First Yogurt

I did it! I made my fist batch of yogurt. All kinds of things went wrong but the yogurt still turned out just fine. I used the cheap 2% milk found a my normal grocery store. I used a candy thermometer that I already had. A normal pot and 8 oz canning jars. I used the half gallon recipe because I did not want to waste a whole gallon of milk if I did it wrong.

Most of the cooking went fine except that the milk scorched on the bottom of the pan but I just did not scrape it and the yogurt tasted normal. I tried to pour the milk in to the jars from the pan but ended up getting it everywhere. I put the milk in to a pitcher and had much better luck. Then I had more milk then jars so I had to use a clean spaghetti sauce jar. Then there was not enough room in the cooler for the big jar. Lucky for me, I found a very fat thermos that worked just as well. Then I fell asleep and let the yogurt sit for longer then 3 hours. At 3:30 am I tip toed down stairs and looked at my yogurt. It was solid! I had done it! I put the yogurt in the fridge and went back to bed. Then next morning I served it to the kids with honey in it. They loved it.

Yogurt and Cheese

According to my husband I have finally gone off the deep end. The other day I was listening to Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbra Kingsolver (with our MP3 player that we got for free) and I heard her talking about making cheese. I love cheese. I like it just as much as chocolate. My mom and I even go to a free monthly cheese class at a high class market in our city just to hear about and taste different cheeses. I always assumed that cheese making was super hard and never something I could do in a cost effective way. But to hear Ms. Kingsolver talk about it, it really is not that difficult. So I looked in to it and it turns out she is right. It is not that hard. I even found this great website where the author is committed to making cheese, yogurt and other things using all stuff you would find at a normal grocery store or already in your home.

I was so excited. Husband thought I was so crazy. Why? was all he could say. Because it is cheaper, better for you (no weird additives) and because I can. I love to cook and I also love a good challenge. Besides wouldn't it be way cooler to give cheese at Christmas instead of cookies?

Here is the website I will be using to make yogurt and cheese with -

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htm

He even has nice pictures for every step.