the magic of hands

We had a big spring-cleaning weekend, culminating in an Easter dinner with family and friends. I just love when my house is clean. Today there hasn’t been a lot going on, and so I did a good bit of Etsy shopping and another good bit of house-tending and kitchen craft.

We’ve started eating smoothies every morning. I was wanting to find an easy way to eat flaxseeds, and after a little experimentation I found that just grinding them up in the trusty coffee grinder and throwing them in the blender with some yogurt, frozen raspberries, and agave syrup for sweetening was just about perfect. I might throw in a banana, or some blueberries, but that’s the gist of it. And it makes a great breakfast! The flaxseeds are just superb for your health, packed with Omega-3’s and lignans (lots and lots of lignans)  that promote estrogen balance.  That estrogen balance is what I was seeking, for uterine fibroids, and so far the effect has been marvelous, darling, just marvelous.

All that smoothie making makes for a lot of yogurt!  So I started buying the milk at the store and making yogurt at home.  It is so incredibly easy, and so much cheaper!  And in the end you have these lovely jars of yogurt just waiting for you.

Jars of Yogurt and Flaxseed

Here’s the basic recipe for making yogurt:

1. Fill a large pot with hot water and put in  your jars, a big spoon, and a whisk.  Bring that to a boil, so your yogurt jars and preparation utensils are nice and sanitary.  You can use any jar for making the yogurt, but half-pint, pint and quart jars make it easy to know how much milk to use.  The milk will convert tit for tat to yogurt–you won’t have any by-product.
2. Measure out your milk, and put it in a pot over a high setting.  Stir it now and then.  You’re going to want to bring your milk just to a boil, when it starts to rise up and foam, and then take it off the heat straight away.  This is the hardest part of making yogurt–waiting for your milk to boil.  The purpose of boiling the milk, by the way, is to kill off any other bacteria so that only your friendly probiotic bacteria will grow.
3. Let the milk cool in the pot until it’s lukewarm, or about body temperature.  If it feels hot to you, it’s still too hot.  When it’s warm, take about two tablespoons of yogurt for every four cups of milk, and whisk this starter yogurt into the milk with your happy, sanitary whisk.  I do not measure my starter yogurt–I just put in a dollop and stir–and I think the stirring may be more important than how much yogurt you actually use, because you want the bacteria to be well-spread throughout the milk.
4. Pour the milk mixture into your sterilized jars, which should be warm enough to handle by now.  If not, just set them out and let them cool until you can handle them easily.  I used to ladle the milk into the jars, but now I just pour it straight from the pot into wide-mouth jars.  Much easier.  Put on the lids.
5. Now you need to put your jars someplace warmish.  In the winter I put them in the warming closet of my woodstove, and in the Summer I put them on top of my hot water tank, because in Summer the utility room gets really warm from our solar water heating system, which is housed there (and on our roof).  If you can’t think of a warm, cozy place for your yogurt, just fill up a hot water bottle with hot water and snuggle it up to them, then put them in a “cooler”  or some other small, insulated spot.  I always wrap mine up in a few layers of towels.
6. Leave the jars for six to eight hours (though I’ve done less, and more), refreshing the hot water bottle a few times if you’re using that method to keep them warm.  Sample it at six hours, checking for firmness.  It doesn’t have to get firm, but the longer you leave it the firmer it will get.
7. Admire you handiwork!

I’ve heard that this will work with any kind of milk:  rice, almond, soy, and I think it would be a fun experiment to see how these would turn out.  But for now, I need to get downstairs to my kitchen corner and make some pizza!

Pizza dough on the rise

Speaking of kitchen, here’s the view of my domestic corner of creativity. I’m excited that we will soon be getting tile in the kitchen, and then new cabinets! But even now it’s beautiful, thanks to all that spring-cleaning, and maybe, if I keep Wednesdays a day for domestic craft, just maybe it will stay that way.  It’s a possibility!