Globally Green Living

My office mate’s wife makes her own yogurt. She’s this really kind and beautiful young lady from India. When I was a kid, my mom made yogurt at home a few times, so I had a pretty good idea of how to do it.

A few weeks ago my office mate’s wife gave me some starter and I made a few batches of yogurt. All went well until I killed the starter and no more yogurt could be made. Alfred the Pug ended up drinking the milk with the failed starter (organic mild, by the way), so I have a feeling that he put on a few pounds on account of that. I guess I could’ve gotten some plain yogurt and used it as a starter but I wanted to make pure home-made yogurt.

My favorite store bought kind is the plain yogurt from Dannon because its ingredients are just milk and culture (however, I hate tossing the plastic tubs since number 6 plastic cannot be recycled here–I wish one could buy yogurt in glass jars…). I don’t eat low-fat or low-sugar nonsense. I’d rather have the real thing, after all I just eat a little bit at a time, so what’s the problem? As an aside, when I buy food, I make sure to read the ingredients. If I don’t know what they are, I move on to the next product brand and read their ingredients to see if they meet my idea of the product. This means I only get real butter, real yogurt, real ice-cream (try Breyers All Natural–yes, there is most definitely a God), etc. but I digress…

Last week, I got another batch of starter from my office mate’s wife. That kind soul… I asked her if she had ever killed her starter; she told me that she always keeps some starter in the freezer as a back up. Cool tip, I had no idea that yogurt could be frozen. So yesterday evening I tried making another batch of yogurt and this morning I had some for breakfast with some blackberry sauce.

Home made yogurt is not as bitter as the one you buy at the store; although, the longer you let the yogurt process, the bitter it gets. I make my yogurt in glass jars in my slow cooker (I have also done it in the oven by warming it up slightly, then turning it off and letting the oven light on overnight). I have quite a few glass jars, since I hate tossing them away so I love giving them some use.

So there you have it, my quart of organic home made yogurt.

Oh, I almost forgot. In India, they make a yogurt dessert that consists of yogurt and condensed milk mixed together and baked in a tray in the oven. The condensed milk gives it just a tad of sweetness.