So here's the 411 on making yogurt (at least the way I do it. There are other ways....)
When I realized that The SB is sensitive to pasteurized milk and loves yogurt I knew I had to do something so he could enjoy that food and not break out with eczema on a daily basis. So I started looking into different ways to do it, trying to find a way that would be easiest with our lifestyle.
I came across this site: Nourishing Days, Crockpot Yogurt. It seemed easy enough so I gave it a try and it worked....so here's how I do it. (Or you can just follow the instructions in the link above :)
Pour half a gallon of raw milk in a crock pot. Mine is big and oval shaped...not one of the tall deep circular ones. (This is what you get for asking a non-cooker to explain how I do things! haha).
Turn the crockpot on the LOW setting (not keep warm) for 2.5 hours. I usually do this at about 2 PM so the yogurt will be finished the next morning.
Then turn the crock pot off for three hours. **Don't remove the lid at any point. I don't stir or do anything other than push buttons on it once I put the milk in. :)
After the three hours, take 1 to 2 cups of the warm milk out into a bowl (I recover the crock pot immediately) and mix in roughly 1 cup of plain yogurt for the cultures. I use organic as-high-fat-content-as-I-can-find and non-hormone Greek style yogurt. It seems that if I don't use Greek yogurt then my yogurt is runnier. If I use the Greek style as my starter then it is at least the consistency of our "normal yogurt" and sometimes as thick as the Greek style. (Even if you don't go raw with your milk I encourage you to look into why hormone free is important and make informed decisions.)
Once the warm milk and yogurt for starter have been mixed, then I put it back in the crock pot and mix it with the rest of the milk. Wrap the entire crock pot in a big beach towel to insulate and leave it sit for about 10 to 12 hours (overnight in my case).
The next morning I get up and scoop it into glass containers and put it in the fridge for at least 8 hours to help it "set" a little more....and because warm yogurt sounds nasty to me. :)
I have made this probably 20+ times and I've only had failures twice....both times were when I didn't follow the times listed above. My old crock pot made better yogurt. I just got a new one two weeks ago and it's not as thick as I would like. I'm sure the new pot heats higher or faster than my old one. If I knew all the temperatures the milk had to be at at all of these stages I would use my kitchen thermometer to perfect it in my new crock pot....but I'm too lazy to go digging for the appropriate temperatures. :)
You can order cultures specific to the type of yogurt you want to make and make your own starter that way, but for me it's just easier to use the regular stuff. That 1 cup of pasteurized milk product added to a half gallon of raw milk to make yogurt doesn't affect The SB's eczema so that's good enough for me. :)
We eat it with granola in the morning a lot for breakfast. I use it often in place of sour cream. I like to add it to brothy soups to make them a little creamier. Or we eat it plain with a little honey or fruit or jam mixed in. I usually make a 1/2 gallon every week using the raw milk we get weekly.
Saturday, December 18
Tuesday, December 14
My direction
For the last few months we have been making some overall lifestyle changes. It's been a slow progression and sometimes convenience still wins over principle.
I think the first change we made was to go from pasteurized milk to raw off-the-farm milk. The SB started having eczema reactions to store bought milk and yogurt, which is a problem because he loooooves yogurt! So we went to soy milk and soy yogurt. And then found out that soy is not all it is cracked up to be and acts as an estrogen supplement within the body. (Here is one of many articles I read with sources...there is some opinion thrown in, but it all makes sense to me and is backed by some other things I have read: Soy Information) A friend of mine alerted me to this and then mentioned raw milk. So I started looking into that.
That lead me to the Weston A. Price Foundation and to realmilk.com. My friend who had mentioned the raw milk is part of a local milk co-op. So I looked into it and joined. I want to say here that raw milk is AWESOME but it is very important to know what your source is and how the animals are fed and treated for illness and how they live. We get ours from The Kvam Family Farm. They are a very nice family on a small farm who have been providing raw milk and other healthy foods to the public for years. Raw milk regulation also varies state to state. Here in Nebraska, the seller cannot advertise or deliver. Thus, we have a co-op. We all take turns going to the farm and picking up everyone's milk. We meet at the same place and time weekly to get the milk, eggs, chicken, honey and beef we all may have ordered. I enjoy when it is my turn to drive. It's about 1.5 hours from my house and believe it or not, it is through some beautiful Nebraskan farm land. :)
I get a gallon of milk every week. Half of that I turn into home-made yogurt. The other half we drink or use in other things in place of pasteurized milk. We use the yogurt often in place of sour cream and our breakfast is usually yogurt with Cascadian Farm organic honey oat granola cereal.
The other major change is adding raw apple cider vinegar, raw honey and probiotics to our diet. I was first told about this from a friend who has seen allergies go away after a few weeks. She recommended it for the perpetual runny nose Sean had earlier this spring. He gets 1T raw honey mixed with 1T raw apple cider vinegar sprinkled with some Garden of Life Primal Defense Probiotics for Kids in a sippy every day. He calls it his "medicine juice" and he loves it. After about six weeks of that his runny nose went away.
I started with 2T raw honey and 2T of raw apple cider vinegar with Garden of Life Primal Defense Probiotics and saw a minor improvement, but nothing too significant. Then I was talking to this same friend who said I really should take the Ultra probiotic because I have so many allergies and asthma. I have been on that for just over two months. Two weeks ago I decided to try stopping my allergy meds (I have taken an allergy pill every day for as long as I can remember in order to function....while still sneezing and having asthma difficulties). I haven't had any allergy flare ups or issues! BigDaddy even commented the other day that I haven't been sneezing nearly as much. I used to be a 3-sneezer as he called it. :) I would sneeze at least 3 times in a row every morning.
In other areas we have tried to go with less processed food items, more organic and more animal fats because I also discovered that our bodies use/need and process animal fat much better than most of the vegetable fats and oils we have in our diets now. So we are back to full fat meat, real butter, and the raw milk we have is not skimmed at all. We try to stay away from refined sugars as well. I have attempted home made bread. The only bread I can get to come out nicely has ingredients I'm not crazy about. I just got a new recipe (from the friend who mentioned the vinegar/honey/probiotics) that has a great ingredient list...but this morning was my first test run with it and the bread doesn't look like I would prefer it look. We'll see when it cools what it tastes like. :)
There are other things I am learning and doing, but I won't continue to ramble on in one post. :) I am almost done reading Folk Medicine. I think some of his evidence is anecdotal but a lot of what he says I think is solid. It is an older book, but he is talking about much older "medicine" techniques even from when he wrote the book in the early 50's. He talks a lot about the vinegar and honey.
The book The Maker's Diet was just recommended to me by another good friend. I have ordered it but haven't received it yet. After I ordered it, my cousin's mom talked about him and it turns out he's the man who started the Garden of Life company! So I'm even more interested in reading it now. Apparently he was sickly and went back to biblical principles of eating and became much healthier. I will post a review once I've read it. :)
And I will post later some of the recipes I am using. I've had a couple requests. I haven't created any of them, but I would be happy to share my sources! :)
Til I talk again....
TR
I think the first change we made was to go from pasteurized milk to raw off-the-farm milk. The SB started having eczema reactions to store bought milk and yogurt, which is a problem because he loooooves yogurt! So we went to soy milk and soy yogurt. And then found out that soy is not all it is cracked up to be and acts as an estrogen supplement within the body. (Here is one of many articles I read with sources...there is some opinion thrown in, but it all makes sense to me and is backed by some other things I have read: Soy Information) A friend of mine alerted me to this and then mentioned raw milk. So I started looking into that.
That lead me to the Weston A. Price Foundation and to realmilk.com. My friend who had mentioned the raw milk is part of a local milk co-op. So I looked into it and joined. I want to say here that raw milk is AWESOME but it is very important to know what your source is and how the animals are fed and treated for illness and how they live. We get ours from The Kvam Family Farm. They are a very nice family on a small farm who have been providing raw milk and other healthy foods to the public for years. Raw milk regulation also varies state to state. Here in Nebraska, the seller cannot advertise or deliver. Thus, we have a co-op. We all take turns going to the farm and picking up everyone's milk. We meet at the same place and time weekly to get the milk, eggs, chicken, honey and beef we all may have ordered. I enjoy when it is my turn to drive. It's about 1.5 hours from my house and believe it or not, it is through some beautiful Nebraskan farm land. :)
I get a gallon of milk every week. Half of that I turn into home-made yogurt. The other half we drink or use in other things in place of pasteurized milk. We use the yogurt often in place of sour cream and our breakfast is usually yogurt with Cascadian Farm organic honey oat granola cereal.
The other major change is adding raw apple cider vinegar, raw honey and probiotics to our diet. I was first told about this from a friend who has seen allergies go away after a few weeks. She recommended it for the perpetual runny nose Sean had earlier this spring. He gets 1T raw honey mixed with 1T raw apple cider vinegar sprinkled with some Garden of Life Primal Defense Probiotics for Kids in a sippy every day. He calls it his "medicine juice" and he loves it. After about six weeks of that his runny nose went away.
I started with 2T raw honey and 2T of raw apple cider vinegar with Garden of Life Primal Defense Probiotics and saw a minor improvement, but nothing too significant. Then I was talking to this same friend who said I really should take the Ultra probiotic because I have so many allergies and asthma. I have been on that for just over two months. Two weeks ago I decided to try stopping my allergy meds (I have taken an allergy pill every day for as long as I can remember in order to function....while still sneezing and having asthma difficulties). I haven't had any allergy flare ups or issues! BigDaddy even commented the other day that I haven't been sneezing nearly as much. I used to be a 3-sneezer as he called it. :) I would sneeze at least 3 times in a row every morning.
In other areas we have tried to go with less processed food items, more organic and more animal fats because I also discovered that our bodies use/need and process animal fat much better than most of the vegetable fats and oils we have in our diets now. So we are back to full fat meat, real butter, and the raw milk we have is not skimmed at all. We try to stay away from refined sugars as well. I have attempted home made bread. The only bread I can get to come out nicely has ingredients I'm not crazy about. I just got a new recipe (from the friend who mentioned the vinegar/honey/probiotics) that has a great ingredient list...but this morning was my first test run with it and the bread doesn't look like I would prefer it look. We'll see when it cools what it tastes like. :)
There are other things I am learning and doing, but I won't continue to ramble on in one post. :) I am almost done reading Folk Medicine. I think some of his evidence is anecdotal but a lot of what he says I think is solid. It is an older book, but he is talking about much older "medicine" techniques even from when he wrote the book in the early 50's. He talks a lot about the vinegar and honey.
The book The Maker's Diet was just recommended to me by another good friend. I have ordered it but haven't received it yet. After I ordered it, my cousin's mom talked about him and it turns out he's the man who started the Garden of Life company! So I'm even more interested in reading it now. Apparently he was sickly and went back to biblical principles of eating and became much healthier. I will post a review once I've read it. :)
And I will post later some of the recipes I am using. I've had a couple requests. I haven't created any of them, but I would be happy to share my sources! :)
Til I talk again....
TR
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