Britt's Blog

I’ve been enthusiastically rearing all sorts of unusual housepets—if by housepets one means creatures that one captures, enslaves to do one’s bidding, and finally devours.

Some of my favorite housepets are Lactobacillus delbrueckii subspecies bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, the primary bacteria used to make yogurt. After many years, I refined the yogurt-making into to a relatively efficient science. Most of the process involves just waiting around until something beeps.

1. Obtain 1 quart of skim milk, 1/2 cup non-fat dry milk, and somewhere between 2 tablespoons to a 1/4 cup of plain yogurt containing live cultures.
   

   Use whole or 2% milk if you like; I like to skip the saturated fat. Various yogurt recipes recommend different amounts of dry milk, up to an entire cup, but I find 1/2 cup works best. Less, and the yogurt comes out too thin (or the milk fails to become yogurt at all) and more, and your yogurt tastes like instant milk (bleh!).
   

   I’ve made yogurt with all different kinds of cultures, including blended fruit yogurt, which is a little dangerous, because the fruit and sugar can cause yeast to develop, but which worked out okay for me. Anything that says “contains live and active cultures” on the packaging will work. My favorite, though, is Dannon All Natural, because its only ingredients are milk and bacteria. Also, it comes in a full quart container, which is not typical since the yogurt industry en masse suddenly decided circa 2002 to reduce the standard serving from 8 oz to 6 oz because it made the yogurt look like it had fewer calories. (One was wearily unsurprised by the fact that they did not reduce their prices by 75%.) Of course, after you’ve made a batch of yogurt, you are freed from the oppressive yogurt industry, because you’ve already got the perfect incubation vessel, and you can just save a little as starter for the next batch.

2. In a large microwave-safe mixing bowl (preferably one with a spout for easy pouring), combine the cold skim milk with the dry milk.
   

   It’s counter-intuitive, but the dry milk dissolves much better in cold milk—probably because it’s designed to be dissolved in cold water.

3. Microwave the milk until it reaches a temperature of 190° F.
   

   You can do this on the stovetop, too, but you’ll need to stand at the stove to stir the milk and prevent scorching. When you use the microwave, though, you can (through trial and error) figure out exactly how long it takes to nuke the milk to 190° (for me, 10 minutes 30 seconds) and once you know, you can just put the milk in, enter the time, and walk away. Alton Brown suggests that you just heat to 120°F, but other recipes go higher, perhaps to kill all the other non-yogurt-making organisms that might be lurking in the milk. I’m not quite sure why 190° is the magic number, but my experiments with lesser temperatures did not end in yogurt. Experiment at your own risk.

4. Cool the milk to 120° F.
   

   A thermometer with a low temperature alarm makes this step much easier, since you can walk away and ignore it until it beeps. Otherwise, just check the temperature regularly as the yogurt cools. The amount of time will vary depending on the type of container and the temperature in your kitchen.

5. Add the yogurt.
   

   In order to distribute the yogurt culture throughout the milk, I pour a little of the warm milk into the yogurt and mix it well to make a nice slurry, and pour that back into the bowl.

6. Pour into the clean incubation container.
   

   This is where the 1-quart Dannon container comes in handy. If you get one of those dinky 24-oz containers, you’re not going to be able to use your full quart of skim milk, and as a non-milk-drinker who lives with a dedicated 2%-milk user, I find it most convenient to buy and use an entire quart of skim for yogurt.
   

   Back in the day, I used to just re-use individual 8-oz yogurt cups, but this is pretty much impossible nowadays, because 1) all the yogurt cups are 6 oz now (see above rant) which wouldn’t be so bad, but also 2) They all come with peel-off foil lids instead of reusable plastic lids, which is probably a good thing overall in a reduction-of-waste sense, but a blow to the home yogurt-maker. I have my eye out for something that would work as well as the good ol’ yogurt cups, but I haven’t had much luck yet.
   

   Of course, you can use any container that is big enough to hold the yogurt with a little head space. Whatever you use, clean it thoroughly. For a while, I sterilized containers with boiling water, but, strangely, I ended up with more contamination problems, not fewer! So I stopped doing that and cleaned the containers with hot water and dish soap. If the yogurt gets contaminated, you’ll be able to tell—it will taste moldy or otherwise gross.

7. Keep the yogurt at a temperature between 100 and 120°F for a few hours (mine usually averages around 4-5 hours), checking occassionally, until you find that you have yogurt.
   

   While you do other things, your housepets are hard at work, growing, dividing, consuming the sugar lactose (which is why some lactose-intolerant people can eat yogurt), and excreting lactic acid (which provides the tart taste and curdles the milk to thicken the yogurt). I use a heating-pad-and-towel-in-a-stockpot incubator á la Alton Brown [yogurt incubator starts around 8:00] . (Bonus: I also have the ability to make turkey stock, dry my hair, or ease various aches and pains with theraputic heat, although admittedly I cannot do these things at the same time as making yogurt).
   

   To monitor temperature, a thermometer with both a high and low alarm is ideal, though these seem to be produced mainly for the catering industry, with the requisite level of accuracy and reliability, so they are rather expensive. Thermometers with a high alarm are easy to find, and they’ll keep you from killing the yogurt bacteria, which is the key thing, and you’ll just have to keep half an eye on the temp at 100+ where the bacteria are most happy. I happened to find a thermometer that has can do a high or low alarm, but not both at the same time, so I use it with the low-alarm set at 100° and a separate thermometer with the high alarm at 120°. The thermometers don’t have to be in the yogurt, just alongside the container is fine.
   

   Of course, you don’t need to mess with thermometers if you have an actual yogurt making machine, available from many fine retailers.

8. Enjoy or refrigerate and enjoy later.
   

   You now have a quart of plain yogurt. You can stir in fresh fruit, honey, jam, or whatever else you like. But don’t forget to save some to start the next batch.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about “the Critter,” which spends most of its life snoozing in the fridge, but sometimes comes out to feed…

(Via.)

_{For sticklers: No, this is not the actual TORNADO! event card. Some liberties were taken.}

J suggested a present with a Celtic theme for John and Mel’s baby gift, so I found this nifty Celtic knot cable. As recommended, I followed Grumpertina’s directions for cables without a cable needle, which are excellent, and make cabling even more fun. (I’m starting to get a yen to tackle EZ’s Aran Sweater…)

Cables “pop” best when they can cast good shadows, which requires a lighter colored yarn. Berroco Comfort in “Lovage” provided a nice green color without so much saturation as to swamp the cables out. Plus it’s machine washable, which is critical for baby projects. I used exactly (and I mean exactly) 4 skeins, 14 oz or 400 g.

This is my first knitting project from a Creative Commons license. I wonder if I should put a label on the blanket? Instead, I’ll state here that the license is Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike. This license allows me (hereafter “End-User Lass”) to share the work (which I guess I did by making the blanket, and talking about it here, though I’m not reproducing the pattern here) and “remix” or adapt the work (check), as long as I attribute the source (check), don’t sell the result (check), and release the resulting work under the same license. I didn’t really make up a pattern of my own, but here’s how I modified it: I added five stitches of seed stitch at both edges and between cable panels from the pattern. I also added several rows of seed stitch at the top and bottom. (It was something like 10. I ran short of yarn and there might not be quite as many on the top.)

Here’s a view of the whole thing. You can see at the upper right that the wrong side doesn’t look too bad.

I screwed up a couple of the cables by crossing the wrong way, but I kind of like leaving a mistake here or there, in homage to the needleworkers who would leave a mistake in each sampler, to discourage the sin of Pride. (Also, I noticed the mistake many, many, many rows back, and I found myself unable to resist the Sin of Sloth.)

Peter was kind enough to take the blanket (and some Jihad cards) from us at Origins to deliver to Ithaca, and I hope that John and Mel find it useful!