This week was a flood of activity, with bread-baking, cheese-making, and yogurt experiments. Pictured above: Goat Cheese with Chives and Walnuts.
After I learned how easy it was to make my own cheese I figured I could just as well learn how to make yogurt. The experiments proved amusing: I made something better than my usual store-bought brand of plain yogurt, Organic Nancy's, and something almost as good as my favorite honey yogurt by Greek Gods. So home-made it shall be from now on. Heat one quart of organic whole milk in the top of a double boiler.
Cool the milk down to 112 degrees by immersing it in a cold-water bath.
Add 1/2 cup powdered milk to the cooled milk, and stir well.
Add a starter culture, either freeze-dried or 2 Tbs of active-culture yogurt.
Mix the starter culture in gently; don't create bubbles.Pour the mixture into two wide-mouth thermoses, and let set overnight. Place thermoses in refrigerator with caps off, to cool down.
Be sure the milk mixture is at least 100 degrees. Also warm the inside metal of the thermoses. The incubating temperature inside must remain above 100 degrees for the culture to do it's little dance.
I hope to work in a little more cream in my next batch, so I can achieve an end result like 'Greek God's Yogurt'. It is simply sublime...and mine will get there with practice. I noticed that mine didn't need honey; it was wonderfully smooth and sweet, perhaps because I didn't incubate it over 8 hours. The longer the yogurt incubates, the more tart it becomes.
We like our yogurt with blueberries. 
This was the flaxmeal bread I baked on Monday. 
A hearty lentil soup made from left-over whey (cheese-making). 
Couscous, pine nuts, and vegetables. East-Indian spices.
Sprouted fenugreek for salads. I'm trying to grow a few plants from these sprouts on my windowsill. The seed-packet was four years old, and it still worked!.
