Welcome to our Wyoming blog. On this blog I have been sharing how we came to move here and the 'adventure' we have been on every since. We started with a hillside, and today (6 years later) are finally putting in some landscaping. We are by no means done. I hope you will come along on our adventure.

I also have 2 other blogs. Big Horn Mountain Creations show cases my quilting and other artistic adventures. Decorating my Tin Shack, is about creating a home thru decorating. Both are on the side bar, I hope you will stop by.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Yogurt and What are YOU doing to PREPARE

Over the last several weeks I have been experimenting with making yogurt. I really don't want another small appliance in my small kitchen so I wanted to find a way to do it without a yogurt maker.

There are two schools of thought that I have discovered. Heated and unheated. The unheated kind is really different from what we are used to. With this method you add your 'mother' to the unheated milk and leave it on the counter or place into a oven with a pilot light for about 24 hours. The yogurt is good but runny with curdles in it, more of a drink.

What is a 'mother'? Like making sour dough bread you need a starter, the same is true in yogurt making. You can use either a powdered starter, or part of a commercial plain yogurt, or an earlier batch of your own.

Heated yogurt is like what we are used to. You bring your raw milk up to 180 degrees, slowly and gently, then take it off the heat and allow it to cool to about 110, add your 'mother' and then either wrap in blankets or place in the pilot light oven. In 8 hours you will have wonderful yogurt that you can add fruit, honey, etc. to.

For an excellent article on this go to the Weston Price Foundation
The article "To Heat or Not to Heat: A Yogurt Question" is full of info, also while you are there you might enjoy "A Simple Change in Mindset, Learning to Maximize the Use of Your Real Milk and Cream".

Now this leads me to ask a question and with this question I want to start talking about some things and would like you to share with me also.

What are you doing to prepare? Prepare for what, you ask? With the economy getting so shaky, and talk of a recession or even a depression. I want to know what things people are doing to prepare for hard times.

Please leave a comment and lets get some discussion going, and perhaps we can help each other with common sense ideas on how we can protect our families in these times.

4 comments:

Candi said...

That's a great Question Gail. We've been in our own "depression" around here with Bert' hours cut back so drastically. On of the things I started doing is when canned goods go on sale, the things I use a lot I stock up on. Maybe one type one payday and another the next. This is pretty well getting us a good supply. Years ago I canned everything, but these days we can't just go out in the fields and take the left over veggies or fruits after the harvest. I know you're doing the whole fresh milk, making butter, now yogurt, any other things?

Susan said...

Paying everything in cash. If I don't have it, there's no charging! Debit card, okay, charge card, staying home.

Kate/High Altitude Gardening said...

Interesting to see this post today because I just returned from the market where I was grousing about the price of everything. I'm considering buying a freezer.. this summer I'd like to spend my gardening days growing more fruits and veggies and see if I can whittle away at the enormous grocery budget.

Ien in the Kootenays said...

Gail, you are my kind of gal! What am I doing to "prepare"? Oh gosh, I think I'll do a blog post on it.
I generally try to have a stash of food in the house, and mainly I am
collecting healing herbs, so that I can barter my tinctures for food with people who are luckier in large scale food growing than I am... I will also DRY a huge batch of kale this year, and mix it with other dried greens. Once things are dried they are easy to transport, don't take up much room, and if you are out of veg you can throw a handful into the stew and your greens are covered.