Things I’ll make from scratch:
— bread
— pasta sauce
— cake
Not that I do #s 1 and 3 regularly, but I can make a good argument. It’s cheaper and the end result is both customized to your tastes and more delicious than what you buy.
Things that make no sense to make from scratch:
— pasta
— granola
— cheese and yogurt
You can do those things to enjoy the process, but I’m hard pressed to see any practical benefit. I know there’s the whole cult of unpasteurized dairy lovers out there, but I’ve never tried it so I live on in ignorance.
Today I added roasted peppers to the second list.
I will grant that they are better than what I buy in a jar. A little bit. They would have to be damn near miraculous to justify all the charring and bagging and peeling and nonsense. Roasted peppers from a jar are delish, and I can eat the whole jar faster than I can peel one pepper. Does this have something to do with my skill level? Certainly. But that’s what I have to work with.
What all this has to do with the recipe of the day is that it’s the “salad” portion of the salmon salad, which is not at all what I was expecting. The salmon part was just a very basic rub — cayenne and cumin — on a piece of grilled fish. I guess the peppers got thrown in to make this an actual recipe.
This is another one of those funky little cards chucked into the recipe folder. Do I think my Dad ever made this? No. But if I start trying to categorize the recipes by their likeliness I will never come back out of that wormhole. So if it’s in the folder, it’s on the agenda.
Note that the card tells us about ancient Chinook rituals surrounding their salmon catch. Very interesting and more edifying than the actual recipe.
Recipe #16: Salmon Salad
Also this week
Recipe #17: Simple Mushroom Saute and Rustic Pasta from Boulder Locavore
jaysaint 
Posted by Sarah on December 20, 2011 at 8:57 am
Oh, disagree with one point: Yogurt is *way* cheaper made from scratch. Although an equally strong argument for making my own yogurt is the environment: Most city recycling programs don’t accept the dreaded polypropylene #5 plastic from which most yogurt containers are made. Toss ’em in the recycling bin all one wants (as I did, for years), they rarely wind up anywhere but the landfill.
That said, making Greek style yogurt at home requires an extra process, and a special kind of patience and attention to the clock. Too little straining = not Greek yogurt. Too little = yogurt cheese.
Sidenote: I love making my own granola because, IMO, no store bought brand toasts its sliced almonds sufficiently #granolasnob
Posted by Marianne on January 2, 2012 at 10:11 pm
I received a yogurt maker for Christmas, and while I initially rolled my eyes, I did eventually try it. And I have to say, the resulting yogurt, made from Cruze Farm fresh local milk, is divine. Who knew?