Quick and easy homemade yogurt with no special equipment.

I freaking love yogurt. When I figured out that it was something you could make yourself a few years ago, I was stoked...that is until my mother in law described a lengthy process that involved special equipment and failure. Uh, no thanks. 

As the years have gone on, prices keep going up (can you say $1 a cup for yogurt...eek!) and we seem to be eating even more yogurt than before. So off I went on a new quest for homemade yogurt. There are several methods out there, some using "yogurt makers" some using crocpots, some using lots of pots, temperature taking and timing. None of this sounds fun for me. I hate doing dishes, I have the memory of a goldfish, and I do not own a candy thermometer.

Sometime last year I stumbled upon a website that had the simplest method for making yogurt, made it a few times and promptly forgot where I found the recipe. Its so easy, I remember all the steps and decided to set up a quick tutorial because I cannot for the life of me find that website again. 

One thing I will not do is tell you that you need to use some super special milk from this one rare breed of cow in the Alps that's raised on organic angel tears and free ranged the finest grass in the world and sweetened with local buckwheat honey that's humanely collected. 

Something majorly off-putting about a lot of DIY food item instructions is the constant, obtrusive yuppy d-baggery that is sprinkled super liberally throughout the article. Buy Walmart brand for all I care. Do remember that quality ingredients will yield a quality end-product, but the quality is up to you.

What you will need

1 Gallon of whole milk

1 6oz cup of plain yogurt

4 1-quart containers with lids (these can even be old spaghetti sauce jars)

1 Tablespoon measure

Something to stir with (I like a chopstick, it reaches all the way to the bottom of the jars)

A big pot with a lid

A big cooler

A large towel

Optional~Jar lifter (you could just lift the jars with a towel over your hand if you don't have one)

Yield: 4 quarts. You will have a little milk and a tiny scoop of yogurt left over.

This is it, minus the pot and cooler. Nothing fancy, nothing special, this is all that will get dirty here. Oh yeah, I said it,  no mess to clean up!

This is what turns your gallon of milk into yogurt. 

Pour your milk into your jars. Fill the pot 3/4 of the way up with cold water. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!  Cold milk in cold jars, surrounded by cold water. If you start mixing hot and cold around glass, you're asking for shattered & possibly exploding glass, not fun. Now turn your stove to medium and walk away for a while. It speeds to process to occasionally give the milk a stir with your chopstick. When I see the water kind of simmering I turn up the heat to med-high. Again, don't jack it up immediately, exploding glass is bad.  Walk away again...seriously. It takes about 20-30 min to get to where it needs to be, no need to stare at it (unless thats your thing).

After the water starts going on a light boil, you're going to need to pay attention a bit. Watch the surface of the milk for a skin. I lifted one of the milk skin thingies off so you could see, it's sort of wrinkly and pudding-looking when it's sitting on top. This means it's heated to the appropriate temperature. Honestly, I don't remember why we need to raised the temp this much, but we need to. Google it if you crave the knowledge of hot milk. 

Now (carefully, boiling liquids remember?) remove your jars and put them on a towel on the counter. Away from any breezes or fans, rapid heating or cooling of glass is explodey. Put the lid on your pot of hot water (we're using this in a bit, keep the hot water in it).

Ready for this? Walk away again, for about 30 minutes. We're waiting for the milk to cool off, you can stir the jars up to speed up the process, but you don't have to.  After a half hour goes by, give the jars a little stir and stick your finger in it, seriously. If you can comfortably put your finger in the milk (very warm but not hot) it's ready to add your starter yogurt. At this point, turn your pot of water on high on the stove.

I didn't take a picture of this part because it's literally me using a measuring spoon. Put 2 tablespoons of your plain yogurt into each jar and stir. 

Pop your jars & pot of hot water into the cooler and wrap everything up with a towel to keep all snug and warm. One more time, walk away. Until tomorrow morning. I usually make this around noon-ish and take it out of the cooler at breakfast time the next day.

   

This is what it looks like when you take it out of the cooler. The liquid is cool if you want a more watery yogurt (think smoothies) so you can just give it a good stir and put it in the fridge, or you can drain off the liquid.

                                 

The left is yogurt mixed with the watery stuff, the yogurt on the right is drained off. At this point you can take the yogurt and put it in a strainer lined with cheese cloth to create a thicker Greek-style yogurt.

Remember this is plain yogurt. Some people dig plain yogurt, I do not unless it's going into a smoothie. So add some fruit, honey, vanilla, sugar or whatever and enjoy ^_^

Home Made Dog Food.

Well hello internet world, I'm the laziest blogger ever, so here is post...3 I think.
Last night hubby and I were finishing up our shopping list, and trying to save money, we delved into the dark corners of our freezer to inventory what we had already. We were very responsible adults and made a list to put on the front of the fridge, I even put it in a page protector so it would be (a little) toddler proof.

Let me stop here and say I LOVE my fridge, you could put at least 2 bodies in it. It's like a Tardis. The freezer is an on-the-bottom chest, but things have the habit of disappearing into the bottom of it.

About 50 feet down, my husband found several mystery meats. Wrapped in foil and bagged, but not labeled, and looking like they'd been there since the dawn of man. Knowing what's in my fridge and not wasting money, I'm totally doing it wrong >.<
After much poking, peeling and squinting, we figured out it was ground beef. Horribly wasted, freezer burnt little rocks of graying cow matter. "Ick, throw that out!" you'll say. But, if you have furry little friends in the house, think twice about chucking your icy chuck. You can turn that wasted money into saved money in about 15 minutes. Dogs and cats both will eat food that consists of actual food! They'll love it, you'll feel like less of a wasteful jerk, and they'll be a little healthier for it. Seriously, watch how their coat will suddenly get all shiny and soft.

Because I love my puppus, here is my dog Remy, he's an American Eskimo (AKA German Spitz) and my toddler's BFF. He will be very happy tomorrow morning when I feed him this project.

I've made dog food before from a recipe HERE, figured out very quickly how easy it is and have done it a few times since with different kinds of meats (Remy's favorite is salmon, rice & peas.) I will say this though if you'd like to follow the instructions on that website, canning ground beef is tricky because the fat can cause the seal to not form and you should NEVER can anything with rice or pasta in it. It is a serious health risk because of the density of such foods. HERE is a website that has all of the up to date info on canning and all the horrible things that can happen if you do it improperly. Don't chance it and just freeze or refrigerate this stuff and use it immediately.

Here we go....

All you need is your newly found freezer treasures and a few things from your fridge/pantry that you'll most likely have anyway.

I have here 1 massively-massive grated carrot, 1 egg, apple cider vinegar (also called ACV, it's great stuff for people and animals), 3 cups steel cut oats & 3 pounds of beef (that's the defrosted chuck-cicles in the bowl)

I found that we had around 3 pounds of beef, so that's what I'm using. I also found the oats about 17 feet back in my cupboard. It's old, and honestly a little stale for people's tastes, but Remy won't mind at all. It's good filler and still fairly healthy for him (especially in comparison to all the junk you'll find in bagged dog food, go ahead, read the ingredients list on your bag of Puppy Chow...) I made 3 cups of the oats. I've made this in the past with rice, Remy approves of this way too. It's really about what you have on hand and what's OK for a dog to eat. NEVER-EVER-EVER-EVER give your dog onions, it will kill them, that is not on the "people food that's cool for dogs" list.


Start off like you're making dinner for yourself, throw your beef into a hot pan.

I cooked the beef until it was about halfway done, do not season it, your dog doesn't need all that salt and pepper.

Then I cracked in an egg AND put in the shell. It's extra calcium that is great for your furry friend and they can digest it just fine as long as it's crushed up pretty good. I crushed up the shell after taking this picture because pulverized egg shell isn't that photogenic.

After I squashed the egg shell up good and the beef was fully cooked, I realized I had about 1/3 of a bag of frozen peas left over, so I threw those in along with the pre-cooked oats and about 2T of ACV.

Mix it all up and look at what a good job you did wasting all that meat! 

Is it "budget friendly" to make your animal's food like this all the time? No, not really. But if you've got meat in your freezer that has been frozen to the point of needing to be thrown out, then yes, it is budget friendly. You're not throwing out money and you can save that bag of kibble for another day, it'll keep. 

I portion mine out to about a cup for my 30ish pound dog. You can freeze this to keep for an "oh S**T I forgot to buy dog food!" day, or just toss it in the fridge and use it immediately. 

 Also, my husband came home about 5 minutes after I made this and said "oh, did you make dinner?" Apparently my dog cooking smells much better than that canned junk :)