Fundies and food

[clibbyjo]

Please post your homemade yogurt recipes here! Any advice on making homemade greek yogurt?

I think if you use whole milk you may get a greek type yogurt. I bought a Greek for my starter this time and whole milk to try, but I usually use plain bryers and 2% oe even skim which gives a a thin yogurt,but I mostly use for smoothies or mix with granola so I am ok with it. I have to copy the recipe from a friend on FB, be back...

My friend's recipe, also what I use

Making yogurt is easy - especially if you do it in a slow cooker, or crock pot

Start the below process in the evening, before you make dinner. This way, your yogurt will be ready the next morning, when you wake up.

INGREDIENTS:

-1/2 cup of store bought, natural, active/live culture, full fat (not low fat or fat free) plain yogurt. (This will be your starter. After your first batch of yogurt, you can use 1/2 cup of some of your homemade yogurt as a starter instead.)

-8 cups of whole milk. Pasteurized and Homogenized is fine, but do not use ultra-pasteurized.

HOW TO MAKE IT

1. Pour the milk into a crock pot, and turn the crock pot on low. Leave it alone for 2.5 hours, cooking on low.

2. Turn the crock pot off, leave the cover on, and let the milk sit for 3 hours.

3. Mix the yogurt starter into the milk.

4. Put the lid on the crock pot, and then fold and put a heavy bath towel over the crock pot to insulate in the leftover heat (leave the crock pot turned off), and go to bed.

5. The next morning, you'll have yogurt waiting for you in your crock pot. :-) Home made yogurt is thinner than store-bought.

6. Pour the yogurt into a container, cover it, and put it into the fridge. Let the yogurt fully cool down to the fridge temp.

7. Then, if you'd like to add fruit to your yogurt, put a few cups of chopped fruit (of your choice) into a blender, and blend. Then mix the blended fruit into the yogurt and return it to the fridge to cool back down to fridge temp.If you'd like a thicker yogurt, then strain the yogurt through a double layer of cheese cloth, letting the yellow whey liquid drip through the cloth, and into a bowl. Do this for an hour or two, and you'll have a thicker yogurt.

[kaetrin]

I think Greek yogurt is just yogurt that's been drained through a cheesecloth for several hours (at least) to make it thick. I do this with regular homemade yogurt all the time. The draining process takes out much of the whey.

[Rosa]

What kaetrin said. You can make shortcut extra thick yogurt by thickening the milk with dried milk before you start the yogurt, but dried milk isn't as cheap compared to real milk as it used to be.

The fundies seem to follow the same fads as other homemakers on the internet, but I agree about adding the extra level of godtalk into it. And then instead of just deciding it's too hard, or the kids prefer oreos, or whatever, they

I wonder if the applesauce thing is regional, too - apples are close to the only fruit that grows up here - we get berries, and cold-hardy kiwis, and a few hardy plums and pears, but most people with a productive home tree are getting apples. That''s true of a pretty big swathe of the US, though more and more hardy fruits have been developed over recent years. Apples, tomatoes, and corn make up the vast bulk of what I put up every year - I'm hip deep in apples right now, got apple butter and apple rings going this minute, and I'll make another batch of sauce tonight. I'd can peaches if we could grow them but we're too far north. We eat a ton of winter squash and cabbage, too, but you don't do anything to preserve those so there'd be no reason to ever blog about them except one or two harvest days. Yesterday's dinner included baked carrots, mashed winter squash, and apple crisp - if there had been cabbage and kale, it would have covered every major plant we eat this time of year.

(And I love applesauce. Bake with it, eat it with cereal, eat it on pancakes. We go through about a quart a week, on top of about a quart of dried apples every week until they run out in early summer.)

[acheronbeach]

I think Greek yogurt is just yogurt that's been drained through a cheesecloth for several hours (at least) to make it thick. I do this with regular homemade yogurt all the time. The draining process takes out much of the whey.

If you don't have cheesecloth, you can do it with a sieve and some paper towels/paper coffee filters. Just position the sieve over a large bowl to catch the drained whey, line the strainer with paper towels or filters, dump in the regular yogurt, place a paper on top of the yogurt, then weight it down with a plate or similar.

If you press it for several hours, you get a cream cheese like yogurt that's used in middle eastern cooking (labeneh).

[Bookworm]

If you don't have cheesecloth, you can do it with a sieve and some paper towels/paper coffee filters. Just position the sieve over a large bowl to catch the drained whey, line the strainer with paper towels or filters, dump in the regular yogurt, place a paper on top of the yogurt, then weight it down with a plate or similar.

Or, you know, just use a skirt you're tired of.

Sorry, I struggled with the temptation for several minutes.

[doe]

Or, you know, just use a skirt you're tired of.

Sorry, I struggled with the temptation for several minutes.

LOL! I used notcheesecloth aka a piece of cotton fabric (never used!) the last time I made yogurt. I definitely had visions of you-know-who during that.

Edited for messing up the quote.

[Bella99]

LOL! I used notcheesecloth aka a piece of cotton fabric (never used!) the last time I made yogurt. I definitely had visions of you-know-who during that.

Edited for messing up the quote.

I tend to believe soap, water and a hot dryer will take care of any germ issues, but I still relegate old clothes to cleaning rags if only in deference to others. There is plenty of virgin muslin around my house, but if I had to use non-virgin material (project started, sick baby, car trouble) I would make sure it was very clean and I sure wouldn't be posting about it.

[Triplet3]

What's gross about apple sauce with icecream? We occasionally have baked apple chunks with mincemeat (in the autumn/winter) or soft fruit such as redcurrants or raspberries (in the summer) for pudding, served with icecream or cream. Depending on the type of apples used it could be called apple sauce I suppose, and it tastes lovely. Another great pudding is apple snow, which in my family is basically meringue baked on top of sweetened, stewed apples which have been thickened with the yolks from the eggs. The only other time we ever have apple sauce is with roast pork.

By the way I'm from the UK too, and think it's interesting how the term 'pudding' is different on each side of the Atlantic!

[ChunkyBarbie]

Candy has claimed to be a NT follower for years. I think that's where all the fermenting, soaking, etc., comes from.

However, for those of us who followed her short stint on SparkPeople, we know better. Candy lives on Taco Bell, KFC, and Mountain Dew, all the while posting fake healthy recipes and spouting off about eating healthy on her blog. She's a complete hypocrite.

I forgot all about that. I remember she defended her real diet on SparkPeople when it was pointed out how unhealthy it was to eat so much junk. Candy is a speshul one. :liar:

Edited cuz I riffled. :P