Neither cats nor dance
I made my own yogurt last night! I am queen of the world!
That is, if being queen of the world means being able to do something that is dead easy and mostly involves waiting around and remembering to set a timer.
I followed the recipe for making yogurt in a crockpot from A Year of Slow Cooking. I wanted to make a nonfat yogurt, as that's what I normally eat, and I wanted to make it fairly thick, so I suspected that I would have to add some powdered milk and strain it to thicken it up. (Though I do also love drinkable yogurt like I used to buy at the Bloomington farmers market from Traders Point Creamery, so I wasn't dead set against a more liquidy yogurt.)
I used a half gallon of organic skim milk from the grocery store and as a starter I used Nancy's organic nonfat yogurt (which is what I've been buying exclusively since I moved to Oregon, as it's made right here in Eugene and thus even the organic varieties are often quite inexpensive in the groceries here compared to other national brands.) I did make one mistake, though-- I didn't pay quite enough attention at the grocery store and didn't notice till I got home that the milk I'd bought was indeed ultra-pasteurized, which the recipe says absolutely not to use for making yogurt. I was shopping at the regular no-frills grocery right around the corner, so I knew I wasn't going to find any schmancy raw milk there, but I was more concerned with getting the least expensive organic option and didn't check to see which were just pasteurized and not ultra. Oh well. You can still use ultra-pasteurized, but it won't thicken as much. The other thing that occurred to me later was that after I mixed my starter into 2 cups of the warm milk, I just dumped it all back into the crockpot, but didn't stir it to blend it with the rest of the milk already in there, so the cultures might not have gotten spread out as much as would be helpful. I'm also wondering about the amount of starter; my recipe says to use half a cup of starter yogurt for a half gallon of milk, but this one (which gets a lot more scientific and precise about the temperatures) only uses 2 Tbsp, and everybody seems to say that the more starter you use, the thinner the finished product will be.
I stirred in the starter around 11 pm last night and let it sit overnight, then uncovered it around 7:30 or 8 this morning, so it had slightly longer than 8 hours to sit. It had indeed turned into yogurt, albeit a thinner, more liquid yogurt. The flavor was sweet, mild, and creamy, with a slight tang like sheep's cheese but not sour or harsh. Really like nothing I've tasted before. I lined a colander with cheesecloth, set it over a bowl, and let it strain for about an hour while I got ready, then scraped it all into a clean leftover yogurt tub and put it in the fridge before I left for work. (I wasn't quite brave enough to let it sit out and drain all day.) I saved the whey that strained out too, as I hear it has many wonderful nutritional properties, though honestly I have no idea what to do with it and it looks kinda gross. Also, even after just straining an hour, I'd reduced the volume of the yogurt by about half-- so I don't have a half gallon of yogurt as I'd hoped, but probably just a quart. Which means that I didn't particularly save any money doing this, since my half-gallon of organic milk cost about the same as the quart of organic yogurt I would normally buy (around $3), plus I spent a couple bucks on the box of powdered milk, though that will last a while.
All in all, it's a good first effort and I'm pleased. But still more tinkering to do, the most important thing being to make sure I don't get ultra-pasteurized milk next time, unless I'm going to full embrace the drinkable yogurt thing.
A couple weeks ago, the morning after I got back from Indiana, I went to the dentist for the first time in mumblety years (because I now have dental insurance! yay!) for a cleaning and checkup. I had to go back yesterday afternoon and get a small filling-- my gums have receded a little, but on one upper canine it was far enough that some root was exposed and was tender, so they smoothed it down and covered it over. I've never had a cavity in my life and this was the first filling I've ever gotten, a fact which seemed to completely confound my dentist and hygienists: apparently Oregon doesn't fluoridate its drinking water, so they're used to seeing a lot more cavities and earlier tooth decay among their patients, and the idea that someone could make it to age 35 with no fillings seemed about as plausible as a unicorn walking into the office. I told the dentist that hopefully I wouldn't need another filling for another 35 years. The whole process was pretty quick, under 30 minutes, but the whole left half of my face was numb from the shot for a few hours, which was a weird sensation. I expected my gums to hurt a lot more (since the filling had to go under it) once the shot wore off, but it just felt a little swollen and tender.
Also, I lied, there is some cat content here. Cat integration is making progress, though there's still quite a bit of hissing and growling from Schmendrick. However, the past two mornings, when I've let the kitten out of her room to come run around while I get ready for work, the cats have greeted each other with a nose touch. Schmendrick is showing signs of wanting to give the kitten a full-body sniffdown, which means he's steadily getting more okay with her being close to him, though he gets really pissed off at her constant spazziness, which I think he still sees as aggression.
That is, if being queen of the world means being able to do something that is dead easy and mostly involves waiting around and remembering to set a timer.
I followed the recipe for making yogurt in a crockpot from A Year of Slow Cooking. I wanted to make a nonfat yogurt, as that's what I normally eat, and I wanted to make it fairly thick, so I suspected that I would have to add some powdered milk and strain it to thicken it up. (Though I do also love drinkable yogurt like I used to buy at the Bloomington farmers market from Traders Point Creamery, so I wasn't dead set against a more liquidy yogurt.)
I used a half gallon of organic skim milk from the grocery store and as a starter I used Nancy's organic nonfat yogurt (which is what I've been buying exclusively since I moved to Oregon, as it's made right here in Eugene and thus even the organic varieties are often quite inexpensive in the groceries here compared to other national brands.) I did make one mistake, though-- I didn't pay quite enough attention at the grocery store and didn't notice till I got home that the milk I'd bought was indeed ultra-pasteurized, which the recipe says absolutely not to use for making yogurt. I was shopping at the regular no-frills grocery right around the corner, so I knew I wasn't going to find any schmancy raw milk there, but I was more concerned with getting the least expensive organic option and didn't check to see which were just pasteurized and not ultra. Oh well. You can still use ultra-pasteurized, but it won't thicken as much. The other thing that occurred to me later was that after I mixed my starter into 2 cups of the warm milk, I just dumped it all back into the crockpot, but didn't stir it to blend it with the rest of the milk already in there, so the cultures might not have gotten spread out as much as would be helpful. I'm also wondering about the amount of starter; my recipe says to use half a cup of starter yogurt for a half gallon of milk, but this one (which gets a lot more scientific and precise about the temperatures) only uses 2 Tbsp, and everybody seems to say that the more starter you use, the thinner the finished product will be.
I stirred in the starter around 11 pm last night and let it sit overnight, then uncovered it around 7:30 or 8 this morning, so it had slightly longer than 8 hours to sit. It had indeed turned into yogurt, albeit a thinner, more liquid yogurt. The flavor was sweet, mild, and creamy, with a slight tang like sheep's cheese but not sour or harsh. Really like nothing I've tasted before. I lined a colander with cheesecloth, set it over a bowl, and let it strain for about an hour while I got ready, then scraped it all into a clean leftover yogurt tub and put it in the fridge before I left for work. (I wasn't quite brave enough to let it sit out and drain all day.) I saved the whey that strained out too, as I hear it has many wonderful nutritional properties, though honestly I have no idea what to do with it and it looks kinda gross. Also, even after just straining an hour, I'd reduced the volume of the yogurt by about half-- so I don't have a half gallon of yogurt as I'd hoped, but probably just a quart. Which means that I didn't particularly save any money doing this, since my half-gallon of organic milk cost about the same as the quart of organic yogurt I would normally buy (around $3), plus I spent a couple bucks on the box of powdered milk, though that will last a while.
All in all, it's a good first effort and I'm pleased. But still more tinkering to do, the most important thing being to make sure I don't get ultra-pasteurized milk next time, unless I'm going to full embrace the drinkable yogurt thing.
A couple weeks ago, the morning after I got back from Indiana, I went to the dentist for the first time in mumblety years (because I now have dental insurance! yay!) for a cleaning and checkup. I had to go back yesterday afternoon and get a small filling-- my gums have receded a little, but on one upper canine it was far enough that some root was exposed and was tender, so they smoothed it down and covered it over. I've never had a cavity in my life and this was the first filling I've ever gotten, a fact which seemed to completely confound my dentist and hygienists: apparently Oregon doesn't fluoridate its drinking water, so they're used to seeing a lot more cavities and earlier tooth decay among their patients, and the idea that someone could make it to age 35 with no fillings seemed about as plausible as a unicorn walking into the office. I told the dentist that hopefully I wouldn't need another filling for another 35 years. The whole process was pretty quick, under 30 minutes, but the whole left half of my face was numb from the shot for a few hours, which was a weird sensation. I expected my gums to hurt a lot more (since the filling had to go under it) once the shot wore off, but it just felt a little swollen and tender.
Also, I lied, there is some cat content here. Cat integration is making progress, though there's still quite a bit of hissing and growling from Schmendrick. However, the past two mornings, when I've let the kitten out of her room to come run around while I get ready for work, the cats have greeted each other with a nose touch. Schmendrick is showing signs of wanting to give the kitten a full-body sniffdown, which means he's steadily getting more okay with her being close to him, though he gets really pissed off at her constant spazziness, which I think he still sees as aggression.