Yogurt Time!

I have been eating Greek yogurt every day for as long as I can remember and I have been paying an arm and a leg for it for as long as I can remember. This morning it occurred to me that yogurt is mostly milk and milk is readily available at any grocery store, so it can't be hard to make, right? RIGHT!

I found all kinds of easy recipes for making your own yogurt and they're all super doable. All you need is a crock pot or regular pot (double-boiler recommended, but what Average Joe has one of those?), milk, bowl, candy thermometer, yogurt starter*, cheese cloth or towel, colander and time. I couldn't believe it. Next week I'm going to do a test run and you can bet you'll read about it here when I get back.

Here are just two of the recipes I was able to find:

Pot and bowl version: http://cleanerplateclub.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/makin-yogurt-from-scratch-you-bet-i-am/

Crock Pot version: http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/04/crockpot-greek-yogurt.html

*You can buy yogurt cultures online and at some local stores...OR you can just use store bought yogurt to get things rolling. The cool part is you only need to do it once, when you make following batches of yogurt just use a bit from the previous batch. The heat will grow the good bacteria for your whole batch.

Happy Wednesday!

-Shala-

No Socks!

Today is National No Socks to Work Day, so take off your socks and donate a pair to the homeless or others in need.  If you ask me it's a pretty cool way to go commando in your shoes :)  What's better is the organization could not make it any easier to donate a pair of socks - check out the locations here.  Visit their site to read all about it at http://nosocks.cranberry.com/


Happy Holidays,
Allison

Rock, Paper, Scissors

This year most of my gifts are handmade, which is proving to consume more time than I had originally budgeted, but I think the receivers are going to be pleased. A few things on the list are hot pot table protectors made with bamboo mats and rocks,(from my back yard), personalized notebooks with tabs for each month of 2013 and woven pixel pictures made with strips of paper. I also have some scarves, purses and leather jewelry to make. If only I could pause time...



Happy Wednesday!
-Shala-