POTATO PANCAKES & COTTAGE CHEESE – May 15, 2015

You may be fortunate to have your own cows and then as well you own milk, cream, butter and cottage cheese.

Others of us have to buy our cottage cheese; something we are doing at this time as well.

A few years ago a lady told me she always buys the dry cottage cheese, because it is all cottage cheese with no milk or juice from milk products. The dry cottage cheese has fewer additives as well. So I started to do the same. I just added cream or milk when using it.

Then when I started making kefir, I started adding it to the dry cottage cheese with a bit of salt and pepper. By adding the kefir, we are adding more fermented food which also means more probiotics. The cottage cheese tasted thick and wonderful.

Most importantly, cottage cheese made in this way has more good bacteria for our stomach and good bacteria is very important to our health.

I just made another batch of kefir with a gallon of milk. When it was thickened I put 3 quarts into the fridge and put one quart into a pot of tepid water. When the thickened part was about 1/3 and the whey about 2/3,
I strained out this thicker kefir and put the whey into the fridge to use when baking bread and buns the next day. The whey helps the dough to hold together so nicely and the gluten develops well. As well, the fermented whey helps break down the bran in the whole grain flour. This bread is actually a bit fermented and as well is healthier for our stomachs.

I used the thicker kefir to prepare a bowl of cottage cheese as follows:

1 cup dry cottage cheese
2/3 cup thicker kefir as made above
Salt and pepper to taste

We used this cottage cheese on the following potato pancake recipe found in WINNING WAYS cookbook.

POTATO PANCAKES – made 12
For supper we had potato pancakes that I made as follows:

4 cups peeled cubed potatoes (or 2 pounds)
½ medium onion
2 small eggs
¾ cup unbleached flour (I used spelt flour but you could also use quinoa flour)
2 teaspoon baking powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Shred the diced potatoes.
Blend the egg and onion until smooth.
Mix shredded potato, egg/onion, flour, salt and pepper, baking powder until well mixed.

Heat 1 tablespoon coconut oil in fry pan. Spread ½ cup mixture in heated pan for each pancake. I do 4 at a time so they don’t touch each other and are easier to flip over. Add more coconut oil as you fry the rest. I brown them nicely on each side.

Top the pancakes with cottage cheese and enjoy.

COCONUT OIL
We are using more coconut oil than other oils as it really is a healthy fat and apparently good to help fight some diseases; one being Parkinsons’.