir. Transferring the previous day’s cheese from the press to the salt brine. Vac-packing the cheese from a couple days prior. Researching a new recipe. Doing math. Starting a cheese in my new, big-ass pot. Culturing and incubating. Stirring and stirring and stirring. 

It was the perfect snowy weather activity: I had my husband on tap to help heave the heavy buckets from floor to counter and, when it was time to pour, tip off the whey, and I had my kids to haul the buckets of whey out to the frozen animals for a warm treat, and wash dishes and empty the drainers ad nauseam.

Here’s what I made.

On Sunday: a gouda, and a gallon and a half of yogurt. 
Monday: a Jarlsberg-style.
Tuesday: Colby, butter (both sweet and cultured), and Camemberts.
Wednesday: nothing, except for brining the Colby, cutting and packaging cheeses, and flipping the baby bears (aka the Cams). 
Thursday: Butterkäse, and I brined the baby bears.  

Throughout it all, there was the kefir to keep after, lots of smoothies to make, and batches of pancakes to use up the buttermilks and ricotta.

The butter-making was tedious, since I had to use my (very) loud blender. My husband says our blender is louder than any of his power tools. That’s sayin’ something. (If I ever get a Jersey, I’ll get an electric churn like this one.)

I tried cultured butter by adding a small amount of kefir grains to a gallon of cream for 24 hours. It’s supposed to be easier to make butter that way, and yield more, but I must’ve done it wrong because I only got a little butter and a ton of thick cream that’s more like cream cheese. (What to use the cultured cream cheese in? It’s too strong to eat on bagels.) The cultured butter, though, is delicious. I don’t want to waste it in baking, so we’re using it up first in fresh eating.

The sweet cream butter is fantastic, too:

Guess what I had for lunch that day?

Yeah, you know it. Buttaaaaaah.

Now I’m done with the extra milk, and it’ll be a couple days until I have enough Daisy milk to make another cheese, so today I’m brining the butterkäse, making final notes, and taking stock of my larders.

The cheese fridge is maxxed out, cheeses spilling over on the trunk and atop the dresser.

I’m starting to tuck cheeses in other spots, too, like this wheel of Swiss (below) which is hanging out in the kitchen cupboard for a few weeks. (I may be in real danger of forgetting where I’ve stashed cheeses, not to find them until months later. Just call me the Queso Squirrel.)

Oh! One more thing. When I popped into the thrift store this morning, guess what I found? Two cheese plates! I liked the size of the smaller one and the glass lid of the other, so I bought both.

And now I’m going to be a “cheese on the counter under a see-through dome” sophisticate.

^{photo credit: my younger son}

I kinda feel like I earned it.

This same time, years previous: four fun things, ham and bean soup, salad dressing: a basic formula, lemon cream cake, lazy stuffed cabbage rolls, on the relevancy of growing onions, the good and the bad, multigrain bread.