Homemade Yogurt-Made with REAL Milk

Homemade Yogurt-Made with REAL Milk

OK. Lisa, this one is for you.  :-)  This is so easy, you won't believe it.  But do remember the texture is slightly different with REAL milk (a.k.a. Raw Milk).  The end texture is more of a jello/yogurt texture, but oh so delish.  And I don't know....maybe the texture is a little different for me, as the kids played with the temperature in our refrigerator and froze the entire gallon of REAL milk that I used for this yogurt (of course after thawing it).  Lol  Oh, well...life with kids, right?!  :-)  Time will tell if the next batch will be different in texture.  I will let you know.  Here we go....

Homemade Yogurt-Made with REAL Milk
3 3/4 cups REAL milk (a.k.a. RAW milk)
1/4 cup of plain, whole organic yogurt (THHE recommends Seven Stars) I used organic Oikos Greek
1 glass quart jar (washed and dried), with lid and ring
Stainless steel sauce pan
Cooking thermometer (I have one with a cord and temp wand that I bought at Wal-Mart, when I was still shopping there, that I use all of the time)
Your oven
2-3 dish towels
1 rubber band

Scoop 1/4 cup of the plain organic whole yogurt into a clean, glass quart jar.  Seven Stars is the best brand you can find at the health food stores, after you make this batch save 1/4 cup from this batch so you can use in your next batch as your starter yogurt.

Warm the REAL milk in your stainless steel sauce pan on the stove to between 105-115F.  No enzymes or nutrition will be lost and the warmed milk allows the yogurt culture to take better than just room temperature REAL milk.  And at this temperature the milk remains REAL and RAW.

After your milk reaches 105-115F pour about 1/2 cup of the warmed milk into the glass jar and mix with the store yogurt.  Mix gently, you are not trying to be a blender, just gently swirl your spoon around in there, introducing the warmed milk to the starter yogurt.

Then pour the remaining warmed milk into the glass jar, stir gently and close the lid tightly.

Wrap the glass jar in your hand towels, leaving the bottom unwrapped and secure with rubber band.

Stick your wand from your cooking thermometer into your oven door, shut the door on the cord and preheat the oven at 170F (or the lowest temperature your oven goes) until your thermometer reads 105-115F, then turn oven off.  You will get the knack of this over time.  When you turn the oven off the temp will continue to rise.  I let it preheat for about 30 seconds and turned the oven off and watched to see what temp the thermometer was going to stop on, then turned it back on to 170F, if needed.  (If you don't have a cooking thermometer, preheat your oven at 170F for 30 second to 1 minute, then turn oven off.  Come back every 3 hours and do this again.)

Open your oven door and place your yogurt wrapped up in your hand towels, secured with rubber band inside your oven and shut door.  Depending on when you started making your yogurt, you want to try to maintain this temp until you go to bed.  Then let it sit in the oven over night (don't worry about maintaining the temp while you are asleep...just let it go.  :-) )

(Another way to incubate this is in your microwave.  This is from the Healthy Home Economist.  Wrap up the glass jar in your dish towels, secure with rubber band and place it in your microwave, leaving the light on for 24 hours, DO NOT TURN the microwave on!  Just turn the light on.  I do not have that option so I used the oven method.)

Then when you get up in the morning, you have a couple of choices.  1. Put the glass jar in the refrigerator and allow it to firm up or 2. Use a clean, never bleached receiving blanket...line a colander with the blanket, place colander into a large bowl to catch the whey and add the yogurt to the blanket inside the colander.  Let it sit in the refrigerator until desired consistency is reached.  Scrape out the yogurt and store it in a glass container.  Save your whey in another glass container and use it in one of the 10,000 ways you can use whey.  Lol

Enjoy!!!

*Adapted from www.justtryingtolivebetter.blogspot.com and www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com  (a.k.a. THHE)

Basic Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream (eggs)

Ok, so seriously, our love for ice cream continues to grow.  I am having a blast experimenting with different flavor combinations and I am LOVING the fact that everything is made with organic dairy products.  That makes me one verry happy mommy.

So, here is a third, basic ice cream recipe.  A chocolate without eggs is in the works.  :-)

Basic Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream
2 cups organic whipping cream
2 cups organic vitamin d milk
3/4 cup sugar
4 oz egg substitute
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup baking cocoa

Combine all ingredients in a large glass batter bowl with a whisk, it will take some time for the cocoa to incorporate, be patient.  Let set in refrigerator over night.  Make sure canister is frozen and ready to make ice cream. 

The next day...remove ice cream liquid from refrigerator, beat with an electric beater.  Place canister on deni motor base, place paddle in canister, cover with clear vue dome, turn on deni and pour chocolate ice cream mixture into rotating canister.  Set a timer, my recipes usually take 26-32 minutes. 

Transfer ice cream to a glass pyrex bowl and place in freezer (do not use a metal spoon to remove ice cream).

Let set overnight or for 4-6 hours.  Enjoy!!

What's In Your Milk???

I just want to make sure everyone saw the Channel 13 piece last night on Dairy Farms, if not here are my notes. The piece discussed dairy farms, milk and meat.  Click here to see Bob Segall's full piece.


Currently, the FDA is testing our milk for 6 antibiotics, if the levels of these 6 antibiotics are too high the milk is rejected, unable to be sold in stores. Now the FDA is asking that our milk be tested for 26 antibiotics. THIS is wonderful news for those of you who drink milk or your kids drink milk. Why, you ask is the amount of antibiotics being increased? Because the USDA has a list called the FSIS Residue Violation Information System that consists of 160 pages of dairy farms where cows sent to slaughter had high levels of drugs in their meat. Meaning meat inspectors are finding unsafe levels of antibiotics and pain killers in meat. And...this is very scary... milk inspectors are not even currently looking for all of the drugs that are being used on dairy farms (i.e. they are testing for 6 and dairy farms are using hundreds of antibiotics and pain killers in their livestock). In Indiana 16 dairy farms are on the FSIS list for violations. 16!!


Unfortunately, the new testing is not going to happen for several months. So... as I have been preaching....buy organic milk that has a label that reads NO antibiotics, synthetic hormones or pesticides. Yes, organic is more money, but if you buy Meijer Organics the price is not horrible, and you know that organic milk is safe for you and your family.


And for my harsh closing...if you can't buy organic milk, please stop drinking milk. I know that is harsh, but after seeing the levels of pain killers and antibiotics that are being passed onto to us through milk...THAT IS UNSAFE and unacceptable!!! Buy your kids organic yogurt or cheese for their dairy needs. Our kids need dairy to build bone, we all know that, but what we don't want is all the other crap being put into our kids bodies.


I know many of you don't want to go organic but you have to in the area of dairy foods. At least until our conventional dairy food is cleaned up.