Homemade Yogurt

Ok.  I remember when I was in high school my mom tried making yogurt.  Honestly to this day I have no idea why she did it.   I decided that you sort of have to like the taste of PLAIN yogurt.  It's not sweet or fruity.  At best, it is a little like sour cream (the good stuff anyway).  I wanted to try to make my own, and here is my saga.

There were several attempts using a couple different methods.  Basically all you need to make yogurt is a little bit of yogurt and a milk.  Warm it up and keep it warm in order to jazz up the live cultures.  Sounds gross, I know.   And it is.

Here's what I tried...

#1.  The Crock Pot Method.  The directions said to heat up the milk and the yogurt starter, then turn off the crock pot and wrap it in a towel (to keep the warmth in) and leave it overnight.  Well.   I went to the health food store and bought a container of plain yogurt and a carton of goat's milk.  YES!  Goat's milk.  I thought, why not?  I'm already just being weird and experimenting, why not try goat's milk?  I love their cheese.  and yogurt.

When I re-read the recipe I'd found, once I'd gotten home with the goat's milk and began heating it up, I saw that it warned against "ultra-pasteurization" which the carton of goat's milk clearly boasted.  I still pressed on, followed the instructions to the letter, and ended up with the same thing I'd started with--milk mixed with yogurt.  Dammit.

#2  The Oven Light Method.  The idea here is that leaving the milk mixture in the oven with the bulb on will create enough heat to keep the cultures going.  For this trial, I chose regular (cow's) milk.  It was as "out of the ordinary" purchase for us as was the goat's milk.  I just figured that we'd get the best results from actual "milk".  I was wrong!  This did not thicken up like I expected real milk would.  Interesting.

#3  The Oven Light Method #2.  This time I used soymilk.  I was the most satisfied with the end result.  It was thickened much more than the regular milk.  My only critique of this one is that the yogurt does have a slightly sweet taste.  Even the original or "unflavored" soymilk does have a sweetness to it.  I prefer the least sweet version, and different brands vary.  My husband prefers the really sweet "vanilla" flavored varieties.

I love the idea of making my own yogurt on a regular basis.  I also tried the greek yogurt FAGE brand and am in love with it.  I want to put a little dollop on EVERYTHING.  So, if I can emulate that flavor, I'm in.  Otherwise, the sweet soymilk yogurt is fine, especially with a little fruit added.

Planting Garlic

Ok, I have no idea how some people can find the time to do their blogs.  

It's not as though I haven't continued living my awesomely blog-worthy lifestyle, it's just hard to take photos of it and then write something clever and such.  First of all, I cannot hold the camera still.  Second, for most of the time that I'm being awesome, there is no one around to witness it (hence the blog).  

Anyhoo--it looks like I haven't posted anything since November, so here's what I've been up to since then. 

In October actually I planted garlic.  Apparently October is the time to do it.

The LARGER the cloves on your bulb, the better.  Size DOES matter when it comes to garlic :)

I got a large organic bulb and planted the cloves, then did the same with an "elephant garlic".  I don't really do much cooking with the elephant garlic, but it's soooo good when you just give it a little drizzle of oil and roast it in the terra cotta thingy then spread it on some crusty bread.  

Here are my little cloves spaced a few inches apart in a raised bed filled with great compost-y soil.

Obviously, you're going to be on the edge of your seat until I harvest these guys.  I'll try to remember to update then.  I have grown garlic before with fair success, but when reading about it I learned I should plant it in October whereas I naturally might have done it in the spring.  I also learned that although I once let my garlic plants grow for more than a season before I harvested (thinking they would grow bigger) what I should have done was snip off the flowering part when it appears.  

The reason for snipping off the flowering parts is that the plant's energy would focus on the garlic bulb growing bigger.  

When I neglected to pop off the flowers, little "sets" formed near the base of the plant.  I think you could eat them or plant them too--they were like little round garlic cloves, but I'd rather let my bulbs grow bigger.