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Homemade Yogurt

10 Jul 2006 by

The last couple of weeks I have been researching making our own yogurt.  After reading about it on Danielle Bean’s website I became a wee curious.  Then I found out my kindred spirit, Misty, had started making her own yogurt. AND our houseguest, Katie, had also made her own yogurt before. 

Well, feeling the need to keep up the “Molly Homemakers” out there.  I decided we should give it a shot too.  After doing my research, talking to Misty, and witnessing how Katie made a batch, I thought I would look into getting a yogurt maker.  Even though Adam gave me the green light to get a yogurt maker, being the cheap-skate, financially responsible person that my husband has taught me to be, I thought I better make sure we actually like homemade yogurt first! 

Last week I made my first batch, without a yogurt maker, and it came out quite yummy.  It was very easy too.  Here’s the recipe and process I use:

Ingredients: 

  • 1 quart milk,
  • 1/3 cup powdered milk (*optional for extra firmness),
  • 1/4 cup starter yogurt (i.e. plain yogurt with live cultures). 
  • You’ll also need a thermometer, glass jars to store it in, and way to incubate the yogurt for 4-8 hours.

Process:

  1. Sterilize your glass jars if you haven’t done so already. 
  2. Mix milk and powdered milk in a sauce pan. 
  3. Heat milk to 180 degrees. Then allow it to cool to 115 degrees. (Cooling take about an hour.)
  4. Add starter yogurt and mix thoroughly. (You can use your homemade yogurt as starter upto about  4 generations. Then you should buy store yogurt again.)
  5. Pour mixture into glass jar and seal.
  6. Next you will need to incubate the yogurt for 4-8 hours in a warm place.  The “incubator” should be kept between 90 and 110 degrees.  I use a small “cooler.”  After I sterilze the jars, I used some of the water in the cooler.  I add tap water to get it to about 100 or 110 degrees.  This cooler does a good job keeping the temp.  I check the water at around 3 to 4 hours and add warm water if needed.  I use enough water in the cooler to go to the level of the yogurt in the jar. 
  7. Refridgerate your yogurt and enjoy!  You can enjoy with fruit spread, maple syrup, fruit, etc.

From a budget standpoint, this could save you a lot of money if you go through a quart a week.  I priced the ingredients for organic yogurt:  $8.50 (w/o powdered milk, $11.50 w/).  This will make 4 quarts plus your starter.  Buying organic plain yogurt comes out to $17.50 for 5 quarts.  After you have a starter, you only pay $5 for a gallon of organic whole milk.  I also firgured if you only eat two quarts a month, you’d only save $1.  So you’ll need to decide if all the trouble is worth it.

 

 

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Molly Homemaker strikes again!

23 Jun 2006 by

Baby food…yes, baby food.  The first time around with Therese, I was pretty lazy and buying jars upon jars was REALLY easy.  Although friends told me that making your own baby food was pretty simple, it required research and time.

 Alas, I have turned a new leaf.  Fulton started solids a couple of weeks ago.  I had a jar of carrots and thought I’d try it out on him. Well, my boy is a boy! He gobbled it right up.  Seeing financial doom (not really) if the trend continues, I decided to make my own baby food and found a great resource.   In fact it’s as easy as everyone said it would be–a little time consuming.  There’s a certain satisfaction in making the food myself and knowing EXACTLY what my little guy is eating. 

Category: Budgeting, Family  2 Comments

Meal Planning

19 Aug 2005 by

After about a year of denile I finally broke down the last couple of months and started meal planning. Sometime a year ago, while doing my mom’s group bible study, meal planning came up. At the time I really wasn’t motivated to actually sit down and do it. And of course I came up with the excuse, “I don’t know what I’ll want to eat tonight much less next week!” Going down to one car really changed how we run the household. Last month, I started meal planning a week at a time because I never knew when I’d have the car. What I found is that it saved A LOT of time, energy, and indecision on my part. What’s more, it saved us some money from my projected budget. Adam finds it kind of like grade school looking at the dinner menu and checking out what we’ll be having in the next few days.

This month I challenged myself even more by planning two weeks at a time. So far it’s saved us some $100 from our projected budget. Woohoo! It’s actually been a fun game of sorts. I started making a list of all our favorite meals. Then I started a binder of some of the recipes for those meals. Then I planned the first week of meals for those that require the freshest items. The second week is composed of the meals that we supplement with frozen veggies. I also tried to group some of the meals that require similar fresh ingredients. As I shopped this month I made two big grocery trips for those two week sets. On the off weeks, I only went to get fresh fruit for Therese’s snacks or anything we absolutely couldn’t live without for another week. These trips are kept on the strickest spending limit…no more than $25.

We’re not at the point where we cook and freeze because we don’t have a deep freezer or the room right now to store lots of meals in our regular freezer. I’m also not so sure what kinds of meals can be prepared and frozen well in advance that will still taste fresh. Feel free to send me your ideas or suggestions.

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