Homemade Plain Yogurt & Greek Yogurt

Sorry that I've been away for a bit. Things were a bit anxious on the homefront, but it's getting ironed out as I type this. Yay for patience!

Anyway, I thought I'd post a recipe that several friends have asked for. I got the original yogurt recipe from my friend TheVillageBeader, but the Greek Yogurt recipe is all mine. :) If you make it, let me know how it goes! I'd love to hear all about it.

Necessary equipment:

• 16-cup crock pot
• 1-cup measuring cup
• Large, non-reactive pot (stainless steel works great)
• Candy thermometer, if desired but not necessary

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon skim (fat-free) milk
• 1 cup plain yogurt, room temperature (with active cultures)
• Ice

Plug in crock pot and set on low. Pour milk into large pot on stove and heat until frothy and bubbly (~180F on a candy thermometer) but not yet boiling. Stir often to avoid scorching the milk. While the milk is heating, fill your kitchen sink with cold water, putting several trays of ice cubes into the water. When the milk is at the right temperature, remove the pot from the stove and put it into the sink of cold water, being careful not to get any water into the pot. Stir the milk continuously until the milk can barely be felt when put on your wrist (like a newborn's bottle; ~ 100F). Whisk the yogurt into the milk, taking care to make sure that there are minimal lumps.

Pour the milk/yogurt mix into the crock pot and cover. Turn the crock pot off, unplug it, and wrap it in a large towel or other cloth. Let sit for 6-8 hours, then refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Be careful not to disturb the yogurt too much when you put it into the fridge. When firm, put into air-tight containers and use within two weeks.

Makes 17 cups of yogurt.

To make Greek Yogurt, you'll need the following:

• About 3' x 6' piece of cheese cloth
• Bungy Cord
• Something to hang the cheese cloth from
• Hand-mixer

Carefully wash the cheese cloth. Double cheese cloth short-wise to make a 3' x 3' square. Lay it out evenly in a large mixing bowl. Pour the yogurt into the cheese cloth, being careful to keep the edges above the yogurt. Tie the opposite corners of the cloth together tightly to make a package of the yogurt. Hang the bungee cord from whatever you're using, and then hang the package of yogurt from the bungee cord, allowing the yogurt to drain into the bowl used previously. Let the yogurt drain for 12-24 hours in a cool place. When it no longer drips, take the yogurt down, whip with with the hand-mixer until smooth and creamy. Refridgerate and use within one week.

Makes about 8 cups.

A few tips for raising healthy kids

I inadvertantly stepped on a few toes with a comment that someone watching what she ate didn't have to make seperate meals for her kids. In fact, that it was better for everyone to be eating the same healthy foods. The response was quick - and defensive. "My kids are 2 and 3 years old. They're not going to eat salads. And kids are picky eaters, anyway." I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disagree.

Before I get too far into this, here's my disclaimer: my only claim to expertise is that I managed to raise four children and didn't kill any of them with my inadequacies. They are also all happy, healthy kids who love to exercise and eat their veggies every day. So, while I'm offering my suggestions, I'm not saying that they're the best - and certainly not the only - way to raise healthy eaters. These are the things that worked for me and my children, and they might help you out, too.
So, here goes:

• Cut out all pre-packaged foods like boxed mac and cheese, Hamburger Helper, etc. I know, I know, they're easy and the kids love them. Well, so is opening a box of Twinkies, but it doesn't mean that we feed our children those, either. I promise you that the kids won't really notice or care, and if they do, then slowly wean them off the stuff. If you want simple, easy, quick meals that little ones will enjoy, keep reading. I have better options coming.
• ALWAYS have fresh fruits and veggies out and available. I put carrot and celery sticks within easy reach of the kids throughout the day. I still have a fruit bowl always stocked on my dining room table, and the kids are usually the first to let me know when it's getting low.
• Reverse psychology is your friend. It works, I swear. My favorite line to get the kids to try new things was, "Oh, I don't know, honey. I don't think you'd like it." That was the challenge they needed, and it inevitably ended with them tasting - and usually liking - whatever I had in my hand. Another was, "Grown ups are really the only ones who'd like this, I think." Challenge accepted!
• Renaming foods makes them tasty. I have no idea why this works, but it does. And not just my kids, either. The neighbors were astounded when I convinced their incredibly picky 3 year old to eat an egg - an ooey, gooey, RUNNY egg. How? By cooking it in a circle cut into a piece of bread and calling it a Pirate's Eye. Dolmathes are still called Monkey Toes at my house, and while goulash was "gross", "American Mix" was awesome.
• "You HAVE to at least taste it." I was never one for making the kids clean their plates, but they had to at least taste everything that was made. One bite never killed anyone, I'd tell them, and so they learned to try new things. At least once a week I made something they'd never had before, and sometimes it was a hit (tzatziki is still a favorite) while other times it fell totallly flat (duck is banished from the house). The point was that my kids were never picky eaters because they weren't allowed to be. Children are what they learn.
•  Pre-planning is your best friend. When you get home from the store, immediately pre-prepare everything before it goes into the freezer. I would cut chicken breasts into "fingers", make serving sizes of frozen fruit, and pre-make hamburger patties. Make up your own, healthier versions of the pre-boxed stuff and keep them on hand. (There are a ton of recipes online.)
• Teach serving sizes. When I would serve my kids, they were allowed one serving size to start. If they wanted more, they could always have it, but again, in the correct serving size. That way, they understood what was an "appropriate" amount.
• Give them choices. Instead of buying pre-packaged, pre-sweetened oatmeal bags, I would set out a variety of toppings and make one big batch of plain oatmeal. The kids had a blast putting in exactly what they wanted (measured first, so they knew serving sizes), and I knew it was healthy.
• Let them help in the kitchen. This is a hard one when you're tired and just want to get things done, but it really does help them want to eat what you're giving them. They feel like they had a hand in making it, and therefore they have a stake in getting it eaten. I started with them young - 3 or 4 - with making the veggie tray or salads.

I believe that healthy habits start young, so I taught my kids how to eat healthy foods in appropriate quantities. Sure, we occasionally had pancakes for dinner and ice cream for breakfast, but those were treat days and rare, and the kids understood why. I never counted their calories, but I did teach them serving sizes ("Want a second helping? Okay, sounds good.") and how to snack healthy.

And guess what happened? It made it a million times easier for me to eat healthy. No having to make two meals. No having to answer awkward questions about why I had to eat something different from them. No having unhealthy foods around to tempt me. It was win-win for everyone.

Staying cool without AC

My family and I are blessed to be living in a 100+ year old house in the heart of the oldest part of town. In fact, Abraham Lincoln is said to have slept in the house across the street during a whistle-stop tour through Illinois when he ran for Senator. It's charming with lots of woodwork, plenty of high ceilings... and absolutely no air-conditioning to speak of.

Central Illinois is known for its ridiculously hot, humid summers. Today topped 95F/33C and it's only mid-June. Imagine what our Augusts are like!

I may have mentioned this before, but I'm a little on the cheap side. Okay, a lot on the cheap side, and I just can't see wasting electricity on a window air-conditioner when there are plenty of options for keeping cool that are mostly free. For example, a wet head does wonders to keep one cool, especially when stationed directly in front of a fan. (Plus, you get to make those fun motor-boat noises!)

Neat trick: if you open all of the doors in the house and put one fan in a window and two others stationed throughout the house all facing in a circle from the window fan, you get an amazing wind through the house! You have to keep rocks on any loose papers and it gets a bit noisy, but that's a small price to pay.

One of my favorite things to do in this kind of heat is to play in the hose. I'm well-aware that I'm truly into my 40s and my teenagers are embarrassed by my antics, but it's a heck of a lot of fun running through the sprinkler no matter what your age is! And if I can sneak up on them, a water balloon definitely hits the mark.

Thanks to some of our friends here, we've been doing great keeping the oven off and our bellies full, too. We've mostly been living on fruit smoothies, tortilla wraps, and sandwiches, which have the added bonus of being mostly healthy, too.

I can only hope that the weather will break soon, but I can't count on it. Instead, I have to make sure that I have enough bags of ice on hand to keep everyone in a slightly better mood than we have any right to be. That and icies. And ice cream. And a trip to the movie theater when it gets really really bad. Oy!

Homemade Mosquito Repellent

I dislike the smell of most commercial bug sprays, so I decided to make my own. This is the recipe that I use. It's 100% natural, smells lovely, and works great!

1/2 cup grape seed oil (baby oil works, too, but it should be scentless)
5 drops pennyroyal oil
3 drops eucalyptus oil
3 drops cinnamon oil (a 3" stick of cinnamon put into the oil will work, too)

Combine all of the ingredients in a small bottle with a tight-fitting lid. Shake it well before putting on.

If you dislike oil-based concoctions, you can also use a scentless lotion for a base. Since I tend to suffer from dry skin and the pennyroyal and cinnamon oils can cause some drying, I prefer the grape seed oil.

It's also incredibly important that you test the various oils on the inside of your arm before you use them. Some can cause some very uncomfortable blisters if you're sensitive to them.

Anyone got some summer recipes?

It's the middle of May and our temperatures are hovering in the high-80s already. The humidity isn't as bad as August, but that hasn't made the heat less miserable for those of us without air-conditioning. Windows are open, fans fully ensconced, and still, we're struggling. Unfortunately, there are children in the house and neighbors not far off, so I'm limited in how far down I can strip to keep cool. I'm sure you can guess that the last thing we want to do in this heat is to fire up the stove. The grill hasn't worked for some time, and we're not really in a rush to replace it for the time being. All of this leaves us in a bind when it comes to dinner.

If we don't want to spend too long sweating over a hot stove, what do we make? I'm somewhat limited in that I dislike lettuce, so green salads just aren't much of an option for me. So when the dreaded question, "What's for dinner?" comes up, I have no real answer. Tonight, to avoid dealing with all of it, I bought a pre-roasted chicken from the grocery store, some raw veggies, and olive-oil and herb goat cheese. It was delicious, and we ate healthier than normal. But that's going to end up getting expensive, and I don't really want it every day all summer.

Help? Any suggestions on healthy, cheap recipes that require little to no cooking?

A happy medium in environmental care

Because I love DIY stuff for the home, I read a lot of blogs that offer suggestions on living the natural life. Most of the time, the blogs give great advice and wonderful ideas on how to cut costs by doing it yourself. Unfortunately, I often find that they are also very ... extreme in their views.

I appreciate that there are those who have the time, energy, and money to live a very pro-biotic lifestyle. I think it's amazing that they dedicate that much of their lives to avoiding anything they believe to be "unnatural", and I applaud them for it. But I gotta' say, I just couldn't do it.

Sure, I love to make my own laundry soap, but that's because I'm cheap, not because I worry about chemicals, dyes, or scents. I mean, it's great that my laundry soap doesn't have much if any of that, but it's a by-product of my frugality, not the goal of it. I normally make an effort to make healthy frozen meals that I can bring for my lunches, but again, that's because I'd rather spend $1.25 for it than the $5 I'd pay at the grocery store for something less tasty and more salty. That doing so results in less packaging garbage is a happy bonus.

As a working mother of four teenagers and the wife of a full-time student, I just don't have the energy to worry about whether the meat my family eats is completely grass-fed and antibiotic-free. I don't have the time to run to three different stores to get the healthiest, safest, most eco-friendly things for my family. My shopping trips tend to be an hour of sheer hell, often-times spending over $200 a week on just the basics. (Did I mention that three of the teenagers are boys?)

We recycle, but I don't cry if a bottle ends up in the trash. We eat healthy whenever possible, but yes, cans are often opened when dinner is being made. I enjoy making my own bread, but the store-bought stuff has a special place on top of my fridge. I have far too much stress already in my life to fret over these kinds of things, and I think it's unfair of me to impose this on my family, too. As a family, we have to decide what works for us.

I'm a firm believer in doing the small things to make whatever difference you can. Be smart and simplify when you can, but don't kill yourself to do it. Don't run the water while you're brushing your teeth, but take a bath every now and then if you want. Recycle if you can, but don't freak out if it just doesn't work for your family. Buy a hard water bottle to carry with you, but if you forget it, don't worry about buying a single bottle of water every once in a while.

At the end of the day, the reason people are panicking over our environment is because so many aren't bothering to even worry about the simple, easy things they can do every day. You don't have to go to the extreme on either side. A happy middle can be just that... happy.

Plarn? Now that's just plain brilliant!

I found this neat new website today called Craftster.Org. (I seem to have been the last crafter alive to have found this place, but that doesn't make it any less cool.) Anyway, there's a picture of a laundry basket that a crafter made out of something called "plarn", which I had never heard of. It is, apparently, a type of plastic yarn made out of recycled plastic grocery bags. You know the ones I'm talking about.

Being the resourceful Googler that I am, I immediately wanted to find a simple tutorial on how to make the stuff so that I could make my own laundry basket. And ta-da! I found one!

This is from myrecycledbags.com, and it makes the process simple and easy. You'll be creating your own plarn in no time.

Plarn How-To

• Cutting

Lay recycled bag out flat

Fold in half lengthwise then fold in half again

Cut off top handles

Cut bag in strips about 1 inch wide or as desired

Set aside the end of bag where bottom edge was glued. The ends and the handles can be recycled either as stuffing for other projects, packing material for shipping, or taken to your local recycling bin for plastic bags.

• Tying strips together

Take two strips and inter-twine together as shown

Gently pull on ends to knot two strips together

Connect next strip to last strip in the same manner

Continue connecting strips until you have a large ball of plastic “yarn”

Tips:

Pull ends evenly to create a smooth and flat strip.

If you find your strip doesn’t lie flat between knots, you didn’t pull evenly which creates a bunched strip. Just make sure your strip is even before you pull your knot tight between the two connected strips. To fix a bunched strip, just loosen your knot between the strips then pull on the ends again to make your strip flat and smooth.

Here's the link, with pictures for the tutorial. Very helpful.

http://www.myrecycledbags.com/2007/02/17/instructions-for-cutting-plastic-bags-creating-recycled-plastic-yarn/

Here's a picture of the laundry bag:

Special thanks to ToadallyDee from craftster.org.

 There aren't any instructions, so I'm just going to play around until I get something that works reasonably well. In the meantime, I think I'm going to set my 13-year-old daughter to making the plarn for me from our piles and piles of bags to combat her recurring bouts of boredom. I'll let you know how it goes.