The Craftiest Workshop

When we go grocery shopping we usually go to Costco first and end up at Superstore last. If there are other errands to run, sometimes we don’t end up at Superstore at all. This past trip to Costco was one of those days; a stop at Canadian Tire, a few things at the dollar store, get gas. I knew that I really wanted some cottage cheese and realized we were not going to make it to Superstore so I bought the three container pack at Costco each with 750g in them. Once I was home, I realized that I was going to have to come up with some ways to use up the cottage cheese. Luckily, it does have a month before it expires.

Cottage cheese seems to be something I see people talking about on social media for a good source of protein. It also has calcium and apparently helps to regulate blood sugar. I don’t mind the taste of it straight up but to get through 9 cups of cottage cheese, I was going to have to come up with other ways to eat it.

We hadn’t had lasagna for awhile so I used up two cups of it to make one yesterday. Lasagna used to be an economical meal but lately, with the high price of ground beef, it is almost a luxury meal. I had bought some ground beef recently on sale so I had some in the freezer to use.

The second thing I decided to try to make was a pizza crust/foccaicia bread using the cottage cheese. It really is only two ingredients and then you add spices. 2 eggs with 1 cup of cottage cheese. I mixed that with a tsp of Italian seasoning and 1 tsp of garlic powder. I put it all in my two cup food processor and blended it. The one thing you need is a 1/2 size baking sheet…a small one. I had bought a pack last year at Costco with two large and one small baking sheet.

Line the pan with parchment paper, spray lightly with cooking spray and pour in the mixture. You will have to flatten the corners and even it out as it isn’t very heavy. The small pan I had worked great. 30-35 minutes at 350° was perfect. You just want it nice and brown. When it was done, I cooled it slightly and then added some pizza toppings and put it back in and broiled it for a couple minutes. It was really good.

The third thing I have tried was to make cottage cheese ice cream.
2 cups cottage cheese

1 cup berries

2 Tbsp honey

I used some thawed frozen wild raspberries and my dandelion honey. I mixed it in the small food processor in two batches. It was still a bit grainy so next time I will try the larger food processor. Here it is before going into the freezer.

I took it out of the freezer to try some. It was more like ice milk than ice cream. Perhaps, if you knew you were eating it later in the day, you could freeze it for a few hours and it wouldn’t be quite as hard. I also had put it in the deep freeze; maybe in the fridge freezer, it would be softer. With my next batch, I will probably put it into popsicle molds and eat it that way.

The other ice cream combinations I have seen are:

2 cups cottage cheese

1/4 cup honey

2 Tbsp peanut butter

2 Tbsp chocolate chips

OR

2 cups of cottage cheese

1/4 cup of maple syrup

2 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla

This one could be eaten just cold as a mousse.

The key to all three of these is to blend until no longer grainy. I think the 1/4 cup of honey would be tastier than the 2 Tbsp I used. Mine could have been sweeter. You could substitute stevia for the honey or maple syrup for those with diabetes.

Well, those are my ideas so far to use up the cottage cheese. If you have any other suggestions, please pass them on.