Making Sunflower Oil and Pumpkin Seed Oil

I got myself a nice new Piteba oil expeller and this post will show me using to to make hand pressed pumpkin seed and sunflower oil. Here's the machine. It's imported from Holland... oddly enough this sort of tool is not easy to get a hold of here in the States. It is, though, quite reasonably priced even to pay for it to come from Holland.

Update 1/26/11 - Click here - the Piteba is now available on Amazon.com! (Opens in a new window)


Basically it consists of several different parts. the first thing you will notice is my handy cottage cheese container. That's to catch the "press cake" of leftover solids that are pressed dry of oil. The blue thing underneath is actually an oil candle with blue lamp oil. It has a neat little guide on top (which is why you can't see the flame).

This actually heats up the whole entire unit to help press out the oil, which becomes more readily available when heated up a bit. It doesn't heat a whole lot, though, which is good because I would imagine too much heat might affect the shelf life of the oil.

Then, to the right you have the collection cup, on top is my funnel for the seed, and then all the way to the right is the crank. Bored yet? OK here we move on to the fun stuff! OK actually one more boring part. This is actually more for the owner of Piteba just so he can see how I have this set up, since I'll show him this link :)

The Piteba oil expeller is actually designed to be permanently bolted onto something. The amount of power that's required to turn the crank for some seeds (with shells on, etc) would need for it to be VERY secure. Unfortunately, I have nothing at my home that I could do that with, and I don't have space for a special table just for that purpose.

So I took a piece of 2x6 lumber left over from my parents building their house and bolted it quite securely to the lumber and left space on each side. Then, I got 2 extra strong c-clamps and used them to clamp the wood-mounted press to my countertop. It actually works really well... the clamps are able to be angled so they don't interfere with the turning of the crank, and the footprint is relatively small. When I am finished and all the pieces are cleaned and oiled, I can put everything in a box and stow it away in a room in my basement. Pretty tidy!

OK anyway, now as promised, on to the fun stuff.

 

 

 

 

Here we are in action! The funnel is filled with shelled raw sunflower seeds. I actually did try this with the black oil sunflower seeds (shell-on) but I realized it was a bad idea. The black oil sunflower seeds I could get were actually intended for birdseed and so they were dirty.

 

 

 

 

Only about 25% more in cost I could get the shelled seeds for human consumption.

 

 

 

 

 

Pound by pound, I get more oil from the shelled seeds so it actually isn't more expensive this way. You turn the crank, which causes the seeds to press in and at the end, the press cake extrudes and the oil drips out into the catching cup at the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the leftover press cake. It's pretty dry and crumbly. Since this was made with shelled seeds intended for human consumption, I could have easily made it into granola, baked it into some delicious bread, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of time for that so it ended up being thrown into the garden. It will either compost nicely or be some protein-rich food for the birds and squirrels. When I have chickens someday this will make excellent chicken feed. Actually, I bet the press cake from flax seeds would be great to feed laying hens for some omega-fatty-acid-enriched farm fresh eggs!

Apparently, even when you have press cake from seeds/nuts with the shells on, you can still feed them to the chickens/hogs/wildlife. At worst, you can compost it. What a great deal, huh!

Here's a bowl of the sunflower oil. It does contain some sediment and so I'll let it settle out for about 24 hours before I bottle it up.

 

 

 

Here you can see the oil I've been pressing from pumpkin seeds. I bought raw shelled seeds in the bulk section. They don't quite produce as much oil, as indicated by the high price, but it's one of my favorite skincare oils and so I definitely wanted to make it.

 

 

 

 

It comes out pretty cloudy... here's a pic of it after 24 hours of settling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool, huh! it almost looks like it's a deep red color... but it's a trick of the light. In the bottle it looks red, but if you look at it in the pipette I used to decant it into it's final bottle, you can see it's definitely a green color with a slight reddish tinge.

 

 

 

 

And of course because we all like pics, here's a picture of the sunflower seed oil after settling. The sunflower oil didn't have quite as much sediment to settle, and also since I do plan on using it mostly in cooking I certainly didn't mind the sunflower "goop." I did this all yesterday and last night I pan-roasted some fresh asparagus and drizzled it with a few tablespoons of this fresh pressed oil. I could definitely taste the sunflower flavor... it was wonderful. I did put too much salt on the stuff but the flavor itself was tremendous, HEADS above the commercial stuff that's been sitting on the shelf for 12 months.

 

And here we have the final product! An ounce or so of hand pressed pumpkin seed oil for a facial oil, and about 8 ounces of sunflower oil that I can use for either skincare or cooking. A lot of people actually do use pumpkin seed oil for cooking, but I don't care for the flavor myself. Although i do like roasted seeds, so maybe if I roasted them first and then pressed them, it might taste pretty good :)

Next on my project list for my oil press - flax seed oil, and maybe even pine nut oil. YUM YUM.

Hope you enjoyed my little photo journal. I guess my summary is that hand pressed oils are definitely a lot of physical work (it was about 30 minutes of cranking to produce these oils). After some trial and error I have become more efficient and also as my oil expeller becomes more "seasoned." It definitely gives one an appreciation for the ease of which we can buy oils at the grocery store, but also an appreciation for the fresh flavors of this fresh pressed oil.

 

This fall I will also have a new experiment - I am growing oilseed sunflowers and naked-seeded pumpkins and so I will be pressing oils from seeds that I grew myself. Something like that gives me the warm fuzzies - a completely sustainable cycle that produces a unique product that most people can't produce themselves. :)

And thusly, I complete my review and photo blog of the Piteba oil expeller. Once again, click here to see the Piteba on Amazon.com (Opens in a new window). Have a great day!

Making cold-pressed vegetable oil with a hand-cranked expeller

Hi everyone! Long time no see, eh? OK well the truth of the matter is that my job basically sucks the life out of me these days, leaving me listless at the end of the day and no energy to do anything creative usually, especially not blogging. The light, however, has appeared at the end of the tunnel - Tommy is done with school in about 5 months. Woohoo!

Anyway, I got a brand new toy and been using it a bit over the last couple weeks. I've had so many people ask about it because it is sort of a unique item so I decided to go finally buy a stupid card reader for my digital camera so I could blog it, so here I am :)

As many of you know, I am on a mission to rid my life of as much dependency on society and whatnot as I can. In my case, this means getting the tools and especially acquiring the skills I would need to in order to live completely off-grid. Maybe by the time I'm 90 I'll know enough, but I doubt it. So my latest toy is the Piteba oil press. It's a hand-cranked expeller that can make vegetable oil from basically any nut or seed that has at least 25% oil. This means technically I could use it to make oil from walnuts, sunflowers, all the way to hemp seed and even cacao beans (making cocoat butter).

I'll photo blog it on my next post, but I have used it a few times and let me say that I have a new appreciation for the fact I can go to the store and buy a liter of vegetable oil for $2. I also have an especially great new appreciation for the flavor and quality of a freshly pressed oil... incredible.

Dehydrating

Sorry about the long absence, all my faithful fans :) There was a small IE problem at work and when it was "fixed" for some reason I can't get blogger to come up, and since that was where I did most of my posting... well.

Anyway, this week I picked up an Excalibur dehydrator off craigslist. It will actually end up going to my brother but since he can't get it for a while, I'm testing it out :) I just peeled and sliced 2 lbs of carrots and stuck them in. When I was doing that, I noticed that not only is this a dehydrator but it also has a setting for rising bread AND making yogurt. What a fabulously useful tool! Someday I will get myself one as well. In the meantime, I'll use his :) He's using the canner and so in the meantime I can dry what I need to put up.

I guess I should do a garden report. I'm about ready to dig all my potatoes. So far they have been pretty prolific and quite delicious. I can't wait to try the fingerlings, which I haven't yet. I'll dig them tomorrow with Eleora. Like I thought, I didn't have much time to keep things up so I have lots of peas, beans and cucumbers going to seed. Those Richland Green Apple cukes were FABULOUS though. I will definitely be replanting them next year.

The tomatillos and tomatoes have been doing well. We had our first orange tomato (Dad's Sunset) yesterday and it was very very delicious. The first ripe tomato was one of the paste tomatoes, though (it was about a month ago). I've got tons of those guys now, and I will definitely be replanting those too (Principe Borghese). Those are the italian tomato that they usually use for sundrying so I think I could dehydrate those too, at least the ones I have on hand. Our weather this summer has been cooler - we had a really hot stretch in July for a couple weeks but since then it's mostly been in the 70s and 80s. So I'm not sure how well things will continue to perform. Our "early" tomatoes (Siletz) haven't been too early, still haven't ripened yet. I will give them another chance because that particular plant was situated in a spot that got a lot less sun than I thought it would. There's a few of those on the vine that are almost ripe.

I have one small pumpkin that I know of... I'm glad about that, one should do me just fine for the winter. I don't think I'll get any melon, only one plant survived and it doesn't seem to have set any fruit.

I harvested all my garlic aboout a month ago and it did really really well. Some of the bulbs were pretty good size, and the smallness of the rest I could definitely see when you consider how LATE I planted them last year. I saved back the best of the heads to replant this fall.

In other news, the neighbor's dog paid a visit to my garden yesterday, tore up a spot in one of my beds. I caught him in the act and then he ran away, jumped the fence. I went over to assess the damage... and there is a dead GROUNDHOG in my garden. Yuck. It's still there, I was hoping to see the neighbor but I think I'll just take Tommy's advice and just pitch it back over the fence and let him deal with it. Seems a bit, oh, snarky to me, but then again I shouldn't be responsible for disposing of an animal carcass that his dog tried to bury in my garden!

garden update

Ok well I got yelled at this weekend because I haven't blogged in a long time. Truth be told, I've just been focusing on trying to go through and haven't had the time for my garden inspections and whatnot. Plus I'm working on writing a novel also and so that takes up a lot of my "write-y" time.

So the garden has gotten pretty messy. Mostly because I never got any mulch to lay between the beds. I've decided to pull up all the rotted cardboard and stuff in between the beds and just start having Tommy mow between them. At least it won't look as crazy with tall grasses and stuff.

It's almost time to pull the garlic. Yesterday I pulled a couple heads that had died back completely and I was very excited to see full-size heads :) I've pulled a couple here and there to use and they were pretty small so this was nice. This weekend I was at the property and pulled up the 3 heads of garlic that grew (from the 5 I'd planted) and they were pretty small. My mom said that our neighbors who also planted garlic ended up with fairly small heads too.

My cabbages and broccolis are growing like nuts but nothing forming on them yet. The pumpkins have blooms forming, and I think the one melon that didn't get eaten by the slugs has some on it too. I'm not sure if they need to cross-pollinate, but I hope I get at least one melon out of it :)

I've got some peppers and tomatoes forming, and a couple cute little tomatillos. Some of the onions are bulbing up nicely. My basil is slowly plugging along, not growing as fast as I'd hoped.

We've had a couple harvests of a couple strawberries. They are so delicious when homegrown! Incredibly sweeter and more flavor. Eleora likes to take them from the plant when they are barely ripening, though, so it's kind of a race to see who gets them first.

Peas are producing, which is fun. I've showed Eleora what they look like so she is having fun looking through the mess of vines for the pods. The beans are coming along nicely and will probably start blooming in the near future. I still need to plant more carrots, never did the succession planting that I'd planned and so I only have 2 squares of them right now. Gave up on radishes which is fine, we burned out on them anyway :)

OH and the nasturtiums I planted, one has a bloom. The most beautiful deep rich bright red I've ever seen in a flower. I think they are called "Empress." I'll have to take a picture of that one... absolutely gorgeous. Oh, and the cucumbers also have blooms and I have a few cute little ones forming :)

Hummus

Just made this yesterday and it's fantastic! I'm kinda excited to see all the new uses I'm gonna find for this stuff. Made with fresh garlic from my garden, of course.

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and liquid reserved
3 tbs tahini
3/4 cups reserved bean liquid
3 tbs lemon juice
1/2 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp salt
pinch cumin
pinch black pepper
1/4 tsp mediterranean seasoning (I have a gyros spice mix I bought in Germany to use for this)

Throw it in a blender and blend till creamy. You can use more or less liquid from the beans to make it the consistency you like. 3/4 was what I used which is about the minimum that my blender liked, I used Tommy's magic bullet blender.

So good... great with triscuits, veggies, and I'm thinking if I made a runnier one it would make a good pizza sauce... lots of good fats and healthy protein in this stuff, especially when eaten with a whole grain cracker or pita.

And it's CHEAP!

One more year...

Until Tommy is finished with school.

Sigh...

SO disappointed... they took my milk away :(

Well, not fully away, but mostly. We get WIC from the state which helps us a LOT right now. We go through probably 3-4 gallons of milk a week. I was so excited last month when I posted that there is now local fresh milk in the stores from the SPOKANE'S FAMILY FARM. The stuff is fantastic, tastes great, low-heat pasteurized... I can't wait to make cheese from it.

But apparently the fact that it isn't homogenized makes it a no-go for WIC rules. So the month or so we've been drinking it, while it has been wonderful, we will now need to go back to drinking regular trucked-in storebought :(

I called the WIC office at the state, spoke with a supervisor, then I called Trish at the dairy. She was a gem and was just made aware of the situation. She is looking into it and I hope she can figure out a way to make it WIC OK. Apparently, they don't homogenize on purpose. I didn't know this before, but homogenization breaks up the nice round fat globules into teeny pointy ones that are more damaging to your heart. Think... tiny little pieces of fiberglass. Great.

Anyway, I'm gonna cross my fingers and hope that at some point, they find a way to make it work. Maybe by going kosher, they can solve that problem. We'll see. In the meantime, if we ever need to buy milk out of pocket, I know what I'll be getting! :)

Here's a reprint from a recent newspaper article about the dairy, from
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/may/20/udderly-fresh/.

“C’mon girls. C’mon,” Mike Vieira calls out his evening invitation to the ladies in black and white at Spokane’s Family Farm. “C’mon,” he repeats, walking into the pasture, “C’mon. Let’s go.” Visitors make the “girls” hesitate slightly, but they eventually oblige and line up behind the barn door for the evening milking. It’s a ritual repeated twice daily at the farm 13 miles west of Spokane where Mike and Trish Vieira bottle up to 2,000 gallons of milk each week. “This is what everyone thinks of when they think of a dairy,” Mike Vieira says.

The couple began milking cows a little over a month ago, after spending the winter retrofitting the 100-year-old barn with modern milking and pasteurizing equipment and preparing for the arrival of the Holstein cows. It’s a small operation, with just 30 animals in a state where the average dairy had 480 cows in 2007. Many of the state’s large dairy operations have more than 2,000 animals.

Mike Vieira worked as a dairyman near Othello, selling his milk to the Darigold cooperative, before coming to the Spokane area. Although he was known for being a top-quality producer, Vieira says the milk he produced was dumped together with that of the other 850 members and bottled. He longed for closer connection to the finished product.

So, the Vieiras decided to move near one of the state’s bigger cities to find a market for an old-fashioned dairy – where milk is produced and bottled on the farm and then sold nearby. The milk from Spokane’s Family Farm is no more than 72 hours from the cow and has traveled less than 20 miles by the time it lands on grocery store shelves.

“I have a lot of incentive to produce quality milk,” says Mike Vieira, who recently turned 38. “My name is right there on the label. It comes down to me.”

Spokane’s Family Farm uses low-heat pasteurization to kill the potentially harmful pathogens in the milk. It’s heated to 145 degrees and held there for 30 minutes before it is quickly cooled to prepare for bottling. Most commercial milk is pasteurized at higher temperatures (HTST) to kill the bacteria as well as other enzymes in the milk and extend the shelf life. Some milk is ultra-heat pasteurized (UHT), or heated to a temperature that kills almost all of the microorganisms and can be shelf stable if it is put in hermetically sealed packaging.

Food and Drug Administration researchers say the higher temperature pasteurization doesn’t significantly affect the nutritional value of milk. Others believe human bodies benefit from the natural enzymes that are left intact by low-temperature pasteurization. They also like the flavor better, and the remaining enzymes help with the fermentation of milk into cheese and yogurt.
The Vieiras like the taste of the milk and the “good bacteria” left behind. Although they like keeping the milk closer to its natural state, they don’t believe in selling raw milk. “It is a liability and it’s still a serious issue,” says Mike Vieira, who also worked for five years in dairy sanitation as a troubleshooter for Sunnyside Dairy Supply.

Spokane’s Family Farm doesn’t homogenize the milk, which means the cream rises to the top of the jugs. Most commercial milk has the cream separated out, and then sprayed back into the milk in a prescribed amount (1 percent, 2 percent or about 3 percent for whole milk). The cream is forced through tubes at high pressure to break up the fat so it no longer separates from the low-fat milk.

Milk from Spokane’s Family Farm averages about 3.5 percent fat. Shake the jug for creamy whole milk or, as the Vieiras suggest, store it in an iced tea dispenser with the spigot on the bottom. The milk that settles to the bottom has about 2 percent fat and the cream that rises to the top can be saved and made into butter, used for coffee or even whipped. It has about a three-week shelf life. The retail price is $4.29 per gallon. It is sold on the farm for $3.50.
Running a dairy is not easy work. Vieira wakes before 5 a.m. every day to feed the “girls” and get them ready for the 5:30 a.m. milking. Cleaning, sanitizing, bottling and other farm chores keep the couple busy until the evening milking. Most days are 18 hours long and sometimes end with the Vieiras delivering milk to stores that are running low.

“There is no pause button on these cows,” Trish Vieira says. Friends and volunteer hands on the farm like to tease them about the never-changing schedule, “They like to rib me. ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ they’ll ask,” Mike Vieira says.

The farm on Coulee Hite Road was used as a dairy until 1962. The Vieiras retrofitted it with state-of-the-art equipment, but it’s still what’s called a “flat barn.” Most dairy operations have a pit so that dairy workers are at eye level with the cows’ udders.

“You don’t have to bend over to milk cows anymore,” he says. “I still do.”
Actually, most of the time he’s squatting. For the first two weeks of operation, Vieira says he was sore from his toes to his ears.

“I’m in it because I love the cows,” he says. “It’s all I ever wanted to do. I think I started saying I wanted to be a dairy farmer about second grade.”

That was after a trip to his uncle’s dairy farm in California captured his imagination. His first job out of high school was as herdsman for a dairy. He recently told a group of veterinary students that if any of them were thinking about dairying, they needed to see a psychiatrist for at least a year. And then at the end of the year if they still want a dairy they should get a second opinion.
The Vieiras have five grown daughters in their blended family. They’ve been married for about two years and have a son, 1 1/2-year-old Kohl. There’s a playpen for him in the barn where the cows are milked, but on a recent evening he was perched atop the nightly feed ration in the wheelbarrow.

The dairy is not certified organic. The cows eat locally grown grains. Although the Vieiras wanted to reserve the right to treat a sick animal on the farm with antibiotics, they would never allow the milk to go into their tanks.

The farm is 160 acres, and they hope to eventually double the operation to 60 cows.
Mike Vieira takes pride in his contented herd, which he bought from an 80-year-old dairyman and his son. When he lets the first group of cows into the barn, they quickly assume positions in each of the milking stalls.

He quickly cleans each cow’s teats using an iodine and glycerin solution and then strips a bit of milk from each one before attaching the milking apparatus. The rhythmic sound of the machinery fills the small barn. The cows eat until the milking is complete, and the units automatically detach and are drawn back up into position for the next round.
Trish Vieira brushes the mud and dried waste from the hide of the cows while she helps with milking. She helps shoo the cows outside, and then they start over with the second group.
She walks outside while the milking and cleaning is finished. Tomorrow, they’ll start the whole process again.
“C’mon girls. C’mon.”


Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream
From Trish Vieira, Spokane Family Farm. Vieira says when she made this with additional milk from the farm instead of cream to lower the fat, no one noticed.
3 cups sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 1/4 cups Spokane’s Family Farm Milk with cream on top
5 fresh eggs, lightly beaten
5 cups whipping cream (can use whole milk for less fat)
2 tablespoons vanilla
Combine first three ingredients in saucepan. Gradually stir in the milk, cook over medium heat for approximately 15 minutes, until thickened, stirring constantly.
Gradually stir 1 cup of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs. Add to remaining hot mixture, stirring constantly. Cook for 1 minute, remove from heat, and refrigerate for 2 hours. Add whipping cream and vanilla to chilled mixture and whip with wire whisk. Freeze as directed.
For an electric home freezer, use approximately 2 cups of rock salt per batch and 1 1/2 bags of ice cubes. Vieira puts a little water into the freezer bucket (about 2 cups) to start the ice and salt melting process. Fresh fruit or chocolate cookie bits can be added to flavor the custard before freezing.
Yield: About 5 quarts

Homemade Yogurt
From Trish Vieira, Spokane’s Family Farm. This yogurt can be used in place of sour cream, she says.
1 quart whole milk
5 grams yogurt starter
Heat one quart of milk to 180 degrees and then cool down to 108 to 112 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dissolve 5 grams yogurt starter (or use unflavored yogurt) in small quantity of lukewarm milk. Then pour back into the quart of milk and mix well.
Incubate for 4 to 4 1/2 hours, or until yogurt has reached the desired firmness.
Refrigerate to stop incubation.
Fresh fruit or jam can be added to sweeten the yogurt. A yogurt appliance can be used to incubate the yogurt.
Yield: 4 cups yogurt

French Breakfast Puffs
From Trish Vieira, Spokane Family Farm. She says these are “simply divine.”
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 cup whole milk
Topping
6 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg and mix just until blended.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Stir in flour mixture alternately with 1/2 cup milk.
Fill muffin tins two-thirds full with batter and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
While the puffs are baking, melt 6 tablespoons butter and mix together sugar and cinnamon.
When puffs are baked, remove from the oven and immediately dip them in melted butter and roll in cinnamon sugar mixture.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Hot Fudge Pudding Cake with Dark Chocolate Rum Sauce
From Trish Vieira, Spokane’s Family Farm.
1 1/4 cup sugar, divided
1 cup flour
7 tablespoons cocoa, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup dark rum
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine ¾ cups sugar, flour, 3 tablespoons cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Blend in milk, melted butter and vanilla. Pour into an 8-by-8-inch pan.
In a small bowl, combine ½ cup sugar, brown sugar and 4 tablespoons cocoa.
Sprinkle over cake batter.
Pour hot water and dark rum over the top. Bake 35 minutes. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.
Yield: 1 (8-by-8-inch) cake