Just got through watching a cheery (not!) episode of Bill Moyers’ new show on PBS and was reminded once again of how precarious our collective economic situation continues to be. Both his guests – Pres. Reagan’s former budget guru David Stockman and journalist Gretchen Morgenson – stated that because no meaningful regulation has been put in place to prevent it, a repeat of the 2008 economic crash is virtually inevitable, probably within the next ten years.
Sigh.
How do you get ready? How do we ensure that we don’t get caught with our drawers down again? Well, aside from becoming a cranky activist and demanding better of the government, you can add yogurt-making to your skills.
Yeah, that’s right. Yogurt.
That may seem a stretch, but making yogurt, whipping up your own simple cleaning supplies, growing at least some of your own food, making homemade vanilla – heck, just generally learning to do lots of things for yourself instead of buying more stuff or paying other people to do them for you – helps you become more resilient. It makes you a lot less vulnerable to the fallout from the criminal activity of the banksters and their ilk should that day arrive, because the more you can do for yourself, the less money you need to live. (Even if there were no criminal banksters, these sorts of skills will stand you in good stead anytime life blindsides you a bit.) There’s a lot more to resiliency than that of course, but it’s a mindset of can-do that can be a great confidence builder.
So let’s build some confidence and learn to make some very good yogurt.
Here’s what you need:
Yogurt making supplies
INGREDIENTS: (with prices)
1 quart of milk ($1.25)
1/2 c. of non-fat dry milk ($0.94)
2 Tbsp. of your favorite brand of plain live-culture yogurt ($0.33)
EQUIPMENT:
Towels
Heating pad
Quart jar with a plastic lid
Candy thermometer
Large soup pot or a big dough bowl
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Place 2 Tbsp. of your favorite yogurt in a small bowl and set aside to let it warm up to room temperature. This is your “starter”.
2. Pour the milk in a 2 quart pan and heat to 180 degrees (use the candy thermometer for this) over a medium-low burner. Stir frequently to prevent sticking or burning. If the milk starts to burn, you have to throw it out and start over as the yogurt will have a burned flavor. Heating the milk in a double-boiler might be easier and faster; I’m going to try that next time.
Cover the bowl of warm milk with foil or a plate
3. When the milk has reached 180 degrees, pour it in a bowl and stir in the non-fat dry milk. This step is actually optional; if you like thin runny yogurt you can leave it out. I prefer a thicker Greek-type yogurt and the non-fat dry milk powder helps with this. If the powder wants to be lumpy in the milk, you can use the hand mixer for a minute or so to disperse it evenly. This will help to cool the milk as well.
Add a couple more towels
4. Let the warm milk sit for awhile until the temperature has dropped to 115 degrees.
5. Put a small amount of the warm milk in the dish with the starter yogurt and stir until well mixed. Pour into the large bowl of milk and stir.
6. Cover the bowl with a plate or aluminum foil and place on the heating pad covered with a towel. Place a couple more towels over the bowl, and invert the big soup pot or dough bowl over the whole thing.
Cover everything with a big dough bowl or soup pot, set the heating pad on low, and leave the yogurt to incubate for 8 hours.
7. Set the heating pad on ‘Low’ and let the yogurt incubate for 8 hours. If you have a gas oven with a pilot light, you might try that as an alternative to the heating pad.
8. When the yogurt has set, pour in the quart jar, cover, and store in the refrigerator.
Generally, you don’t want to make more yogurt than you can use in about 5 days as it starts to get tart (unless you like that). You can use a couple tablespoons of each batch as starter for the next one but after every four or five batches you should start over with fresh store-bought yogurt. I’ve read that you can freeze your left-over starter yogurt and it will work just as well as unfrozen but I’ve never tried this.
So, how much do we save? A bundle.
Assuming you like thick yogurt, the ingredients listed above total $2.52 for a quart – that’s 32 oz. That works out to 8 cents an oz. or the equivalent of 48 cents for the standard 6-oz. container of store bought yogurt. Around here, 6 oz. of commerical yogurt goes for at least 99 cents (even store brands) so you’re saving more than half: 51 cents.
Now, if you’ve been eating one container of yogurt per day, homemade will save you $186.15 a year. If you live in a yogurt lovin’ household and go through, say, 4 containers a day you’ll save over $700 in one year if you switch to making your own.
Now, my favorite brand of yogurt is Chobani and it’s actually made here in NY State so I would love to continue supporting them, but it varies from $1.00 to $1.19 per 6 oz. in area stores. Compare that to a quart of milk for $1.25. If I were the 1%, I probably wouldn’t bat an eye at the idea of spending almost as much for one itty-bitty cup of yogurt as on a quart of milk . But, like most of us, I need to watch what I spend. And I hate to go all doomer-y on you but the more I can save now, the better position I’ll be in when (if?) that second crash comes.
There are other advantages to making your own yogurt as well. Once again, doing it yourself puts you in control. For starters, you get to use the milk of your choice. You could use 1% or 2% milk to make your yogurt. I find it annoying that almost all commercial yogurt is non-fat but also full of sugar – in fact it’s almost too sweet for me. If carbs* are your problem (as they are for me) you will want to make a whole milk yogurt that has a lower carb content. And you can use stevia or any of the alternative sweeteners if you desire.
Heck, if you can find a farm in your area that sells raw organic milk you can use that. And check your health food store for organic non-fat dry milk powder. It will probably cost quite a bit more, but my guess is that it would still be less than commercial yogurt.
My favorite way to flavor homemade yogurt is to mix in sweetener to taste and add a tiny bit of vanilla. I then mix in whole blueberries or strawberries that I bought locally and froze for winter use (20 quarts of blueberries and 16 quarts of strawberries if memory serves).
Making yogurt does take some time. It’s best done while you’re already puttering in the kitchen so you can keep an eye on the heating milk and give it a stir every so often. Then you need to keep track of the cooling. But after that, it just sits there yogurtizing for 8 hours. It’s up to you whether you want to leave the house with a heating pad plugged in – I always do it on a day that I have no plans to go anywhere.
I also like the fact that when you get into the habit of making your own yogurt, you’re generating far less plastic waste. It takes almost as much energy to make new plastic from old plastic as it takes to make new plastic from scratch so recycling it doesn’t help as much as we think it does. And even if you repurpose the little cups, there’s a limit to how many of them you can reasonably find a use for. Each batch of yogurt you make yourself generates, at most, a paper milk carton and envelope (from the powdered milk) plus one plastic yogurt cup every four or five batches.
Homemade yogurt really isn’t that hard or complicated to make. Give it a try – you just might find yourself adding yet another handy frugal skill to your repertoire.
*Side note on the carbohydrates in yogurt: at least half the lactose (milk sugar) in the milk gets transformed onto lactic acid in the yogurt-making process, cutting the carb count dramatically. This is not reflected on the label of commerical plain yogurts because the nutrient content is calculated from the tally of the ingredients, not analyzed from the finished product.
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