I am going to start with a recipe. A few years ago Clay gave me a Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker. I got it with an extra set of jars which I highly recommend. I love my Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker. A couple of years later I got a Dash Greek Yogurt Maker. Sorry I couldn't find a manufacturer's link, but it is sold almost everywhere now it seems. While I could recommend this machine as well, because I like it, I prefer the Euro. I like the single serving jars. I prefer the yogurt it makes. I like that I can eat everything it makes because there is no separated whey. Dealing with that whey is a whole other story, and while I could tell it, the story would just end as an object lesson. My advice is that if you want homemade yogurt go with the Euro Cuisine with an extra set of jars! With the background out of the way, let's get to the promised recipe. I found this recipe online and worked from it. So, here is credit where it is due and my starting point. Below is my recipe:
4 cups of skim milk*
4 - 6 teaspoons of sugar, Splenda, honey or sweetener of your choice
1/2 cup of powdered milk
1/2 to 3/4 cup of starter yogurt
1 Tablespoon of vanilla
Preheat the Euro Cuisine with the empty lidless jars in it for an hour or so. Let the 4 cups of milk and starter yogurt sit out on the counter to come to room temperature (or close) for that same hour or so. I do this by setting the Euro Cuisine timer at 11 hours to start. When ready to start cooking, place all the ingredients in a large bowl and whisk together to dissolve and break up the starter yogurt. I use a small 4 cup pitcher/measure and a bowl with a spout rim. This makes it easy to fill the jars now. I find that I can cook regular skim milk in anywhere from 8 to 10 hours. Longer and it will separate into whey on top. Not a bad thing as you can mix it back in to eat, but who needs it. *Deluxe skim milk or Ultrapasteurized will cook faster and need at most 7 hours. I have used soy milk and it cooks either shorter or longer, you have to watch and check it. I just don't like it. If you have to use it, you can. I used the stuff in the brick cartons, not the refrigerated stuff. Starter yogurt? Any single serve container with 5 live active cultures will do. I mostly use and prefer my grocery store's plain Greek yogurt for this and buy a new starter every 2 to 4 batches or so. You can use one jar from the previous batch to start the next one for a few batches.
The last and biggest question is how do you know it is done? I wish I had bookmarked it, or could find it again, but I didn't and I can't today. But, I found a blogger's photo online of set yogurt so you could know it was done. It was perfect and I am saddened to not find it again. Anyway, what you do is remove a jar, any jar, and tilt it and watch. When it pulls away from the side in a mass instead of as liquid, it is ready. It will be soft and creamy. If you let it go longer, it will be fine, but it may start to separate which is another doneness sign. I don't like it that way, but you can stir it up. There will be a whey layer and a bottom curdy layer though, just so you know.
I eat my yogurt by dumping each jar into a small bowl and stirring in a spoonful of granola and a spoonful of fruit syrup. I'll share both recipes below.
I found this granola recipe online and follow it to the letter, though I use powdered egg whites.
The fruit syrup recipe I found in a cookbook my Mom gave me. It is Lose Weight the Smart Low-
Carb Way. The recipe All-Purpose Fruit Syrup is on page 82. I use it as a starting point. Below is my favorite adapted variation.
3 cups apple cider
2 pound bag of frozen cherries
Pour cider over cherries in a deep saucepan over medium high heat. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium to low to simmer for a hour or until thickened. At about the 1/2 hour mark, I use the back of a big wooden spoon to smash the cherries against the side of the pot. At about 50 minutes, I use an immersion blender to liquefy the cherries. This will make a cup to a cup and a half of thick syrup.
So that is it for my shared cooking tips. Next up is Christmas!
I have some recommendations for anyone spending Christmas time in the Naples Florida area. These are some things we enjoyed during our visit last year. Again sorry no photos. First up, The Tuba Concert. I don't know how we have managed to miss this in the past. They have been doing this tuba concert of Christmas carols every year in Naples for the past 20 years and we have been in the area most of those years. I think maybe we came earlier this year and that is why we never saw/heard it before. I highly recommend it. Free! Come early and bring your own folding chair. It is a small space and we came late and barely squeezed into standing room. Still it really set the season for me and the all brass band's music was surprisingly beautiful. The feeling of a few hundred observers singing along was magical as was the small square's setting of thousands of tiny white lights. Magic! Go!
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| Aunt Felicia, Mom and me with the Interactive Hugging Tree. |
Last up is knitting with qiviut. Qiviut is the yarn that we bought in the Artic on our North West Passage Cruise that I blogged about early last fall. Clay gave me the very expensive yarn and an adaptable set of circular knitting needles for Christmas. We bought 2 - 50 gram, 200 meter twisted skeins as shown at the link above at that shop. It was $60 USD per skein! (Clay asked the shop girl and she weighed both the gaiter for sale in the shop as well as a skein and said that is what we needed to knit one at home.) It is lovely, but really extravagant. It is super fine and super soft and is supposed to be super warm. I hope so as I don't expect to ever work with anything so nice again! So, I am making us both neck gaiters, which were selling at the shop linked above at $300 USD each. We did not see any lesser priced on our trip, so this is actually us saving money as well as giving me an occupational therapy project for the tremor! Now, I looked online for a free pattern and this is as close as I could come. I used it as inspiration and studied and mocked up with some #2 weight leftover wool. So the pattern I used as inspiration needs 70 grams of yarn so mine is smaller and shorter and probably can't be pulled up over the nose. I still knitted with 2 strands for a double thickness as the yarn is so fine. Mine will probably work out at about 17-18 inches around and between 7 and 8 inches high. Since it will be tighter, shorter will probably be fine. They should certainly be warm! Also, I didn't like the rolling and so have given it a more finished look with a 3 row ribbing border. I am close to finishing the first one. To give credit where due and to pass on recommendations. I used these instructional videos to help me get started with knitting in the round. One. Two. Three. So, once I figured out how to knit in the round. I started studying the free cowl pattern I have linked above. I have knitted variations of that thing on leftover wool about a half dozen times now.
Here is the neck gaiter pattern I am actually knitting with my 50 grams of quivit yarn.
Needles: US size 4 16" circle
Gauge: 28 stitches x 33 rows - 5.5 x 5 inches in stockinette (adjust as needed)
Finished size: 17 to 18 inches around and 7 to 8 inches high
Cast on 103 stitches to size 4 16-inch circular needles. I knit 2 together first to join in the round being careful not to twist. Knit 1 Purl 1 rib stitch for first 3 rounds. I use a little loop of leftover yarn as a marker on the needle to keep track and I knit in the tail yarn. I knit 2 together at the marker on the next 2 rows to eliminate the starting gap. That leaves me with 100 stitches for the whole. As you decrease stitches watch Ks and Ps to keep your rib knit! Then KNIT only all the rest of the stitches until you reach 7" or until you can see you are nearing the end of your yarn. Knit 1 Purl 1 for the last 3 rounds and cast off. Secure your yarn at the end however you normally do it.
That's it for me giving back today. Next month we should be back out on the road, in the air, on water, on rails, etc. Check back as we return Down Under!
