Can someone tell me why I can’t be content to buy my flour at the grocery store, to buy my eggs at the grocery store, to buy bread at the grocery store! No, I have to grind wheat to make flour, have chickens to get fresh eggs, bake all my own bread and I’ve be wanting to make yogurt. Oh, another thing . . please don’t mention to me that you’re doing something because you know I’ll want to do it too.
In fact, at lunch the other day Vince and I were talking about homemade yogurt:
Me: I read on someone’s blog that they got a cow . .
Vince: NO! NO! NO!
Me: . . to use fresh milk for their yogurt.
Vince: NO! NO! NO!
Me: They said it was so much better with fresh milk.
Vince: NO! NO! NO!
I think it may take me a while to convince him that I need a milk cow. It took me 3 years to convince him to let me get a dog (Speck) and 11-1/2 years to convince him to let me get chickens. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the cow. He did say that I might (there was a lot of emphasis on might) be able to get some goats.
Back to the yogurt . . For a while I’ve been wanting to make yogurt. Speck has yogurt with all his meals because he has so many tummy problems. The chickens get yogurt several times a week. They love it and it helps cool them down on a hot day and they need the calcium. And, I’ve read on several blogs about homemade yogurt. I even found a little yogurt making machine but you had to use a package of mix in it. I don’t do so well with storebought mixes for anything.
Stephanie O’Dea has a recipe on her blog so that’s what I tried. It’s so easy! And, so good! And to flavor it, I stirred in a bit of blackberry and peach pie filling in some of the containers. The chickens and Speck will get theirs plain and I saved out 1/2 cup of plain for the next batch of yogurt.
There it is in the crockpot . . all done! Tastes just exactly like storebought plain yogurt, only better!
There’s a little peach pie filling in the bottom of six containers.
Here ya go! 3 plain, 4 blackberry and 6 peach . . all from 1/2 gallon of milk that cost me $1.58 . . plus a little pie filling that I had canned. You can bet we won’t be buying any more storebought yogurt at our house!
Carol says
And all done without your own cow! Mooo.
Cindy B says
I make yogurt too! It’s so good. I haven’t tried it in a crock pot. I make it in a quart jars in my countertop oven. The little oven keeps a perfect 100º all night long. I add 1/4 cup powdered milk to the regular milk for more calcium and some vanilla. I keep it stored in the fridge plain unsweetened and we add fruit, jam or granola per bowl. I make a batch of plain yogurt to use as sour cream in recipes and I make yogurt cheese from it too. That’s like cream cheese.
Judy D says
Having spent a good deal of my teen years getting up early to milk the cow, I will not be owning one of my own. You can convince me to grind my wheat, bake my bread, have a really cool flock of hens for fresh eggs but you will never, ever convince me to buy a cow!
Now homemade yogurt does sound like some fun and ohhh, the yogurt cheese is sooo very good! I might try this. 🙂
CJ says
You sound perfectly normal to me Judy, it’s all those people who buy everything at the store that are weird! LOL
CJ says
PS… a milk goat is much easier to deal with than a cow, and makes great yogurt and cheese! And soap, if you’ve a hankering to dabble…
Michelle says
If you really want your own fresh milk, you may be able to more easily convince Vince that just a couple of dairy goats is the way to go.
They’re smaller, cleaner and more personable than a dairy cow.
I have a couple of friends who have a small herd, started out with two nanny goats, they rented a stud, and now have 4 doe kids! When those two nanny goats came into milk, and could be milked for the people (not just the kids), they provided them with enough milk to go through the winter. Just a small family, two parents and a toddler.
Next year they’ll have more goats in milk, and can sell off the extra doe-kids and buck-kids to be milkers and meat.
If Vince built you a chicken coop, it’s not any harder to make a goat shed 🙂
Just saying . . .
JudyL says
I’m really pushing my luck here in town with the chickens. I can have a couple of goats in town but I think I’ll wait. We’re looking at 40 acres this weekend and while I’m trying not to get my hopes up, if we can find land, that will change everything. Vince has already said I can have goats when we get land. I think he said that! 🙂
Gizmo says
I have both dairy goats and a milk cow, and will add my second cow this Winter. My cow and goats are just as personable. I think because they’re worked with twice per day. 🙂
Judy, you should look into getting a yogurt maker. I make a fresh quart every night. 🙂
I have enough “left over” yogurt and milk that I give it to the pigs.
:^D
Cindy says
Yogurt? Isn’t yogurt made out of … yogurt? Kind of like :what are marshmallows made out of.
We have some bachelor farmers somewhere around here and Joe has brought home gallons of raw milk for me. Always in a Gallo wine jug, which is interesting.
He hasn’t done it in a while, though. You might try your Amish friends.
Where’s the land?
Denise says
Judy – do you like those little containers you used for the yogurt? I love them. I have a bunch of those and they are such a handy size and the lids twist on so nice and tight. Right now there’s a bunch of them in my freezer filled with homemade rhubarb raspberry freezer jam.
JoAnna says
Why don’t you see if anyone nearby has milk shares available? I’m not sure about MO, but in Colorado it is illegal to sell unpasteurized milk so the small dairy farms sell milkshares instead. Kind of like the vegetable coops.
Brenda says
that is the yogurt recipe that I tried and LOVE IT!!! We make alot of smoothies and I have now done this two times, soon to be a third, and it works out just fine for me!!!
I am glad you that you like it too!!!
Susan Fields says
You might want to re-think the goats………… Almost impossible to keep contained. We had goats once. We spent two weeks trying to figure out where they were breaching the electric fence and repairing it. Then two weeks later they had come up with something else.
Not to mention that we had a storm and lightening struck a tree with the fence wire on and followed it into the unattached garage where the fence charger was. Blew out the charger throwing hot pieces of metal all over. This was my sewing room. The hot metal pieces hit a pattern I had laid out ready to cut and set it on fire……….. The fire department got there before the garage burned down but my sewing room was no more…….
Julie says
Hi Judy! Thanks for the link for the yogurt recipe, I will try this. I have never made it in a crock pot before. We have had milk cows, and the drawback is that you can never travel, because they need milking morning and night, regardless of your plans. A funny story…a man my husband worked with had 8 children, and they drank lots of milk. So he bought a cow, and took the cow with him on vacations! He just pulled the cow with him in a trailer, and off they went!! Hee!
Laceflower says
I make yoghurt every week, drain the whey off to make yoghurt cheese and use the whey in my bread baking. Also use the cheese as a substitute for mayonnaise. Want to make cheese but can’t get raw milk (illegal) and besides I have a full time job away from home.
Oh, and I do make soap, now that is worth making, it is so much finer than any store bought. Not to tempt you or anything.
Stephanie O'Dea says
Oh yay! I’m so glad that you enjoyed this! Your containers look marvelous—mmm, I love peaches.
xoxo steph
Cindy L. says
Until you can get your goats :)….does the Amish markets you visit sell fresh milk? Might be a possible option.
Karen L says
Judy…….I’m so enjoying your cooking/baking adventures…..keep it up and you will teach all your readers to say no to processed ready to eat food out of a can. I won’t tell you what I’m working on……….all I say it involves a cookbook that was produced in 1949…….
About that cow…….do you know how many things you can make with the milk…….butter, ice cream, cream….your own meat that you know what it has been fed!!!!! The possibilities are endless.
Karen
Leslie in Maine says
I keep forgetting how great homemade yogurt is. It is a great substitute for sour cream.
I had goats once- loved them to pieces, but be aware there is no such thing as “goat proof” there is barely “goat resistant” and that means all the brush, scrub and vege garden lower than about 5 feet. Also, the down side to milk goats is that you have to make baby goats too. In my case BBQ was not an option so mine were just pets and tree trimmers.
Perry says
Now you need to make homemade cheese. I have made some great stuff from unpasturized yogurt that I mixed with herbs for a cheese dip. It was delicious. I just looked for the recipe book and I can’t find it. BUT, if you go to Amazon.com and under books type in making cheese at home…the first book that comes up has some great stuff in it. Meanwhile, I will look for the cookbook, but it will take a couple of days before I have time.
June Piper-Brandon says
I love home made yoghurt. I look at the store bought flavored yoghurts and everyone of them has flour or starch or something like that in it. Why does yoghurt need those? It’s thick enough without that in it and it takes terrible with starch in it. I’m with you, I used to make my own all the time, got away from it when I was able to get organic plain yoghurt at Trader Joe’s for $1.99 a big container.
Regina says
I only recently tasted yogurt as an adult and the thought of making it is getting me very excited!!!
I am adding it to my To Do List 🙂
R
Amy says
It’s so wonderful that you *found* homemade yogurt! There’s nothin like it!!! YUM!!!
Molly Nelson says
My mom was a major hippie and made a constant supply of yogurt all the time I was growing up. She had one of those yogurt makers but never bought the mix to start it. I think she scalded milk for the starter or something like that. I’ll have to ask her. We used her jam for flavoring, as she always insisted ‘you don’t need nearly as much sugar as the recipe calls for……….thus her jams tasted wonderful but were the consistency of syrup. 😀
Thanks for the memories! Also this gives me inspiration for cooking frugally, what with budget cuts /decreased hours for me……frugal is good! 😉