Food of the Gods

i feel so empowered today. Like i ran a marathon or something (i didn't; i refuse to go anywhere NEAR downtown on Music City Marathon weekend lol). Nope, i made YOGURT! Roar!

Yogurt? Yes, yogurt! Also known as food of the gods. Mwahahaha!

Once upon a time when i was a hippy in college, my Thermodynamics professor, who happens to be very, very Greek, told me how he makes yogurt. It sounded incredibly difficult. It involved cooking on the stove off and on all day, and using certain types of yogurt as a starter, etc. He encouraged me to do it, but i lived in the dorms and i didn't have access to a stove except in the basement and i wasn't going to literally slave over it all day. i shoved that thought aside for far too many years.

i toyed with getting a yogurt maker recently. They're about $50 and i thought maybe i could save some money over the long haul, but in researching and asking friends for help, etc, i found that i don't need a stinking machine. There are a LOT of ways to make yogurt, and some of them are difficult and some are easy. i'm lazy, so i chose easy.

My way: Heat the oven to 100 degrees F (or 17o as that's as low as mine goes, so i opened the door a bit and fanned it out some). Pour 2 quarts whole milk and 3 Tbsp plain yogurt in a covered casserole dish, stir, cover, and put in oven. Turn oven OFF but keep the door closed and the light on, and leave it overnight. Pour the clear liquid off in the morning, and you've got yourself yogurt. Yup, no more complicated than that!

You can slave over a stove, or you can use a crock pot and turn it on low for a few minutes every couple of hours. You can even make it by putting a heating pad in a box and putting a dish with the milk and yogurt mixture in the box, or by heating the milk and yogurt up, putting it in a thermos, and leaving it for hours. But you don't have to. You can be lazy like me!

i usually buy four cartons of whole goat milk yogurt for $3 each plus two or three 4-packs of YoBaby yogurt at about $5 each every week. That's roughly $20 a week i can save and have the same amount of yogurt! Yum!