Crunchy locavore cooking

[wrenb]

I haven't been doing a lot of the cooking lately, but I did a couple of frivolous things today.

First I made yogurt. After scouring the internet I found the simplest method possible. Heat 4 cups of milk to 180F, drop it back down to just below 120F and stir in 2 Tbsp of yogurt. Pop that in a clean quart canning jar and put it in a small cooler with a companion jar of hot water. It should be ready later this evening. I did this with Sassy Cow milk, which comes from about 10 miles from my house.

This evening I went outside to tell Drew that we're in a tornado watch zone. Not a big deal, since as I was taught, it's the R in Warning that means Run. A watch just means "Clean up the back yard so that the sheets of foam board insulation don't end up down the street". As I was out there I noticed the dandelion greens. I came back in for a bowl and then picked a whole salad spinner full of dandelion greens. Tomorrow night I'll steam them and serve them with lentils and barley. Tasty and easy springtime dinner!

Comments

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

I used some Mountain High that we got from Costco. That's been our go to yogurt for years and years. I'm eating the new batch of yogurt right now and it's pretty nice. Very mild flavor. It could probably have used a longer time and more starter yogurt, but I poured 1/2 a cup of whey off the top this morning. It's just the right consistency for muesli.

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

Sugar River is really tasty but it's fairly expensive where I shop. According to the Sassy Cow site it's made with their milk. A couple of years ago when I had my milk delivered from Blue Marble Farm I could get SR yogurt delivered so I thought they used Blue Marble. Either way, we're talking about milk that's from within an hour radius of my house. Happy Jenn!

Anyway, I used 2 Tbsp starter for a quart of milk, but not all of it got in the jar. I must have mismeasured the milk because it didn't all fit, and a bunch of the starter yogurt ended up in the bottom of the saucepan rather than in my jar. Next time, 4 scant cups of milk or just measure it in the jar to start with.
The other thing I saw in lots of recipes but didn't do this time was to boost the milk solids with dry milk powder. I hate the flavor of dry milk, so I figured I'd risk the yogurt being runny. It turned out thick enough, although not as thick as anything I could buy in the store.