thursday thrift: episode 2

welcome to thursday thrift, a weekly installment that lets me discuss ways to be thrifty in the home & kitchen. last week i blabbed on about chickpeas and how its cheaper to use dried ones & cook them yourself instead of using canned beans. i ended with a promise of epic proportions - a tale of mystery & colonization...

i may have over-exaggerated a bit. (to allure you back) this is not an epic tale. this is, however, all about mystery and colonization. the colonization of bacteria, and how it mysteriously transforms milk into a thick, semi-solid state full of yumminess and healthiness.

last week i made my very own yogurt. well, i took pictures anyways. it is super easy - you can do it too!

here's how:

what you need:
milk (preferably organic whole milk)
a saucepan
a wisk
a container
a tablespoon or 2 of yogurt (unflavored, make sure it contains active bacteria)
a warm place in your house/ a container to keep your yogurt container warm

measure your milk by pouring it into the container you will be using later on. the amount of milk you use = the amount of yogurt you will get.

pour milk into saucepan.

put saucepan on high heat.

whisk your milk continuously as you heat it.

as SOON as it starts frothing (you will know because it will triple in size and want to spill over your saucepan), take it off the heat. OR, if you use a thermometer, you want it to reach 180 C, just before it boils.

pour scalding milk into your container. you want to cool it down now to a temperature of 110 or 115 C. to quicken that process, set your container in a bigger container full of cold water and stir your milk constantly. the temperature drops quickly, so be careful. we didn't have a thermometer, so we checked by dipping a finger in. if your finger can stay in for 10 seconds comfortably (without burning), then you're good to go. remove the container from the water.

add your yogurt and stir.

(best to use fresher yogurt. the bacteria in yogurt close to its expiry date may have less active cultures.)

close your container. now you want to keep it warm for 6+ hours. we wrapped ours up, and put a hot water bottle underneath to help with the warmth insulation. some sites suggest using a crockpot or a picnic cooler with towels or jars of hot water to keep it warm. the longer you keep it warm, the thicker and more sour it will be. check it at 6 hours, if it looks like yogurt & is thick enough, place it in fridge to cool.

and there you have it. homemade yogurt!

here are some other helpful yogurt links:
granvilleonline.ca
homemade baby food recipes

in love with fatty yogurt

once you go greek, you can't go back. i turn up my snobby upper lip to 'normal' 3% yogurt now. nope. now its 10%, organic, probiotic, thick, creamy, fatty, delicious, plain greek yogurt with no colors, sugars, or preservatives. i've shamelessly been going through a couple tubs a week. not that i'm pigging out on it, i limit myself to 2 servings a day max. but i enjoy it with honey, or maple syrup. and sometimes with peaches - sweet, juicy, BC peaches. i know there's people who go for the skim yogurt, or the diet yogurt, but i say that if you can limit yourself to small servings, go for the full-fat. it tastes so much better.

i've started eating more yogurt since i've started reading mireille guiliano's french women don't get fat. great book, i highly recommend it! i'm not trying to lose weight here, but i am wanting to eat healthy, and i happen to like food, and french women like food, so i thought it would be a good read. it is a good read, but i'm not done yet, so i can't do a proper review quite yet. but i can already prompt you to go borrow it from your library, and tell me what you think.

comfort food

i am thinking that comfort food is important. i'm used to cooking for myself at home, and i've cooked once here so far in the past almost 3 weeks. lazy? yeah... but mostly just busy.

when you (not YOU you, the general you) are traveling, or you have moved to a new place, sometimes you just want to eat familiar foods. its normal. some people call that culture shock. now i'm fairly used to asia, so i'm not suffering huge culture shock, but i do miss certain things about eating and food back in canada. you need to satisfy that craving in some way. some people do this by eating fast food. but as my previous post mentioned, i'm not so fond of fast food. however, the other evening my family had a lovely nighttime snack that was pretty blissful. i will let my photos describe the wonderfulness of the snack: (with the help of some tag lines)

yogurt with fruit + sugar

(i was a snob and bought the slightly more expensive natural yogurt - you know, the preservative and additive-free kind. i've given up some of my food snobbishness here already, but i'd like to keep some of my snobbishness, thank you.)

avocado with lime, salt, pepper

(sometimes the simplest things in life are the most amazing)