Homemade Yogurt

I LOVE homemade yogurt. Several years ago we bought a yogurt machine that has little jars and while I love it, my yogurt always was runny.

After some investigation a few months ago, I found out that I needed to drain the whey off if I wanted Greek style yogurt. I do and I did. This made my seven jars of yogurt reduce to two and a half or three jars.

Now, don't get me wrong this Greek style yogurt is AMAZING and so worth it but resulted in the need to make several batches a week and drain them all. The mess and the work became more than someone who works five days a week could handle.

So while surfing around on Pinterest the other day I ran into some articles about crock pot yogurt and thought that this might be the cure for my homemade yogurt desires. The couple of articles lead me to read several more. No one's way of doing it quite fit what I thought that I wanted to do. So I took some ideas from here and there and decided how I would try this.

My needs:

• I need to have enough yogurt that I can eat it everyday (maybe twice a day since others in my home may want to eat some too)
• I only have to go through the process once
• I also decided that I wanted to take a portion of the yogurt and make yogurt cheese to replace my cream cheese

I stopped by the store to pick up a few things and bought a gallon of skim milk ($2.99 on sale), two cartons of Okios Greek yogurt to use as starters ($2.00). 

What I did:

• Poured the whole gallon of milk in the crock pot. I have an AMAZING crock pot that was worth every dime I paid for it...it's very large, the lid locks down, and it has a temperature probe

My Amazing Crock Pot

• I sliced a vanilla bean in half (we bought a package of 50 really good vanilla beans off the net for $25...so this was only about 50 cents) and tossed it into the pot
• Secured the lid down inserted the probe and set the pot to heat to 185
• The timer went off about 3 hours in and I removed the probe, turned off the pot and let it sit...checking every hour or so until the temperature dropped to 120
• At this point I put the two containers of Okios into the pot and mixed it up well 
• I put a thick towel under the pot and covered it with two thick towels and went to bed
• In the morning I had a pot of yummy yogurt...there was a LOT of whey in the pot
• I took a strainer basket, put a clean cloth in it, sat it over a very large glass measuring cup,  and ladled a couple of ladles full into that for my yogurt cheese...this may need to set for much longer than the yogurt

Yogurt Cheese Draining

• I took a much larger strainer and lined it with a clean cloth, put this over a large pan, and ladled the rest of the yogurt into this basket

Yogurt Draining

• I let both set for about 3 and a half hours at room temperature to drain over their containers to drain

Finished Yogurt Cheese...this firmed into cream cheese consistency.

Lessons that I have learned with Greek yogurt making...always save your whey until you have whisked the yogurt and refrigerated it for awhile. You will need to get it back out and whisk it again. Often you will feel that the yogurt is not thick enough  and find that after the temperature changes it is actually too thick. If you find that, you can then add some whey back a couple of tablespoons full at a time until it reaches the thickness that you prefer. They you can place it in your reusable single serving containers for work, school, whatever and the remaining can be eaten at home or used however you like!

Yogurt before whisking...you can't see in the pic but there are little vanilla bean specks all through it! I added five little packets of Splenda to the whole batch to take the tartness off...it's not too sweet and not too tart!

Yogurt packaged for my lunches this week. I didn't have as much left over still as I would like!

My left over whey...I put it in the fridge. I have been looking for ideas and am leaning toward making ricotta for the lasagna that I am making for an upcoming party!

What to do with the left over whey? I don't want to dump it so here is where I am looking for ideas!

Left Over Whey Ideas 1

Cravings

As a child I alway understood that if we were having something that I didn't like for dinner I had to get to mom before my dad got home...there was this rule that one of them wouldn't over rule the other. If I could get mom to say I didn't have to eat the "yucky" stuff then I was home free. I wasn't an overly picky kid there were only a few things that I didn't like but cube steaks with mushroom gravy was definitely one of them.

When I was pregnant with my daughter I had the strangest craving for cube steaks with mushroom gravy and mashed potatoes. As hormones raged my hatred of that funny meat turned to adoration I had to have them at least once a week and generally made enough to have left overs!

I still love cube steaks with mushroom gravy (what is it about pregnancy that can permanently alter our likes and dislikes?), although we eat them rarely...it's the mashed potatoes that must be made to go with the gravy that keeps me from making it more often...I make really good mashed potatoes but the butter in them could give you a heart attack.

 I have learned recently how to make REALLY good gravy. I have always been a low fat girl I would cook the cube steaks with canned mushrooms (why?!?) and use the resulting liquids in the bottom of the pan to make my gravy with skim milk. It was passable gravy but not great gravy.

I have learned in the past few years that you need fat for really good gravy. This is what gives the gravy it's creamy yumminess (is that a word?). I still use skim milk but I know that I need to make sure there is enough fat now.

We went to the local meat market for roast for a oven stew for a dinner party and they had cube steaks...I bought them on a whim...this is how I cook them:

• 8 oz fresh mushrooms
• 1/2 a medium sweet onion cut into smallish pieces (I think next time I will try a red onion for the stronger flavor and color)
• sautéed in 3 tbs. olive oil (need to try some good fat huh?)
• 2 tsp of bacon grease (for flavor :-) and creamy yumminess)

Then add the cube steaks while the mushrooms are still firm and cook steaks are done and remove them.

Scrape the bottom of the pan  and add flour until all the liquid is absorbed and using a whisk add 1 cup skim milk slowly breaking up flour into the milk until smooth. Add about 2 more cups of milk and allow to cook and thicken...you want to err on less milk at first and add until the gravy has cooked to a nice consistency.

Yummy!

We added mashed potatoes and roasted brussel sprouts...what a wonderful dinner!

50th Wedding Anniversary

For anyone who knows me at all, you know how much family means to me. I would do anything for my family and it is VERY important to celebrate special occasions. I am kind of like a female Clark Griswold...I want to celebrate big and make it perfect.

I think that it's very important to teach our kids this as well. I think Hannah has it down to a fault. She wants to celebrate the last day of summer break, the first day of the semester, the first final, the last final, the last day before Christmas break, the first day of Christmas break, the last day of Christmas break, the first day of spring semester...are you getting my drift? My daughter pretty much wants to celebrate when the sun shines.

So please take a minute to imagine my horror and gut wrenching surprise at 6 am on Friday morning when my husband is looking at his phone, gasps, and hands it to me. What I see is my mother-in-law's midnight entry "Today Jerry and I celebrate our 50th Wedding Anniversary!" Now friends, to say I am breathless and speechless is putting it pretty mildly. To say the very least, I am the WORLDS WORST daughter-in-law!

By the time I left for work at 7:20 I had tasks assigned to my husband and myself. The horrendous transgression MUST be rectified and QUICKLY! I spent my lunch hour shopping for supplies and Friday evening finishing up. Saturday morning was coffee, a grocery list, grocery run, fast lunch and dinner was in the oven by 12:15. We selected my sister-in-law's FABULOUS oven stew because it is both quick and delicious and will feed a crew. I wanted to concentrate on making them a beautiful cake for their anniversary.

The cake turned out fabulous! I used this recipe that I found through Pinterest. This is the icing recipe that I used. It was quite a bit of work but so worth it. My step son loved the icing and wants it on his birthday cake.

I think that despite my failings in keeping track of this MOST momentous occasion that we pulled together a very nice very special evening for these most wonderful people.

Oh yeah! Let's not forget the afterthought pictures of our wonderful oven stew! Sorry I didn't take it when it was fresh but here is the recipe my sister sent!