Homemade Yogurt

Over the past few months I've become a little obsessed with starting to feed my family better (or at least more whole) food. We are still not good at this, but I'm taking baby steps. On Sunday and Monday I made two big batches of homemade chicken stock, to be added to recipes instead of using bouillon or canned stock. I froze a total of 10 cups (in 2 cup increments) and still have nearly a quart in the fridge to become soup.

I've been using Kitchen Stewardship's* list of baby steps to get started. We're working on getting all of the artificial sweeteners out of the house, and already avoided trans fats (step 1). We already use full fat dairy for everything except milk, and we tend to cook in either butter or olive oil already, though I'm curious about coconut oil (step 2). Sometimes I meal plan (step 3), and when I do, we eat really well, at home, for weeks on end. When I don't, we tend to grab more fast food and eat at restaurants more often, which is harder on our budget as well as our bodies. Meal planning also gives me structure enough to plan my coupon shopping, though I have made it to Aldi on a couple of occasions recently.

And step 4** was homemade yogurt. I first made it a couple weeks ago, just a half gallon to try it, in two quart sized containers. I had half a 32-oz container of Stonyfield organic plain yogurt in the fridge at the time (I'd gone through two of them already just "making sure" that I wanted to eat plain yogurt, and I did!), but I wanted fresh cultures (without possible contamination) so I bought a small plain Greek yogurt. Nobody had plain yogurt in small containers except one brand of Greek. What I am trying to say is that I had a lot of yogurt in my fridge at the end of this, which is why it lasted me two whole weeks. I suspect I'll go through a half gallon a week when I get going with this.

I eat my yogurt with granola or muesli, or just plain uncooked rolled oats with some dried or fresh fruit. If I'm doing that, I tend to sweeten the yogurt slightly with either brown sugar or honey, or (my new favorite) a spoonful of my homemade jam. I cannot wait to see how it is with my apple butter. Anyhow, I try to mix equal parts yogurt and other stuff because I like crunchy in every bite. It's more like eating cereal with yogurt instead of the milk rather than eating yogurt topped with a little granola. I was pleasantly surprised that the homemade yogurt had a much less tart taste to it compared to commercial yogurt, probably partially because I let the temp get nice and low and only cultured it for six hours.

Granola + Yogurt + Raspberry Jam = ...

Pink Yumminess!***

I didn't use the Kitchen Stewardship recipe, because at first I thought I'd be lazy about it and do it in the crock pot, so I clicked her link to Heartland Renaissance**** and saw that she's got a slightly better (non crock pot) method. It involves more dishes than the KS recipe, but I don't really mind that as I own a dishwasher. It also uses the oven to sterilize the jars and to incubate the yogurt, which is perfect for me! I was afraid of using the cooler-with-a-pot-of-boiling-water incubation method used by KS because I was sure Sam would mess with it. I use the bread stone and a big cast iron griddle in there with it to help hold the temp. I've been yogurt making on Tuesdays so that I don't mind not using the oven for dinner, because we eat bag lunches at class rather than eating at home.

Supplies (not pictured: large dishrags, one canning ring, a funnel, a small spoon and a large ladle.)

Jars in the oven with the bread stone, the cast iron griddle, and a pan I use for steam when I bake bread.

This time, I accidentally let the milk get a little too hot, and I was just praying it didn't curdle. It foamed up but I caught it pretty quickly when it happened and took it off the heat. My least favorite part of the process is waiting for the milk to cool.

Hot milk!

Anyhow. It eventually got cool to 110 degrees. I'd saved a small jar of culture from when I opened my last jar of homemade yogurt over the weekend, so I was pretty certain that was not contaminated and still contained active cultures. I mixed the now room temperature starter with a couple scoops of warm milk until it got smooth. Then I stirred that into the pot. I was careful not to disturb the bottom of the pan while I was stirring, and I was glad when I poured the warm milk/culture mixture into the jars. Anything that curdled or burned stayed in the pan.

Measured culture starter

Well blended with some warm milk

Blended with all of the warm milk, ready to grow cultures

In the jars!

Aftermath in the stock pot

Then I put the filled jars back in the oven, wrapped them in large thick dish towels, and left it to sit until we got home from class. Start to finish, including waiting time, it took about 2.5 hours to make and then sat for 7-ish. The bulk of the 2.5 hours was spent writing this post (and yesterday's), setting timers to recheck the thermometer, and scooping off skin from the hot milk, and doing whatever. About 10-15 minutes was actual active "doing" stuff, and that only took as long as it did because I was taking pictures.

Wrapped up all cozy!

Last night when we got back from class, I put the lids and rings on the jars and popped them in the fridge. This morning, I had yummy yogurt to eat!

Finished product, moment of truth

It's set! Yay!

Check that out. It's even thicker than the last time I made it.

That's it. I just ate a delicious breakfast of dry rolled oats in homemade yogurt with raisins and a little brown sugar. Since the yogurt is unsweetened I can use it in recipes to replace sour cream or buttermilk, and if I wanted to I could strain it to make it an even thicker Greek style yogurt or even yogurt cheese (to be used like cream cheese). Two ingredients, a few pieces of equipment I already had on hand (I only had to buy the candy thermometer, and needed one anyway), and voila. I'll say it now: this is even easier than baking that artisan bread. If I weren't home during the day, I'd have done the milk heating and cooling in the evening and then let it sit overnight. You can also let it sit up to 24 hours if you want it to be very easily digestible (the cultures eat all of the lactose), so yeah. I think the only way to screw this up would be if you didn't properly sterilize your jars, or you didn't let the milk get cool enough not to kill the cultures. Before, I was paying $3.50 for 32 ounces of whole milk yogurt, organic because that's the only way I could get the full fat version. Now I paid $1.79 for twice that, made with conventional milk and cultures I already had.

*I'm not a fan of her politics/theology in general, but food-wise she's got some interesting ideas (and fantastic recipes.) I tend to take it all with a very large grain of salt.
**We've done parts of steps 5-10 as well, but I don't need to detail them here.
***Those are flaxseeds, not raspberry seeds. It's Simply Balanced Honey Almond Flax Granola, homemade yogurt, and homemade jam.
****I really haven't read much of her stuff other than this one recipe, so forgive me if she's some sort of weirdo. The recipe works, though!

Thinking about blogging, and crocheting, and motivation

I've come out of my early-fall fog a little bit, so I think I might be ready to start blogging again. We'll see how that goes. With the cooler weather, Sam's not escaping the house as much any more, so I'm less stressed out about that. Our family just got over a bad stomach bug, so I'm still a little slow on the cooking. Today I'm making homemade yogurt and taking pictures of the process. I'll post about it tomorrow, including the recipe.

So I looked back over what I was doing at this time last year, and my gosh, I was stitching up a storm. Anything to keep my hands busy. I stayed that way until Sam started preschool in April. I suspect that that was my way of dealing with Sam's autism diagnosis. It was something that we'd sort of known was coming since the summer prior, but hadn't really processed (and let's be honest, we probably never will, completely.) Doing this blog, and making all that stuff, kept my mind on other things than the elephant in the room. Working (caring for Maggie) was much the same. But eventually there was a breaking point where our family as a whole had to accept and embrace Sam's diagnosis for what it was, and begin the hard work of giving him the best start we possibly can.

I thought I knew Sam a year ago. I knew what he did, sure. I knew every detail about how he did things, and what he was saying, and I normally knew exactly what he wanted or what was wrong. But I didn't know why he needed to bundle objects and hum, or memorize letters and numbers. I might have had some clue about his triggers, but the need he was fulfilling with his behaviors wasn't even on my radar. "Yeah, he does that a lot," was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea how much visual and auditory stimulation he craved. I had no idea how badly he wanted to make music. I had no idea why he craved certain motions and not others.

In the big picture, of course we don't know why he has certain sensory needs, but we have learned a ton about how he meets them. Most of the time, I can redirect his humming to singing, and his bundling can be done in a way that's safe for everyone. Food is still something we're working on. I have a feeling it'll be a long process. He drinks milk and eats chicken, so between those and all the junk food, he's growing and reasonably healthy.

Anyway. I'm not going to set a schedule for updating this blog because I don't want to use it as an escape as much. I'll update when I have something to say. We're finally done with most of our classes, the exception being three more weeks of More Than Words, which we have tonight. Sam got pretty bored over Thanksgiving break, so he's pretty happy to be back in school. We put up our sad little tree yesterday with only one ornament--a star that I crocheted at the top. I'm debating about bringing the big one out for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but for now, this is what we can handle. It's a little Charlie Brown, but it works.