Category Archives: Good Eats

Galley On the Go

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Tonight Michael is sitting across from me on our deep settee, brow furrowed over the decision that is before him: which bottom paint shall we use this time? That’s right, it’s time to haul the boat for a new paint job. In fact, it’s well overdue, much to our shame. So haul the boat we will. This month. That will begin on October 17, Gods willing and weather cooperating.

One day of fun actually SWIMMING in Puget Sound. Actually. Swimming. Weird. Look Ma! No wetsuit.

But wait! There’s more! Tomorrow we leave the slip for the first time in 2 years! Huzzah! Are we going cruising? No we are not. Are we anchoring out for a night, just to remember what that feels like? Nope. Will we raise a sail? HAHAHA! You jest. Those sails are stored at the house. No, we will leave the dock and drift over to the boatyard to have the masts pulled. The sad thing is that this makes us all kinds of excited. The bar for excitement for us, after two years of land life, is so terribly low. Nobody warns you about this when you return to land; that your life will feel so mundane that taking your boat to the yard will be dead exciting. Let me be the first to inform you.

See those wooden shims? Those drove us insane on our voyage to Hawaii. Having dried out when the boat was in Mexico, they squeaked constantly and loudly. Squirting soapy water up into that space about hourly helped loads. Those will be replaced with something else. Something that doesn’t make noise.

Anyhow, here we are excited to get some work done. Making sure our hydraulic steering pump is in good shape and having brand new lines for the fluid was on the lengthy ‘to do’ list and so we had Summers Marine come and pull the steering pump out and send it off to be rebuilt. When the refurbished pump was put back, Mike and Jonathan, our steering guy, bled the air from the system. They bled and bled and bled the lines, getting all the little air bubbles out. Then the system sat for a couple of weeks until Mike turned the engine on tonight and tested out the transmission to reassure ourselves it had not forgotten how to go into reverse and then back into forward gear.

He gave the wheel a few turns. My ears pricked up. He turned the wheel a few more times. Yes, I definitely heard a growling sound that I didn’t like. If my ears can hear it, by definition the noise is loud. More and more turning, a lot more loud growling from the steering mechanism, and pretty soon Michael was in the aft cabin ripping the place apart so he could get to the steering ram and see what was up. Ah, the sweet sound of cushions being tossed around and boards being moved aside! It sure took me back to all those good times where we  (And by ‘we’, I mean ‘Mike’)  were fixing boat things in picturesque anchorages.

Our pump is so old that it can actually be rebuilt. So while the casing looks worn, the innards are new. Shiny new lines!

It sounds like after sitting for awhile, some residual air bubbles have found each other and they are making a hell of a racket while also possibly making the steering a bit stiff. Tomorrow we will pull the masts. And then we will sit at the work dock and bleed that damn system some more. I hope that solves the problem. Otherwise, Jonathan is on standby in case we need him to come on down for a visit. Are we cruising yet? Because it’s starting to feel like we are.

Anyway, I want to get back into the habit of writing this stuff down, now that we are approaching things like mast pullings and boat haul outs. Finally, it feels like we have a lot to report on. Mike has been on a veritable shopping spree for gear and boat parts. New radar (Garmin, to play with our chart plotter), new halyards, a new shaft seal, wind instruments, AIS transceiver, two hatches… and that’s just as of today. We will be making major changes to certain parts of the boat and will write more about those as they happen. We’re are hiring out some fiberglass work to give us proper scuppers to clear water off the decks more easily and to add a radar pole with an outboard engine davit to the aft deck of the boat. We are even working with our rigger to re-work the way the boat is rigged and make sailing her easier for aging sailors who want to stay aboard for as long as possible. The month of October will be interesting and expensive.

As summer is giving way to shorter days and cooler nights, the galley aboard Galapagos is cooking more than usual and frankly it’s easier for me to get my head around the goings on in that space than it is for me to think about the huge number of projects we need to accomplish in the next month and all the big decisions that are waiting to be made.

So I’m easing myself back into the habit of writing by putting together a list of my favorite and most relied upon galley gadgets and tools. These are things I reach for regularly; things that really do make life in a tiny kitchen easier. We are planning to leave the dock next spring. I look forward to using all of these while lying at anchor in a nice cove somewhere; probably while Michael rips cabins apart with his bare hands, chasing down the inevitable puzzling noises that might indicate trouble. I’m ready! Let’s go!

So here are my top ten most-loved galley gadets and gear:

  1. Number one on my list lately is my nifty jumbo sized silicone baking cups. Who knew what a game changer these would be? These are sturdy and hold their shape well, even when filled with batter. Easy to clean, they save me the much-loathed task of cleaning muffin tins. I hate cleaning muffin tins, and I also dislike those little paper inserts, which make more trash anyhow. Dirty muffin tins always seem to sit in the sink, filled with water, in the vain hope that a dishwashing fairy might come and allow me to avoid dealing with them. Alas; the disappointment is always real. Honestly, whenever the mood for muffins arises, I always have to weigh the desire for a tasty morsel with the dreaded dirty muffin tin left behind. No more! These are sturdy enough to stand up to meatloaf or my special egg/sausage/cheese/onion handheld breakfast “muffins” I make for passages. I could probably even bake yeast rolls in them. I like them so much I am tempted to buy them in the smaller size as well. These get bonus points for taking up a lot less room than muffin tins. 
  2. Our new 10.25″ cast iron skillet with lid (sold separately); made in the USA. We have been cooking with a cast iron skillet at home for 40 years. A little thing like moving aboard a boat was unlikely to change that. In fact, when we first moved aboard we brought along our 12″ skillet, a well seasoned cooking tool that we literally used every single day. That skillet had been aboard since we first moved onto the boat and was still in perfect condition. No, it did not rust. (Too much oil on it!) Why did I take that skillet home, ignoring Michael’s tears of grief as he watched me stow it in the cart to carry up to the car? Because it was too big. We have a 4 burner Force 10 stove. That skillet took up 1.5 burners and every time we wanted to do anything OTHER than cook with the skillet, it had to find another place to stay for awhile. I was tired of it. I was tired of putting it on the floor of the shop so I could have a saucepan instead.  Forget about using my pressure cooker if the skillet was at home.  I could not use three burners at a time because that skillet was taking up more than its fair share of burner space. So, after carefully measuring our space, I determined that this  10-ish inch skillet would fit better and would still be more than large enough for us. Only thing was that Michael would have to spend a few years scraping the iron down to a perfectly flat surface for his everyday omelettes. He is learning to live with it. Don’t be afraid to bring your cast iron skillet on board. Nothing cooks better eggs.
  3. Our crock pot. I use this a lot, even underway. Sure, I’ve learned that I cannot overfill it, and it’s best to put it in the sink if we are sailing. Sure, I learned that the hard way. And I actually DO wish that it had a locking lid. But it’s small enough that I can store it and it doesn’t heat up the galley like using the stove; at least not as badly. I use it frequently. It draws little power so our inverter hardly feels a thing as it bubbles along. And it’s great to have a hot dinner ready when we pull into an anchorage after a long day.
  4. Our insulated wine tumblers with lids, made by Rabbit and found at Costco for literally 10$ less than the Amazon price. An impulse purchase, they are proof that my impulses are sometimes good. They keep the beverage cold. Ice keeps overnight in these little tumblers, at least in the Pacific Northwest Summer. Highly recommended. Plus they are really cute and the perfect size for not only my hands, but for the cup holders at the steering pedestal!

    Image absolutely stolen from Amazon. But this is the set we have.

  5. And speaking of ice, these Komax ice cube trays with locking lids have solved the problem of safely making ice aboard a moving boat. We love them. They do not leak and they stack easily in our freezer. We tried a couple of other varieties of locking ice cube trays but were not happy with any of them because the lids leaked. These cubes are small, but that’s ok.

    Ack! Another stolen image from Amazon! Go buy these so they don’t get their knickers in a twist.

  6. The Omnia Stovetop Oven. Honestly, if this had not been a gift, I’m not sure I would have sprung for it. The cost seemed excessive to me for what you get: an aluminum pan and lid, sitting on a steel ring. The gift package I was given also included a silicone insert and a storage bag.  Turns out, this is a great galley addition! My first foray into Omnia cooking was roasting stuffed peppers. Instead of using the silicone insert, I lined the little oven with foil for ease of cleaning and so that the peppers would crisp up. They turned out perfectly! I then tried a brownie mix and that, too, was good. The silicone insert made cleanup very easy with the brownies. I’m excited to weave this into our repertoire as we get going again. And I’m thinking next up will be some kind of muffins using the jumbo silicone muffin cups listed above.

    This image could be from anywhere. But this is what the oven looks like.

  7. Under the category of ‘has stood the test of time’, my little Briefton’s manual food processor is the decided winner.  I bought this before the first big trip, in 2017, and it whips up delicious pico de gallo fast and easy. This was before we added a larger inverter to the boat. I could probably use my Cuisinart now, a real food processor. But I prefer to save the space once we have left the dock and leave the Cuisinart at home.

    I took this photo myself.

    8.  Our Fagor “Elegant Belly” design pressure cooker. Yes, that’s right. This shape is referred to as the ‘elegant belly’ and I actually find this very satisfying. This is an old school manual pressure cooker and is the perfect size for making soups and rice, or beans, or whatever. I never thought I would use it much, but I actually do. I have a fancy Instant Pot, and that’s a nice tool, but it’s too big for my kitchen so I left that at the house. I can make rice in about 3 minutes in this pot. Mine does not have that big handle that is shown in the photo from Amazon below. I’m glad. That looks like it takes up too much space.

    Amazon’s photo show the lovely shape of this pot.

    9.  Our set of nesting Magma non-stick pots. These have really held up over time. We bought these when we had our Cal 34, Moonrise, so about 15 years ago. While I don’t use the skillet (because…cast iron is better) or the soup pot (because my Fagor Elegant Belly has a locking lid), the saucepans are used regularly. They heat up evenly and quickly, and they hold the heat for awhile when the fire is turned off. The finish can still be wiped clean or just given a quick rinse. They seemed expensive to us back then, but I’m glad we spent the money on them.

    10.  This useful collapsing silicone bowl with a handle. I have no idea who made this, or where or even when I bought it. The silicone is yellowing with age and use. Mike uses this literally every day to whip up the eggs for his breakfast. I use this on the occasions when I want to mix up a small amount of a batter. I expect it to crack at a fold pretty much any day now and I’ve been scouring the interweb for a replacement to no avail. This bowl is used so frequently that I generally do not even bother putting it away in the cabinet. If you ever see one of these bowls, let me know right away! And if, early one morning, you hear a high, long, piercing wail of despair coming from the west, it could be that Michael has discovered the death of his beloved silicone mixing bowl.

    WANTED: A 2 cup measuring bowl like this. The handle has multiple positions, it collapses flat to store. Might come in different colors.

     

Pass the Potato Casserole, Please

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Lately on this blog it looks like life is all about the yard and getting it whipped into a shape that can be maintained by someone else, in particular my nephew, Reid, of the Zaal NoFlex Digestor trials. He’s at the age where he’s just young enough that he can’t get gainful employment, but just old enough to know the value of a dollar, plus he’s a hard worker and really smart. So he just found himself a job as our new “Gardener”. I figure I have maybe two good years of letting him be the yard guy before he can get a job closer to home. I look forward to training him on the finer points of weeding.

Reid fishing in the Sea of Cortez. We had a dandy time with him and my sister when they came to visit.

What has been less apparent from this blog is all the weeding that has been going on inside the home. Of course we did most of this kind of stuff; the going through closets and boxes and the like and getting rid of meaningless crap; before we left the house the first time, waaay back in 2016. While all the work I did is sure making my life easier now, what remains is the stuff that I chose to keep way back in that other life when I could actually afford to live in this house because we both had jobs. Now I am forced to choose what I absolutely want to keep from things I actually like and care about, or at  least are useful and I’d have to replace once this wild hair about cruising is over. I’m talking about  things like this cement maple leaf that I made during the years when I spent hours playing with different formulas of cement in order to get a product that would hold up without being too heavy. It took me a year of tinkering to get to this formula, which is now lost to the ghosts of posterity. I love this thing and will keep it until the day I die. I will leave my kids to fight over it when I’m gone. I consider this an heirloom.

The mold for this was made from one of the leaves of our big maple tree out back, the one that was recently given a haircut. It’s about 17″ across.

Lots of families have heirlooms they pass down from one generation to the next and while that has kind of gone out of style lately, what with the younger folks not wanting to be weighed down with ‘stuff’ and all that, we still have a certain amount of bequeathing going on around here. (Hello, Maple Leaf.)  But aside from physical things that represent important parts of our family history together, what I really don’t want to lose is the food. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on a rigid routine of balancing the scales of justice, if not the actual scale in my bedroom, since my months of over indulgence on fine Mexican tacos and alcohol in the Sea of Cortez. Maybe I’m just hungry. But regardless of my dreams of literally eating cake, food is an important part of our family culture and I bet that’s true of your family’s, too.

Yeah, I cannot find it in myself to get rid of this Better Homes and Gardens cookbook I bought before we got married. Some things are just sacred.

If this makes it sound like I still have remnants of that potato casserole my mother made in 1974 hanging around in a box somewhere, well, I’m not actually THAT bad (although Mike’s opinion might differ). But I do have her recipe. It’s written in a tiny book that she gave me years ago where she wrote all of her favorite recipes that were somehow important in our family culture. I call it the “Little Hippopotamus Book ” and not for the reason you think. Sure, there are hippos on the cover, and yes, if I always ate like the recipes in the book I’d be about the size of a baby hippo. But also hippos are symbolic of motherhood and these recipes are from my mother. So now you’ve learned something useful here. I live to serve.

The Little Hippopotamus Book. Well loved and used.

I have her recipe for Beef Bourguignon, Candy Cake, Frozen Salad, and the delicious and terribly terrible-for-you Potato Casserole. Absolutely none of these recipes is in any way healthy. They are all loaded with delicious fat and sugar and carbohydrates and that’s what makes them so good. It’s also why I haven’t made them in years. That Frozen Salad though!  When I came across that one I began to wonder how I could make that on the boat. Memories of that creamy coolness sliding across the palate… they came rushing back in a most visceral way. I cannot lose these recipes! But the little book is falling apart. What to do?

The little book. Falling apart with age and use now.

Enter the new world of computer Apps.  For several years I have been using an App named Mealboard, which is about the dumbest name I can think of for an application that is this clever and useful. In a nutshell, Mealboard allows me to add new recipes, sometimes directly from websites, categorize them, and plan meals and create shopping lists from those plans. It’s simple to use and since I’ve been using it for probably 4 years or more, I can attest to it being bulletproof. I can log in on line, where the typing is easier on my computer, input recipes to their simple and intuitive platform, then sync the application with the one on my phone. This gives me easy access to all my recipes even when I’m offline in the Sea of Cortez. If you are gearing up to go cruising, take a look at Mealboard if you are looking for a way to organize your recipes.

To add a new recipe, just click on “new recipe”. To import from one of the websites they have connected with, click on “import recipe”.

One of the best things about this application is that you can enter a recipe via regular text typing, then hit ‘done’ and it will show up in the dedicated columns on the recipe page. If I want to copy a recipe on line, I just copy the ingredients into this page and it populates the correct boxes with that information. Then I simply copy and paste the directions into the appropriate box. There is a place for you to reference the website so you’ll always know where you got the recipe. You can also add a photo if you like. There is a place for notes as well, so you can put in variations or additional information.

Easily type all the ingredients in the text box. Then hit done and the ingredients show up like this:’

Notice that the cheese didn’t get put in the correct grocery category. That’s because I used the words ‘sharp cheddar’, rather than ‘cheddar, sharp’. I can easily correct that on this screen by using the dropdown menu if it’s important to me.

So yesterday I began adding all the recipes from that little book Mom gave me years ago; the one that’s falling apart now and the pages yellowing with age. I’ll be able to get rid of the book, knowing I won’t lose the vision into 1970’s eating and church potlucks that it represents for me. The tastes, smells, feelings of repletion are saved for posterity, I hope. I do admit to being a little hesitant to ever throw away a hard copy of anything. What if the internet goes away? How will I get my recipes? That’s a rabbit hole I’m not prepared to engage with.

Now what to do with the same kind of book I created for my own kids? It has my famous ‘never the same twice’ Chicken Soup, my spicy and thick  Beef Chili, Mom’s Famous and Delicious Chicken Salad (that would be me, not my own mom), and the family favorite ‘Goria’s Taco Soup’, so loaded with carbs you’re sure to be bloated after eating a bowl. For the cookie monsters among us there is the Christmas favorite ‘Molasses Platter Cookies’, the recipe for which exists on an old Tacoma newspaper clipping from 1986.  And speaking of Christmas, I would never want to lose the recipe for the incredibly important French Breakfast Donuts that we have only on Christmas morning with our mimosas. Do my kids want to carry around a book of my old recipes from their childhoods? Probably not. Maybe I’ll just give them my Log in information for MealBoard before I die.

The book I created for my own kids is a little fancier with some useful general information included.

Here are a couple of those fabulous 70’s recipes Mom passed down to me. You might enjoy them, too. And if you have a favorite recipe I can add to my Mealboard App, post it in the comments!

Frozen Salad

Bananas
Crushed, drained pineapple
Strawberries
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup sour cream
chopped pecans
1 large carton CoolWhip

You be the judge of how much fruit you want, but I think the pineapple is just one can. Cut up the fruit and mix it together with the lemon juice and sour cream. Fold this mixture into the CoolWhip and then freeze in a pan. Cut into pieces to enjoy.

Potato Casserole

2 pounds hashbrowns
1/2 cup melted butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 pint sour cream
1/2 tsp pepper, or to your taste
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
2 cups grated cheese

Optional topping: 1/4 cup melted butter mixed with 2 cups crushed cornflakes. I highly recommend this addition.

Combine hashbrowns with all the rest of the ingredients except topping. Put in 3 quart casserole, greased. Sprinkle topping over the whole thing. You might need two batches of topping if you want it to really be good. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes of until crispy and brown.

Easy to freeze recipe so maybe for your next blue water passage?

French Breakfast Donuts

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar (half cup for donuts, 1/2 for rolling)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup milk
1 beaten egg
1/3 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon

Sift flour with 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Combine milk, egg, butter, vanilla.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir just until moistened. Do not over stir or they will be tough. Bake in muffin tins at 400F for 20 minutes until golden. Remove from pan while still warm and roll in the remaining sugar mixed with the cinnamon. I brush the tops with more melted butter before rolling. Because why not?

What are your favorite family recipes? I’m ready to add to my repertoire.

 

Sugar-Free Galley: Demon Free Chai

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Last year Mike and I discovered this lovely Indian restaurant right down the road from our house in Lakewood. Great Cuisine of India is one of those little low-key places where the food is so good it’s hard to know when to stop eating. It was there, at a nondescript table overlooking the parking lot, that I discovered how much I adore chai tea. The first time I had it, I could not stop thinking about it for weeks. In the dead of winter the aroma of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and cloves preached to me like a sermon at a Baptist tent revival.  It was so good I could have literally fallen to the floor in rapture if I didn’t have good manners. This is my clue that it likely has a load of added sugar and therefore it is a false prophet sent by the devil. I mean, anything that warm and creamy and soothing is probably evil of the worst kind. So I’ve avoided going back for more.

I banished this new flame of desire into the overcrowded prison of my brain’s ‘time out’ room. It was in good company.  Chocolate. Cookies. Ice Cream. Ginger candy. All the sugar demons welcomed their new friend, Chai. I knew they were planning their escape, but I ignored them.  You have to be tough with demons. They thrive on negative attention. Ignoring is the best solution. I would move forward into life acting as though that Chai tea was not, in fact, calling my name.

Weeks passed and then, this Christmas season I was shopping the gourmet food section of T.J. Maxx. As I was having a heated discussion with an extra-large and aggressive package of German gingerbread cookies that kept trying to jump into my cart, I noticed a coy, unassuming little box of Masala Spice Chai tea mix by Nature’s Guru. It was laying low during the altercation with the cookies, but when it saw me looking its way, it lifted its tiny little arms to me in a gesture of complete trust and surrender. Smitten, I reached for it to read its label. It was UNSWEETENED! Oh Happy Day!? Could it possibly be that someone had actually made a chai mix with no added sugar? 

I read the ingredients: milk powder, black tea extract, cardamom powder, spices. Yes!! Could I possibly get my chai fix without letting the army of sugar demons out of their room? Because, I mean, if I let one demon out, they all want to come out and play and it’s anarchy. It might start with an innocent chai tea, but pretty soon I’m sitting around in dirty sweatpants feeling bloated; scattered crumbs the only evidence of my sin. My little box of tea and I smiled at one another in mutual trust, and I placed it lovingly into the seat of my cart.

Tossing the cookies aside, (I win!) I searched frantically for another box of tea. Why buy one when there might be two? I  found another, albeit smashed, on the end cap. Two boxes. 10$. I did not care that they seemed pricey. I was, after all, smitten by the possibility of spicy goodness.

demon-stewie-3

Demon, trying his best to look cute and innocent. Do not be fooled. (Yeah, he’s from Family Guy, that’s why he looks like Stewie.)

On Christmas Day when we opened our stockings, somehow one of the boxes had ended up in my own stocking, and one in Mike’s. Whaattt? Santa! How did you know? Trusty water kettle always at the ready, I made short work of mixing up a cup of velvety chai and then added a packet of Stevia (my sweetner of choice) to the cup. Inhaling deeply, I sat with the fragrance for a minute. Lovely!  It looked actually creamy. I sipped and let it roll around in my mouth for a few seconds. It was delicious. This stuff was a winner. The demons cried with woe. This was not the key that would unlock their cell. Ha HAAAA! Take that! This tea is my new super-power, demons, so beware!

I began to see the possibilities of this tea. Vampire killers might wield a cross at their nemesis, but sugar killers everywhere could now hold their tiny packets of tea in front of them as they made their way boldly with heads erect through the bakeries of life.  I began to hoard the little packets of tea in my purse, even taking some with us to Tennessee so we would not go without. I sighed with relief when the TSA agent at the airport didn’t bat an eyelash at the little foil packets of powder in my purse.

To find something this delicious that doesn’t send me down to the corner sugar dealer for an illicit fix is almost too good to be true and as a ‘thank you’ to the Universe, I needed to use this new power for good, not evil. I would need to share this with others.  And I would need to create my own supply because at 6$ a box on Amazon, well, you get the idea.  I needed a more cost effective way to get my chai. Anyone who thinks ‘necessity’ is the mother of invention has never met ‘addiction’.

A long shallow dive into Google produced recipes for making your own chai tea mix and I got excited until I realized that they all call for at least 1 full cup of white sugar, and some actually have more sugar in them than milk. WTF? Why not just start an intravenous glucose drip and cut to the chase? They also all used nonfat dry milk (blech) and non-dairy creamer, as well as vanilla non-dairy creamer. I decided to make my own and make it sugar free. We can all add our own sweetener of choice to this mix and the cost savings to our bodies, souls, and wallets are significant.

That’s a large canning jar, plus the jar the tea came in, full of tea mix. Compare to those little packets in a nifty box.

The commercial brand I bought is $ .50- $.60 per serving, depending on whether you order from Amazon or happen to find it at the discount store.  My mixture comes out at just $.23/ serving of two tablespoons to 8 ounces of water. If you add more of the mix, then that cost goes up accordingly. Still, that’s a lot of wiggle room. Also, to be fair, I had all of these spices on hand. Even the cardamom and white pepper. If I had to buy all of them, the costs for my initial batch would go up. But you can make a lot of tea mix with a bottle of spice. Also, don’t buy your spices at the big grocery store in the spice section. They are WAY the heck overpriced. Look in the Hispanic foods section and then check the dollar store. Costco has great deals on many spices, as well.

I tweaked the recipes I found a bit. For instance I like full fat milk. Nonfat milk is a non-starter to me. So I bought the can of powdered whole milk in our local grocery store’s Hispanic section. It’s by Nestle, of course, and costs more than the non-fat variety. If you don’t mind non-fat, your costs will go down. I notice Amazon carries some other powdered whole milks as well. Maybe I’ll try one of those next time. 

I have never bought non-dairy creamers but because all the recipes I found had both the plain and the vanilla varieties, and the milk was expensive, I caved and bought some of the plain variety. After mixing this up I think I will forgo that next time I make the mix and just use all milk powder. I don’t need to be drinking ‘corn syrup solids’ on a regular basis because, hello, that’s basically dried processed sugar. Even with the creamer, however, there is very precious little sugar in my mixture except for what is naturally found in milk. It’s not enough to set me into a sugar spiral, and my demon is very sensitive.  Next time, no creamer. All milk.  Instead of using the vanilla flavored non-food creamer, I just add a couple of drops of pure vanilla to my cup if I want that flavoring. I like myself some real vanilla.

So here you go. Tweak the spices a bit if you want. This has a little gingery kick because I like that. I suggest starting with 1/2 the spice and then working up until you like what you smell.  You’re welcome.

Melissa’s Sugar-Free Chai Tea Mix

Makes 76 servings of 2 tablespoons per cup of hot water. Add stevia, honey, sugar, or whatever sweetener you like if you want it sweet. Add 2 drops of pure vanilla extract if you want vanilla flavoring.

3 cups powdered whole milk
2 cups non-dairy coffee creamer (or just use 5 cups of powdered milk)
3 1/2 cups instant, unsweetened black tea like Liptons
4 tsp ground ginger
4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 1/2 tsp cardamom
2 1/2 tsp allspice
3 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp fine white pepper

Put ingredients in the food processor and process them until they become a uniform fine powder. You really don’t want to skip this step because the spices are going to be ground into a much finer powder by doing this. Store in an airtight container. Enjoy guilt free.