I figured we needed more Canadian content in the accent vlog going around.
I apologize for the length – if anyone ever doubted it, I can TALK, you guys. I also forgot to add the part about where I grew up. Which is just here. Vancouver. I’ve lived my whole life here, so there you go.
If you know me in real life or even just on the internet, you will likely have heard me bragging lately about making my own yogurt. Enough people have asked me for instructions that I thought I’d get them typed up and posted here. You guys, I even took pictures for you.
Homemade yogurt is cheap to make and tastes, hands down, better than store bought. Really. REALLY. And contrary to what you may think, making yogurt is EASY. SO EASY.
Basically, it goes like this:
But I will give you a few more details, because details I have.
I decided to give making yogurt a try after realizing we were going to end up in the poorhouse based on the amount of money we were spending on Greek yogurt each week. I did some research, as I do, on yogurt makers but they’re all around $100 and on every review I read someone was screaming in the comments “YOU DO NOT NEED A MACHINE TO MAKE YOGURT!!!” and at first, yes, I thought those were just the hippies, but it turns out it really is dead easy and really, REALLY there is no need for a yogurt maker. All you need is:
*Optional
I had everything but the thermometer so my entire investment was a $7 thermometer I found at the grocery store (I believe it’s a drug thermometer because it says things like Hard Crack on it. Maybe it’s for candy. Not sure.)
I decided to give it one go and if it didn’t work out, I’d rethink investing in a yogurt maker but I was so, so pleased with my first batch I’ve started making it every Saturday – you do need to time things out jusssst right, so weekends are best for me.
I’ve always used a 4 litre jug of milk and it makes enough Greek style yogurt to last us a week – I eat it every day for breakfast, Andrew often does too, and I occasionally use some of it for dressings or sauces through the week as well.
Ingredients
That’s it. THAT’S IT! Can you believe it? (I didn’t.) Here is a picture of milk in a pot. Exciting.
Preparation
Put the lid on the pot, wrap a towel around it and stick it in the oven for 6 – 8 hours* with the oven OFF but the oven light on (I KNOW!)
ps, yes, do close the door. Photo above is for illustrative purposes only. Do not judge my dirty oven. Also pictured, the pink sticky note I tack on the front of the stove that says “Leave light on!” because Andrew is a light-turner-off’er extraordinaire.
*I read that the longer you leave the yogurt wrapped its warm little blanket home, the more of a “tart” yogurt you’ll get. I left mine for 6 the first time and it was NOT tart at all. The next time it ended up being around 7 hours and it had a teeeeeeny bit of tartness. I think 6 – 7 hours is my preferred window but govern yourself accordingly.
I like thick, Greek style yogurt so I also strain my yogurt but if you like it runnier, you can stop now. You’re done. You have MADE YOGURT. Well done, you! Please put it in the fridge now, unless you like eating warm yogurt (HOARF)(UNFOLLOW).
I have strained immediately after the steps above, but I’ve also left it until the next day to strain (the first time I made it I timed things incorrectly and had to set my alarm for 4:00 am on A WEEKEND to take my precious yogurt out of the oven and put it in the fridge. Yes I did.)
Line a strainer with unbleached coffee filters (I had some on hand from my pre-Keurig days)(or use cheesecloth) and spoon/pour it in. It does take quite a while to drain all the whey out – hours, in fact. And if you do it juuuust right, TULIPS will grow out of your yogurt.
I left it a little too long this time and ended up with (nearly!) cheese – but no biggie, just stir some whey back in.
I keep my yogurt in a big Tupperware container and stir thawed berries & granola into a bowl of it each morning, but you can flavour the whole thing too – I think you have to do that after the 6 – 8 hours if I remember correctly but you may want to google that – I didn’t want to make flavoured yogurt, so the details didn’t stick in my head.
SO GOOD!
Let me know if you decide to take a crack at making your own yogurt – you won’t be disappointed, I swear.
Good luck, hippies!
Last year I thought I’d start a new birthday-eve tradition, based on an old tradition, and start writing a little bit about the year I had. For a week I’ve been thinking “I have to write that post” and here it is, nearly 7:00pm on my birthday-eve and I’m just sitting down to crank something out. This is why I don’t blog. I’m lazy.
Last year, as you may remember, I wrote about the things I’d like to accomplish this year. In a nutshell, those things were:
I did not move. I did not buy a new car. I am not in better shape. I did not go snorkeling. I have an excuse for most of these things. No, really, I do. And I’m sure you want to hear all about that excuse, and the things I did accomplish.
Back in June, I had the opportunity to go to San Francisco for work. My best friend decided to tag along and it was as awesome as a week in San Francisco with your BFF can be. We ate at fancy restaurants. We walked for miles and miles and miles. We went on a wine tour. We shopped. We found a rice pudding restaurant. I’m not even kidding.
A week after I got home from San Francisco, where I spent money like a rich, drunken sailor on shore leave, I found out a big family vacation was planned for January in Hawaii. My brain instantly heard that record screech sound effect and Operation Stop Spending So Goddamn Much Money, LARA went into immediate effect.
We had thought about moving but there are a few things around here that need to be done before this place can be listed. Biggish things like replacing a rotting bathroom floor. Things that cost money to fix, money we just didn’t want to spend while trying to save for the vacation. Don’t get me wrong, when I’m lying on a beach in Hawaii in a few weeks, I’m going to think “This is WAY BETTER than a new bathroom floor!” I’m not complaining, I’m just making excuses. As I do.
I likely don’t need to explain why there was no new car this year either.
I did have a mini-vacation this year, to San Francisco and we leave on our trip to Hawaii this year, so that counts, right? Ehh, sorta. It didn’t occur while I was 40 but it was certainly planned, saved for and highly anticipated for the last six months of my 40th year. My 41st year. The Year In Which I Was Age 40. Whatever.
I DID get a new camera this year. I did NOT learn how to use it to it’s fullest potential – although I did take some pretty pictures, especially during the Olympics and in San Francisco (flickr linkage).
Speaking of the Olympics, I’m going to go ahead and call that the best part of my 40th (41st) year. You guys. SO MUCH FUN. I can’t even begin to tell you. It was fantastic and probably one of the best parts of my LIFE, not just of this past year. To have the world here, in my hometown, was amazing. The weather was amazing. Our athletes were amazing. And most of all, my city was AMAZING. For several weeks, everyone was dressed in red. Everyone was smiling. Strangers were polite to each other. You HUGGED strangers in the street. You laughed and cried and loudly sang the national anthem in public, and in private, standing in your own living room. It was the world as I wished it could always be. I miss it.
(This post took a turn. I told you, I’m cranking it out.)
This year. What do I want to do this year? Oddly enough, moving is kind of off the table now. We likely would have moved if we hadn’t had the vacation to plan, but now we are rethinking that idea. We like it here. We don’t have a lot of storage and we don’t have in-suite laundry, but we do have a lot. We have a huge, private patio. We are both within five minutes of work. The mortgage is completely manageable, which allows us to save for fancy trips and nice dinners and wine and other fun things. I’m not sure. I’m not sure where we’ll be next year.
I would still like to get a different car. My Corolla is boring. Reliable, and boring. I am not a car person AT ALL but I still think I’m more of a Volkswagen Bug kind of girl. I’d like to make that happen.
I will learn to use my camera this year. I will continue to swim. I want to go on another vacation.
Let’s not talk about the getting in better shape thing, OK? Let’s just not. I’ve held steady this year. I am no better off than I was this time last year, but I’m not worse off either. Any improvements I make in the coming year will be an improvement so let’s just say I will do my best to make improvements, small or large.
This time last year I was wringing my hands and wailing about turning 40. How did this happen! I’m so old! WOE WOE WOE and this is SO BAD OMG. And, of course, it was no big thing. I’m not stressed about being 41, at all. I’m reserving the next big age freak out for 45, so that when I turn 50 I have something to look back on and roll my own eyes at my own self about.
I’ve moved back to WordPress.com, because it’s free and I’m cheap and I never got around to playing with the fun stuff the WordPress.org setup would have allowed me to play with. And I last updated in APRIL. I’m obvious very committed to my blog.
Please let me know if you notice any weirdness. Other than the usual weirdness.
Yesterday was our first official day eating primal style although we really do pretty much eat this way most nights anyway. We typically don’t eat pasta, rarely have bread and only occassionally have rice so it’s really not much of a shift for us.
What was a shift for me was looking up recipes with no consideration given at all to the fat and calories. I started with this recipe for Coconut Shrimp and quite honestly I have never, in my life, cooked with coconut. FATT-E-NING amirite? The primal eating style not only allows cooking with coconut, but recommends it. Yowza.
I would absolutely try this recipe as written (with shrimp, der) but we had a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the fridge that had to be eaten, so I tried it with chicken and it was great. Here are the non-meat ingredients, taken from the page linked above:
(Coconut flakes AND coconut OIL OMG).
A couple of things:
The chicken browned up really quickly, but given that I never fry anything, I forgot that it would brown before it was fully cooked and the spinach was done and I was all “ACK NOW WHAT?” so I threw it in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes and it may have been a tad overdone, but it was still really (REALLY) good.
As a side dish, I wanted to make spinach. I LOVE SPINACH a whole lot and I had it in my head to try something gomae’ish, but warm. Believe it or not, I actually had tahini in the cupboard (I think I once had an illusion I would make homemade humous HAHAHA YA RIGHT that happened).
I found this recipe for Spinach with Tahini – doesn’t get much easier than that. And yet I overcooked it when I misjudged the time it would take to fry+bake the chicken. That is your first warning about the picture I’m about to post. The second is that it’s just a shitty picture.
I told Andrew that I wanted to take a picture of our dinner, but he was starving, dinner was late, I am not yet a “quick on my feet” photographer and the lightening in the kitchen is horrible for photography (“photo-graph-ee”) apparently, so long story short, the photo sucks.
But, here it is: Coconut Chicken with Sesame Spinach (pretend the spinach is in focus, please).
I’ve just realized this theme doesn’t work super well with photos – it re-sizes them in a weird way, so I have to make them quite small. Time for a new theme, perhaps…
