Curds and Whey

I love fresh yogurt. It is both tastier and cheaper than the stuff from the store. What I hadn’t realized until a couple years ago — shamefully, this was revealed to me when reading that book French Women Don’t Get Fat (hey man, who doesn’t love pastries, chocolate, croissants and wine?) — is that you can make it quite easily yourself.

You can make yogurt without any equipment or with a little incubator like instrument that resembles a spaceship. I have a spaceship which I love and decided to make some yogurt earlier this week.

My first batch was a terrible disaster. I lost the directions and thought I could just “wing it.” I think I boiled all the active cultures to death and was left with a cottage cheese like substance (in fact, I think that is how one makes cottage cheese). After this attempt I scooted out to Target (my first purchase at the one that opened up around the corner last week– while I don’t love the traffic it is causing, it sure is nice for times like these) and bought a candy thermometer so I could make sure not to scald my dairy ever again.

After twelve hours of incubating I was left with 7 lovely jars of fresh yogurt. One tip, I highly recommend is using at least 2% milk.