31 Days off Your Duff {Day 19} - Making Your Own Yogurt

Whoever thought you could actually create your own yogurt?!

Okay, probably a lot of people realized that, but I didn't until a few months ago when CrunchyBetty put up a post about it.

Unfortunately, her method just wouldn't work for me. Luckily though, I found some instructions elsewhere that worked great!

Look up here! Look up here! These fabulous instructions are from Michael W. Reeps.

Let's Get Started!

So first, you'll need to get all your supplies clean and ready! I use:

• Stirring spoon
• Double Boiler
• Thermometer
• ~optional~ Draining bowl and strainer (although that comes the next day)
• A lidded jar (again, for the next day)
• Milk (however much you start with = the amount of yogurt you will end up with)
• Yogurt (yes, you need yogurt to make yogurt, unless you are currently growing your own cultures)Be sure it's a healthy, plain yogurt with actual live cultures! In my area, I love Zoi and Chobani, as they have the largest variety of cultures that I can find.

Boil all the equipment you can for about 10 minutes to get it good and clean.

Once everything is clean and dry, put your milk in the double boiler (top of course!) and heat until it reaches 185°. Keep it steady at that temperature for about 30 minutes, and then take the milk off to cool.

At this point you could wait for the milk to cool, or put the pot in a sink of ice-cold water to help it along. Either way, get the milk down to 110°. This is the right temperature for the bacteria in your yogurt to start lacto-fermenting.

So when the milk reaches 110°, stir in your yogurt. Reeps says to add 2-3 Tbs to half a gallon of milk, and since I never measure mine, go ahead and follow his advice.

Next, stir your yogurt/milk mixture, and then gently put it to bed.

By this of course, I mean cover it with a towel and keep in a warm, dry, dark space. A heating pad works great; just set it to medium and put the bowl on top. Just be sure nothing overly flammable is around!

Now, the longer you wait, the thicker and tangier your yogurt is going to get. Start your first batch at 7 hours, and work from there. I personally like mine to ferment for about 10 hours.

After that agonizing wait, you get to...... wait some more! Hooray!

You see, to halt the bacteria's growth (and also to thicken the yogurt up a bit more), you have to stir it and put it in the fridge - overnight. Oh boy. So next you stir the curdling yogurt in the bowl, pour it into your chosen container, and set it in the fridge.

After that though, your yogurt is ready to be enjoyed.

Unless of course you want to go through the extra special next step!

Make Your Own GREEK Yogurt

Yum, Greek yogurt is my favourite! Luckily, turning your yogurt Greek is the simplest part of all.

Just strain it, in one way or another. Cheesecloth or coffee filters will work. Sadly, at the time I took the following pictures, I only had paper towels... which do not work all that well. Unless of course you like the texture that paper towel bits add to your precious yogurt.

Look how fancy I got

Soaking up paper towel nutrients

The whey being strained out

Once your yogurt is as strained as you like it, put it back into the container. Keep that nutritious whey that you strained out though, and incorporate it into your diet somehow. I personally like putting it in smoothies, or being super fancy and freezing into ice cubes for the smoothie.


Important Note: If you haven't realized yet, I'll tell you now; this will greatly reduce the amount of yogurt you end up with. So remember back when I said amount of milk = amount of yogurt? That doesn't apply here. If you know you want to make Greek yogurt, go ahead and double the milk you start with.

Finally, your yogurt is ready to eat! You can enjoy it plain, put granola on it, make it into a sandwich spread, doctor it up with fruit or honey, mix it with pomegranate juice and freeze it into little drops, anything your mind can think of! Just be sure to set some aside as the starter for when you make your next batch.

All Done

All right! Check you out, you fancy creator of yogurt! Aren't you proud of yourself? I'm certainly proud of you!

Now take your duff out into the world and boast of your yogurty prowess!

31 Days off Your Duff {Day 18} - Do What Makes You Happy

By a show of hands, how many of you do something every day that truly makes you happy?

Hmm... well, I can't see you all, but I'm going to throw out a guess that not many of you raised your hand.

As a coffee shop owner, I see a lot of people every day. And the majority of these people seem to have the goal of just surviving until they get to go back to bed. Very few seem to actually be taking enjoyment out of their lives.

That's right about where I was the beginning of this year; lot's of personal things were negatively affecting my life, my beagle was diagnosed with cancer, people I cared about were having problems... some days it was indeed hard to enjoy anything.

But that's no way for any of us to go on living.

Make a List

Of course, some of us have problems even figuring out what it is that makes us happy. There are so many options available, it's hard to find what you really like!

That's why over the summer, I decided to write a list. This list would have no real order or reason; it would simply be the things that make me happy, make me peaceful, make me excited, anything that gets good feelings going. Afterwards I would look over the list to see if I could act upon anything that was there.

So, I got started. I won't name everything on the list, but here are a few items:

• Pretty chocolates
• Spots
• Creating things in down time (I'll explain in a moment)
• Rain
• Shopping
• Logic Problems

Now, after looking at this list, I decided I could easily start with Chocolatiering. I had always loved beautiful chocolate, the art of making chocolate, eating chocolate, all of it, and I finally realized that I should be doing something about it!

So I started making chocolates for my shop. Hooray! I loved doing that, but chocolate don't sell well all the time, so I couldn't make as many as I really wanted.

Ah well. I put that on the back burner right now. I may try and get a part-time job at a chocolate shop one day, but that isn't going to happen at the moment.

Finally Finding Something

I won't bore you with all the things I've tried from my long list, but suffice to say I have just picked up crocheting (this falls under the very vague "create things" item).

Instead, it's time for you to go make your list. Even if you are one of the lucky few who enjoy your days (hopefully with a good cup of tea!), it can't hurt to identify the areas in which you could enjoy yourself a little more.

So! Get off your duff and be happy!

31 Days Off Your Duff {Day 17} - Squash & Pumpkin Seeds

One of the best things about this season is eating pumpkin seeds! They taste so good, even with just a little bit of salt, that it's a great snack to whip up after a night of carving pumpkins.

This week though, my family finally used one of the gigantic squash from our friend's farm. We cut it up for a delicious soup, and my father thought to bake the seeds just as he does pumpkin seeds.

Turns out, they taste the same! Shocking, I know.

Baking the Seeds

This is another one of those recipes where you can't really go wrong unless you try.

The basics are:

- rinse seeds and set out to dry
- drizzle with a little oil
- cook at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, or until golden brown

It's up to you to jazz up the recipe! My dad always did just plain salt, and a couple batches were also blessed with cayenne powder. But you can get as creative as you want.

Here are some ideas:

- Garlic powder/ raw garlic
- Smoked Paprika
- Pumpkin Pie Spice (pre-mixed or your own creation) ((I'm hoping to try that one this year!))
- Salt and Vinegar
- Salt and Lime (this delicious-sounding idea just came to me... has anyone tried it?)

Of course, there are nearly endless other recipes. Tell me about the time you got off your duff and made a batch of seeds!