Greek Yogurt

I

The supplies

One of the things I love to make, that honestly has
the store bought type beat is Greek Yogurt.

I used to make yogurt in a little machine and I would end up with about a quart of yogurt which
would last around a day.

Although it's very easy to make it takes awhile so if I'm going to make it at all I might as well make enough to last at least a few days!

First thing gather your supplies...
Milk, a crock pot, starter yogurt ( I like Fage, because it's pure) a thermometer, and a spoon to stir while the milk is heating.
You'll also need a large towel or something to wrap your crock pot in to keep the temperature stable.

Ok, so first I pour my milk into the crock pot and turn the darn thing to high. I use my cheesemaking thermometer to watch the temp.You need to stir every once in a while the milk is heating..

What I'm trying to do is to raise the temp to 180 degrees. It takes a long time! Sometimes I just raise the temp to 160 and hold it there for a while and it works fine.

Here's the stupid part at least to me.. after the milk gets to temp, you start to cool it down to 110 (turn the crock pot off) degrees. I guess the point of heating the milk is to kill competing bacteria, so when the yogurt culture is added there is no competition to it's growth.

After the milk cools to 110 it's time to add the culture. I confess to not measuring, but to this batch I added 2 spoonfuls. I also sprinkled a tiny amount of natural sugar to feed the micro organisms.

Don't just drop cold yogurt in the pot, mix it in a small bowl with some of the 110 degree milk and mix it well in the small bowl.......

Like this



Then pour this into the crock pot (sorry I don't have a photo, I need a third arm)

Quickly after the yogurt mixture has been added, cover the crock pot with the lid and wrap it all up in a heavy towel. You will be leaving this alone for 8 hours. DON'T MESS WITH IT!!!!!

don't move the pot at all, it will inhibit the growth.







After 8 hours set up your staining gear.
Set a colander over a bowl. This will be catching the whey as it drains out of the yogurt.









Line the colander with a cloth.












Spoon the yogurt into the colander, cover it with a plate and put it in the fridge to drain for a few hours.

The amount of time you choose to allow for draining will determine the consistency of your finished product.







Many times I have to leave to run errands so my yogurt is really thick, but I love it like this especially for cooking with it....










For this batch of yogurt I had black berries from the garden.....










They were a little tart.. so I put a bit of raw sugar in a sauce pan with water and the berries and simmered it for a while.

I put the mixture in the blender...

and added it to the yogurt. It was fantastic! It seems like more effort than it really was, or is to make. Well worth it believe me!
You can do this with store brought milk as well!
Let me know if you do and how it works out for you.
Good Luck

Good Deeds

 I apologize for not posting for such a long time.

Really no excuse for it, except possibly I may have been a little pre occupied with this whole being sued thing. I swear I have read the Texas Property Code,
Contract Law and all about the Corporation and
Non Profit Law til I could just about scream. I'm talking entire days.  I just had to, to understand what we are dealing with...

But....that's not all we've doing..

 My daughter is getting ready for her Girl Scout trip for one thing.That lucky girl is going to Savannah
for 4 nights. She earned the lion's share of the money through cookie sales, but the remainder she earned doing chores....

Now I was never in Girl Scouts, but I don't think they did cool things like trips when I was a child.. I just wasn't really into badges and things like that, you know.. first place ribbon, gold stars. I just never got too excited about them. As long as I had done my personal best... that's what mattered. Still does.

 Fast forward to Juliette, she really doesn't care about the badges
either, but there are some activities she wants to participate in, like this one you see in the photos.

The girls were given the opportunity to make a Fleece blanket for kids
battling cancer in the hospital.

We went to the fabric store and tried to choose a pattern that we
thought all kids would like, and also one that either a boy or a girl would like.

We got a yard and half of a print and a solid.

When we went home we laid them out wrong side together, on top of each other.

Next we cut the edges to be kind of even, and we also cut a little
square out of each corner.

Next step was to cut fringes around the edges, we used a piece of painters tape to guide us so we wouldn't cut too much and to keep the fringes kind of even.

Finally we tied the fringes in knots.




 Then we turned it over, and here it is
a cute little blanket for a sweet little child.

Now we could have done this ourselves, but we just probably  wouldn't have done it with out some one
setting up the drop off and such.
The Girl Scouts has been good for my daughter for this...
 Do you think the blanket turned out well?

We hope it cheered up the little one who got
it, we hope they are getting better too.

 This past weekend was nice.

My daughter and I met up with my Mom and my sister in Fredericksburg.

The weather was perfect.
First we went to look at a house my sister bought and is restoring, well she isn't doing the actual work, but...

then we went out for lunch to a nice little place called "Silver Creek" my husband was playing music there so we wanted to see him. He's getting really good! I mean I actually have to say he is a real musician... his carpentry is no longer "what he does".
Know what I mean?

 After lunch we walked by the Nimitz Museum, and my mom, in her usual off handed way said, " oh there's where the man who hanged your grandmother's grandfather was shot"
 What?....
My grandmothers mother's father lived outside of Fredericksburg, they were German (duh) and he was a union sympathizer. One day a group of confederates rounded up the union sympathizers and hung them, he was hung in front of his family.

After the war the men involved in the hangings were tried and found guilty, but this one man ran and was  found and shot at the Nimitz Museum, which at the time was a hotel.

What sad time in our history.


Oh well back to the day....

 I took my mom home and worked a little bit with her in her yard.
She's 84!  I had brought some of my lovely composted cow manure... which by the way I sell...

anyway, I spread it on her grass where it was looking a little sad.....







Finally my mom, my daughter and I took a walk and we came upon these three little ducks. My daughter picked them up and they decided they loved her.
They started following us and we weren't quite sure what to do about it,  I mean, they were following us home!

Fortunately a boy and his mom walked up and the boy started fooling with the ducks...we seized the opportunity to flee.

We got safely home, duck free!

A really nice day.

Portable Fence

Whenever I can, I let my cows graze.
Luckily I have some wonderful  neighbors to the west of my yard and another sweet woman across the road.

Both of these neighbors have given me permission to let my cows graze in their yards... I used to tie them to graze which was OK but they would get tangled up in their leads.

So last year I invested in a portable electric fence,
It's wonderful! I am able to both set the fence up and take it down by myself and easily control how much time they spend in one spot, which is important because I don't want to over graze  my neighbors'  properties.

OK so here's what I have, it's a nifty little fence called the "Smart Fence". It has 4 wires that can be unwound and wound back up together.

I decide where I want to put them for a few hours, and pull the wires out....

Then I push in the stakes as I unroll the wires and "build" my fence

After I get my fence set up I pound my grounding rod in the ground, ( I just use a piece of rebarb)

Next I set out my energizer by the fence and connect the grounding stake wire to energizer, ( the energizer
is important because it controls the power flow so
when the animal touches the wire the shock is just a pulse)

and of course I need a power source, I use a small battery from a lawn mower.... I use wooden clothes pens to connect the terminals

Finally I connect the electricity to the fence itself.

and it's ready to go!

The cows love it, they see me get the fence out and follow me to watch me set it up... then they run over to their little "room"...



Any questions?

Weird Egg

Last  fall we got new hens.

My husband decided the smart thing to do would be to rehome the old birds and start with young hens all of the same breed.
That way we will know which hens are the oldest, youngest etc.

So I started with new layer chicks last fall.
Now they have started laying eggs. When hens first start to lay eggs they seem to go through a period where the "kinks" get worked out.

Sometimes they will lay an egg without a shell or they just kind of lay them in the wrong place, like when they are sitting in a tree.

The other day I found the most unusual egg yet.
It was tiny.

 Initially I thought it was a large acorn. I don't know if you can tell how small it was from the photo.

Any way when I cracked it open there was a tiny yolk!

This is just a passing phase, soon they will be good to go and I'll be getting my needed dozen a day!

Twin Chicks

Every so often we have a chicken who lays double yolked eggs.

I have never gotten a double yolked egg from store bought eggs. Not sure why...

Anyway here is what a double yolked hard boiled egg looks like, kind of neat don't you think?

I am sure you know that the DNA that messages the formation of the chick is in the yolk, so what I have always wondered is whether double yolked eggs would develop into 2 chicks....

I looked it up and yes! double yolked eggs can produce 2 chicks, it is rare but it can happen.
Pretty cool, twin chicks.

POA Troubles

Here it is...

 I have been silent for so long.

Here's what happened... I got served papers from my POA.
Yes, ...we are being sued.

When I first found out about the law suit I really freaked out. I mean I was depressed. You know what I mean? I felt like a criminal! Then I started thinking about the reality. The reality is this:

Neither my husband or I have ever lived in a place where there was a HOA or POA, so when we signed the paper work at the closing of our current home we knew there was a POA, but we really had no way to conceive of what that meant.

they actually ran off copies of my blog!

Here's what it means.. for us anyway...we pay the mortgage, the taxes and the insurance. Every January we get a letter telling us to send a check to a PO Box and to make the check out to our POA.
Then that money will be used to sue you if you break any rules, although these same rules may not be enforced on other residents unless someone complains or if one of the board members has a beef with the resident.


Jerry and I were guilty of these 3 offenses.
Our driveway was messy,
I was having kids out and being paid,
Our house was taking too long to complete.
(I would say more, but as you can see from the photo, the board members are reading my blog and I don't want to add fuel to the fire so to speak )

This whole thing got me reading and learning more about POAs. Man, how is it that we even allow them in this country? I mean are they even American? The whole thing stinks...

 So... , we are working hard to finish the house. We have cleaned our driveway and I am no longer having kids out here, although I think I can have kids out for free (?) So I may have a few open play days in the spring.
Oh, and we are definitely moving, to a place without an HOA!