Hey!! I Made YOGURT!!

My friends think I've gone a bit overboard. Perhaps I have...but sometimes overboard is a fun place to hang out. It all started when I was listening to a podcast in which a woman mentioned that her family made its own yogurt. Then I remembered seeing a segment on Martha Stewart where a lady "taught" Martha how to make yogurt and I didn't think it looked too involved or complicated. Soooooo I did what all modern home cooks do...I Googled it.

No fewer than 1.5 million hits later, I found an acceptable "Yogurt Primer" on a blog called Keeper of the Home. I decided to give it a go. I grabbed my prairie skirt, donned my bonnet, tied on my apron, followed the recipe, and met with success.

My excitement knew no limits. I've talked way too much about yogurt to my friends (who already suspected that I'm a bit nuts), and to my family (who knew I was nuts long ago), and to my poor hubby (who knows better than to go on record about his wife's nutso condition). And so...to end my yogurt yammerings, I'll pass on my newly acquired knowledge...it's the only cure I'm afraid. Please bare with me.

Here's how I made HOMEMADE Yogurt...

You will need:

• 4 cups of milk - you can use any kind of milk. I used whole milk for the first batch and am using 1% for this one.
• 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt with ACTIVE Cultures. (Dannon works well and so does any generic brand)
• a crock pot 
• a heavy towel or two

That's it-- no foolin'! Two ingredients. See, it's already easier than you thought, huh? You may wonder why it is necessary to use yogurt to make yogurt. The active yogurt is the starter. You only need 2 tablespoons of active yogurt to make 4 cups of HOMEMADE yogurt. After you have your very OWN yogurt, just reserve as much starter as you need to make your next batch, should you choose to do so.

While there are only two ingredients in homemade yogurt, there are more than a few very easy steps involved in the process.

First, in a medium to large sauce pan, heat the milk to 185 degrees which will be just when the milk begins to come to a full bubble. I like to use my candy thermometer ($10 at most stores like Target or Walmart) for this step.

While waiting for the milk to heat do three things:

1. plug in your crock pot and turn it on low to preheat,

     2. remove the starter yogurt from the fridge and measure it into a small bowl (like a cereal bowl),

     3. draw cold water into the sink or a large bowl to place your heated milk pan into.

Once the milk has reached 185 degrees,

place a lid on the sauce pan and transfer it into the cold water bath.

Make sure the water cannot get into the milk. Let the milk set until it cools to somewhere between  90-110 degrees. This takes about 10 minutes. Again, you can use the candy thermometer for this, or you can dip a clean finger into the milk. If you burn your finger, it's still too hot. If you don't have to jerk your finger out of the milk, presto...it's ready.

Remove a small amount of cooled milk, about a cup or so, and pour it into the bowl with the yogurt starter and mix well.

Pour BOTH the small bowl and the rest of the cooled milk into your preheated crock pot and stir gently.

Place the lid onto the crock pot and immediately unplug it.

This next step is a smidge odd, but ultra necessary and easy. Cover the crock pot completely with a thick towel or two.

The next step is my favorite one. Walk away for 8-10 hours. If you make this in the evening while you are cleaning up the dinner dishes, this means that you literally go to bed and sleep while the yogurt makes itself, or as we seasoned yogurt makers say, while the yogurt cultures.

When 10 hours or so has elapsed (longer is fine), wake up and tell your fresh yogurt--your HOMEMADE yogurt-- Good Morning!

After the culturing process is complete, set your crock pot (or inner part of the crock pot if yours is the kind with a removable bowl) into the fridge for the yogurt to cool.

Don't jostle it around much if you can help it. Just let it set peacefully. This allows the yogurt to become nicely firm and creamy. Let it cool for at least 4-5 hours or so (the longer the better).

Now, you've got yogurt--HOMEMADE yogurt, I know how excited you must feel! You'll want to dip it out into sealed containers for storing conveniently in your refrigerator. Don't forget to set aside some starter yogurt for the next batch if you're so inclined.

The yogurt-- the HOMEMADE yogurt-- is not sweetened like the flavored yogurts you may be used to. One of the perks of making your own is that you can sweeten it exactly as you wish with sugar, honey, artificial sweetener, or the peach jam you made from the South Carolina peaches you received earlier in the summer.  You can choose whatever fruit you have on hand, or no fruit at all! Other toppings include granola, your favorite dried cereal, wheat germ, the list is endless!

You can make as large of a recipe as you wish. Simply use 1 Tablespoon of active yogurt per 2 cups of milk. Generally the yield of yogurt is equal to the amount of milk you used.

In addition to avoiding all of the additives and preservatives that come in "store bought" yogurt, there is a huge cost savings in making your own. Last week I purchased 1/2 gallon of milk for a pricey $2.62 and the 32 ounce tub of plain generic yogurt for $2.18 of which I used only 28 cents worth which brings my total investment in ingredients to $2.90.

From my investment, I made 64 ounces of yogurt, the equivalent of nearly 11 of the 6 ounce containers sold at the grocery store. Those 6 ounce containers are around $0.60 cents each or $6.60 for 11.  Compare 60 cents per container for brand name yogurt to 26 cents for an equal amount of homemade yogurt and you can see why it's well worth my crock pot's time and a bit of my energy to do this for myself.

One of my favorite reasons to make homemade yogurt is that my kids are fairly impressed that their mom can actually make one of their favorite breakfast/snack foods. They've no clue about the yummy muffins I'm going to make this week using yogurt as an ingredient (stay tuned). They also don't know that there's a future science lesson about how that crock pot "makes" the yogurt!

If you'd like to read even more about yogurt, click here for a link to Dr. Sears' EXCELLENT online article called "10 Reasons Yogurt is a Top Health Food." He highlights many reasons why yogurt is super for all of us, but especially for growing children and for senior adults.

Here's to being more cultured!!

Click here for printable recipe...

Why We Take Swimming Lessons

My Grandma has a definite opinion about water. It goes something like this, "DON'T go near the water until you've learned how to swim!" Unfortunately, it just doesn't work very well in that order. Grandma eventually came around to the idea of swimming and even took swimming lessons in her 70th decade and participated in water aerobics well into her 80th!

Swimming lessons have become a looked-forward-to non-negotiable portion of the summer for us.  Our town offers a swwweeetttt deal on swimming lessons. For a mere $5 per child, each child receives two weeks (45 min per day) of lessons given by an experienced group of lifeguards under the management of Mrs. Mary Jo.

Mrs. Mary Jo, mother of three grown kids herself, has been teaching Wright kids to swim for many years now and she's quite good at it.  We look forward to getting reacquainted with her each year as we head to the pool for the first day of lessons.

On day one, each of the big kids gets into the pool for their evaluation and is subsequently assigned to either the 9:00 or the 10:00 class. The better they do-- the earlier the class. I, a lover of my pillow on sunny summer mornings, secretly hope that they will sink like little bricks (just for a minute of course) and qualify for the later class. Usually, however, there is one kid in my gang who refuses to sink.

This one, I like to call her Miss NINE O'Clock...

Her brother was Mr. Nine O'Clock this year, but he was Nine O'Clocking it across town at a strength camp at the YMCA. It was his first year not in lessons with the rest of the kids.

This child...

was Miss TEN o'clock and won The Wright Kids' Award for "Most Improved Fish"!

Molly, may have had the most difficult task this year. 

Lessons for her age group were at 11:00 which meant that she had to wait...

...and wait...

...and wait...

...through two hours of the other girls' lessons before her's began.

The 11:00 class is for three year olds, but Molly participated last year as well. The catch with the little ones' class is that an adult must be in the water with them. I begrudgingly entered icy water last year so that Molly could begin her swimming career AND I also braved the very chilly water a few years earlier when Kate was in the little class and I was EIGHT months pregnant with Molly. The water level of the pool actually rose when I got in!! No kidding.

This year, I made other arrangements.  

Meet Rebekah...

Rebecca, oldest of four children, knew better than to be terribly charmed by Molly and therefore, lessons were quite a success.

(click picture to enlarge...)

Between Rebekah and Mrs. Mary Jo, Molly learned one of the most important lessons taught in the three-year-old class...

close your mouth before jumping into the water.

This lesson would help Molly later in the summer when I (the one who skipped lessons this year) lost my  grip on Molly in a large jet-propelled portion of a pool at the bottom of a water slide. (Cole who was standing nearby scooped her up quickly and the drama was kept to a bare minimum.)

Meg and Kate also learned lots this year...

(again, click to enlarge...)

During the two weeks of lessons, there were mornings when we struggled to get our lazy summer selves out of bed and to the pool by 9:00 am. There were mornings when I tried to convince myself that surely last year's lessons were sufficient to get us through this summer. 

Yet, each morning, we continued to haul our buggies to the pool and get into the turn-your-lips-purple water and each day after lessons were completed we felt pretty accomplished. (AND this was the first year in many that I didn't forget to bring towels for everyone and have to return home to retrieve them...I must be getting good at this mothering thing? Except for that earlier part about dropping my baby into a jet propelled swimming pool...)

During one of our pool excursions a few weeks ago, Kate was waaaaay short of the height requirement for these appealing slides...

There was a way around the little guy with the ruler ...a swim test. Kate had to swim 25 meters across the lap pool without stopping or touching the bottom. If she passed the test, she would be allowed to S-L-I-D-E. Would she make it? Would she have to spend the day watching the "big kids" slide while looking wistfully from the side of the pool? Would she be able to earn that coveted blue wristband which allowed munchkins into the upper realms of the slides? 

 Oh yeah!! (Happily it matched the suit...)

Thank you very much Mrs. Mary Jo!

The rest of the gang had a super day too...

Molly even got to tell the frog to make sure and close his mouth when he got into the water!

Swimming lessons well learned and much appreciated and worth every early morning!

Football Before & After (From a Mom's Perspective...)

Before...

 (click on picture to enlarge)

After...

(click on picture to enlarge)

"The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory."
Vince Lombardi

Bathing...er...Rolling Beauty

What's a girl to do when she's done all she can do in Grandma's pool but she's not AT ALL finished stylin' in her new bathing suit?

She begins training for the Roller Derby...

of course!!

(She probably should have stopped before trying to conquer the ramps!)

Oh Kate!!

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Two weeks of vacation from his work usually means that my Man can be found packing the family van and setting off into the sunset of a beach amidst the boisterous clamor of his family. This year, like another three years earlier, found the Wrights embarking on a "stay-cation".

A "stay-cation" is time away from one's daily existence without time away from one's dwelling place. Tricky. Three years ago our "stay-cation" was necessitated by the impending arrival of Molly into our family. This year our "stay-cation" was a result of a home in need of some major TLC and a football season that would not wait on our family's return from a distant locale.

The first week of our time off together involved jetting around the area shopping a bit here and there, swimming a bit here and there, driving a bit here and there, and eating out every evening here and there! I was Queen of the Passenger's Seat and my subjects were all lovely little travelers (most of the time). As my Man drove hither and yon, I read. As my Man played with children in pools across the land, I read some more. When my Man drifted off to sleep exhausted from all of that driving and swimming, I turned on a night light and continued to read.

The second week of "stay-cation" involved work--housework, and lots of it. As my Man made four thousand trips to Lowe's, operated a power washer, and shoveled in shrubbery beds and build landscaping edges...

I baked a little, 

...did laundry a lot, and read still more.

Were I to imagine this blog post as the annual back to school assignment, my essay would be a simple one.

"This year on my summer vacation I read five books."

Two of the books, I'd had a bit of a head start on while the other three were "begun & done" in two weeks! It usually takes me that long to read the directions on a child's board game, but I used every possible second available to stick my nose into a book or into my Nook.

Here's what I read...

Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson

(Click on Title or Author for link)

This is the 16th installment of the Goldy Bear culinary mystery series. I have read them all. This one may not be the strongest of the series, but it was a fun read all the same especially with the added feature of recipes in the back of the book! My favorite way to consume these books is by audio. They are narrated by the very most talented voice in the audiobook world, Barbara Rosenblat who brings the book to life. 

(Ms. Rosenblat also narrates another of my favorite series featuring Amelia Peabody a Victorian-era archaeologist in Egypt click here for Amazon link to the first book. The series, by Elizabeth Peters should be read in order if possible.) My local library is loaded with audio books and I take full advantage of their convenience.   I often listen to them while cooking or folding laundry to make the job more fun and I did just that with this one. I'd listen for a bit, then I'd open the book and read for a while when things got quiet. 

Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches

 by Rachel Jankovic

(Mother of five kiddos under six!)

Remember this spaghetti face book I talked about a while ago - here? I loved every single page of it. It is as good as a parenting book can get. I can't say enough about this book. The only thing that gave me pause was that the author's picture on the back only served to emphasize how much younger she is than I.

How'd she get so wise so fast? Page after page brought forth blessing and lesson alike. On a few pages I laughed aloud even as my toes were bruising. It really is THAT good. Tell every young (and less young) mommy you know about this book!

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert

I read this quirky book on my Nook on the recommendation of one of my favorite readers Nancy Pearl, who is probably the most famous librarian you don't know about.  She even has her own action figure! No kidding. 

Author of many "books about books" Mrs. Pearl is my go to gal when I'm in need of an interesting read. The Coffins of Little Hope has, as it's storyteller, 83 year-old Essie Myles who is the obituary writer for her family's hometown newspaper. Essie opens the book like this...

I still use a manual typewriter (a 1953 Underwood portable, in a robin’s egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn’t quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and I need those keys to sometimes catch so I can reach in and untangle them, turning my fingertips inky. Without slapping the return or turning the cylinder to release the paper with a sharp whip, without all that minor havoc, I feel I’ve paid no respect to the dead. What good is an obituary if it can be written so peaceably, so undisturbingly, in the dark of night?

To read Nancy Pearl's explanation of this quirky book which touts one of the most original plots I've read lately, click here...

Next up...

Don't you love to "meet" a new author through an excellent book? While reading Bel Canto I experienced that very happiness. Ann Patchett is the author of many books, all very different themes and plots, characters and settings, and all very highly reviewed. None of her books is more highly lauded than this one, winner of the Orange Prize for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction. 

This was another of the books that I simultaneously read on my Nook and listened to via audiobook from the library. I'm not sure which I was more taken with, the listening or the reading. Both were grand experiences with this wonderful, wonderful story. Here's what it's about.

In an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.

This story explores the lives of the captors and captives throughout the long period of captivity which would last for over four months. By the end of the novel, I'd fallen in love with many of the captives and more than one of the captors all of whose lives are explored deeply and thoughtfully by the skilled Patchett.

Finally, I read...

    ...well, I can't exactly tell you yet what the fifth book was yet, but the review will be posted soon on a blog site called BlogHer.com where I was invited to read and review the title in question.  I'll let you know when my review goes "live." Until then...I think there's plenty of material above to work with!!

"A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it."  ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958

More vacation adventures & recipes to come...stay tuned! 

A "Little" Help

Our vacation days are coming to a close in a few days. We've one more mini-trip to prepare for so I enlisted a bit of help with the laundry...
                          (Turn your volume way up...)

...apparently she learned this skill from one of her favorite teachers...

Special Agent Oso who teaches preschoolers special skills early each morning on the Disney Channel (while their parents catch a few more minutes of sleep). Agent Oso is also responsible for teaching Molly how to Hula-hoop. Agent Oso, however, calls it a Hoop-A-Loop and therefore, so does Molly...

 

Wonder if Special Agent Oso knows Latin or maybe chemistry??

Happy Weekend!!

(Fun recipes coming next week...stay tuned!)

You Say Tomato...

{We've been the happy recipients of a basket of tomatoes from a friend and are enjoying them to the fullest! Our favorite thing to do with tomatoes hasn't changed much over the years. Below is a repost from a few summers ago about one of the most sacred experiences of summertime...}


Ahhhhh, is there anything more pleasing to the palate than the summertime tomato sandwich? Only if it is a summertime tomato sandwich on my Grandma's homemade white bread with gobs of mayo. Add to that masterpiece a healthy dash of salt, a bit of pepper and a generous smidgen of sugar and you've got yourself the tastiest sandwich known to mankind.

Friends from NC delivered two beautiful, fat, shiny, green tomatoes a few weeks ago when they visited. What promise these tomatoes held as I sat them on the counter waiting, just waiting for them to turn from their bright firm green, to a less firm pink, and finally yesterday to bright red sandwich ready spheres.

After each child was tucked safely into bed, I made my move. I tiptoed to the kitchen, grabbed a serrated knife, and began cutting fat slices of tomato as juice and seeds streamed down my forearms. Surveying my bread selection, I decided with a sigh that store bought bread would be better than none at all, and slid two slices from the bag. 


Making a quick decision, I plucked the "full-tilt" mayonnaise from the fridge--no low fat stuff tonight, I reasoned, this sandwich deserves the best. Assembled and seasoned, my creation was complete and I, with gusto, partook. I was thrilled to discover that this summer's tomato sandwich was every bit as satisfying as last summer's. Giving the remaining tomato a parting gaze that held plans for morning, I set off to bed.

As I attempted to repeat the whole sneaky sandwich assembly and consumption drill this morning, however, I was busted! Just as I was polishing off the first half of my pre-lunchtime creation, in walked Kate.

"Mom! What is that?"

"A tomato sandwich." I answered, pulling it closer to me.

"It must be very good. Is it?" she queried, eyebrows raised.

Sighing, I offered her a bite.

Taking the proffered bite, "Oh...mmmmm...can I have one just like yours?"

Today I learned that a yummy summer tomato sandwich, much like a good cup of coffee, is even better when shared with someone special.