Yogurt

I made yogurt yesterday, and you can too!

We've been buying those little plastic cartons of yogurt in the store. You have to read the labels on those things, because it's astonishing how many calories they can pack into one of those little cups. Even if it says "light," "sugar free," or "fat free," it can still have stuff in it I'd rather not consume. For instance, "fat free" might be sweetened with sugar or, worse, high fructose corn syrup. "Sugar free" might be sweetened with aspartame or have more fat in it than I like, and who knows what "light" is supposed to mean. It seems to be different from one brand to another, or even from one flavor to another. I haven't figured out a consistent commonality in "light" yogurts. Light in color, maybe?  Even "plain" yogurt sometimes has sweeteners and flavoring in it, so you really have to read the labels!  Suffice to say that  I read labels and I don't always like what I see on the ingredients list, totally aside from the fact that they're all packaged in plastic. And then there's the cost. Depending on brand and store, you can pay anywhere from .59 to over a dollar each for the little darlings. As much yogurt as we eat, it seemed worthwhile to look into making our own.

A great thing about this project is that you can use any kind of milk you wish, all the way from 4% whole milk, 2%, fat-free, cow's milk, goat's milk, or soy milk. I purchased a container of fat free powdered milk. That's powdered, not instant. "Instant" milk has other stuff in it to make it easier to blend with water. This powdered milk I got (Sanalac brand), not being instant, you mix it up and put it in the 'fridge and let it set for a while if you're going to drink it. I mixed up enough to make a batch of yogurt right away, plus have some to put in the 'fridge, for drinking, or to use for the next batch of yogurt.

Okay, so here's how. I obtained a couple sets of those little glass Pyrex dishes with the snug-fitting lids. For this project I used the one cup size. You will also need a quart of milk, a thermometer, some yogurt starter, and a warm, still place to allow the yogurt to culture. An oven with a pilot light is perfect for this. A baking pan with warm tap water is a good thing to have ready to set the culturing dishes in, in the oven. Have everything out and ready. For your yogurt culture, you can either purchase actual "starter" from a health food store, or a carton of plain, live culture yogurt. Make sure it's really plain, with no sweeteners or flavorings! When you are ready to start, set the yogurt out so it can warm to room temperature.

First, you need to sterilize your milk. Put it in a pan (or a double boiler if you have one) and heat the milk slowly and gently to a scald, 180 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir constantly and check the temperature frequently while the milk heats up.

When the temperature of the milk reaches between 180 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit, remove from heat. Now you're going to let it cool down a little bit. You can go do something else for a little while, coming back to check the temperature of the milk about every five minutes or so. It needs to be cooler than 120 , but warmer than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. About 100 is a good, safe, middle range.

Measure out 2 Tablespoons of  the plain yogurt, or the prescribed amount of health food store yogurt culture and whisk into the warm milk, blending well.

Pour into the glass dishes, one at a time. As you fill each one, cover tightly and place into the baking pan. I filled five one-cup dishes slightly less than full. When all your little tightly covered yogurt dishes are in the baking pan, add warm tap water to the level of the milk in the dishes. Carefully set in the oven with the pilot light. This should provide just enough warmth to culture your yogurt. LEAVE THEM ALONE for 8 to 14 hours!

When you bring them out of the oven, place them in the refrigerator. They should keep comfortably for as long as a week, but you'll have them eaten up before that, I'm sure. 

If you like it plain, have it plain. If you like it sweetened, you may sweeten it with your sweetener of choice. If you like fruit or other things in your yogurt, you can add fruit and flavorings all day long and twice on Sunday, and YOU know exactly what is in your yogurt!  Fresh fruit in season, frozen fruit, thawed, whole, chopped, or mashed. You are in charge and in control of what is in your yogurt. You don't have to worry about Mystery Ingredients, you don't have to worry about the brand-to-brand nuances of definition in terms of "fat free," "sugar free," and "light." And you don't have to worry about the little plastic containers, which could be a whole 'nother post all by themselves. Maybe another time.

Oh, and the money - I got the big container of Sanalac for $9.75 at my neighborhood grocery store. That container has 39 servings in it. One serving of reconstituted milk makes one serving of yogurt. $9.75 divided by 39 servings is 25 cents per serving.

My plan is to do up a batch of yogurt after supper so it can do its thing in the oven overnight. You may be surprised, as I was, at how thoroughly pleasant a still-warm, freshly cultured cup of yogurt is! Flat knock your lights out in a bowl of oatmeal!  You will see that a little liquid separates from the body of the yogurt. You can either pour that off (CAREFULLY or your yogurt will slip away with it!) or stir it in.

So go on - give it a try!

Hippo Birdie and Other Cards

This day is overcast, temp in the 40's and windy, windy, windy, but I got outside ANYWAY and moved some dirt into four-foot square patches for this season's garden. Nowhere near done yet, but it's in the works. I have planted five squares of Pontiac Red potatoes, one square of "candy" onions, and one square with some sugar snap peas, some spinach, some radishes, and some lettuce. The garden book says all these things can, yes, be planted as soon as the ground can be worked, so that's what I did...even though WeatherBoy says we're supposed to get snow overnight and tomorrow.

Inside, I'm stacked up to here with paperwork, and out in the multi-purpose building I have some insulation to hang in my very own soon-to-be studio, so there's always something to do!

Steve asked me what did I want for my birthday and I hadn't thought about it all that much, but I said I believe I'd like a steak dinner at Cattleman's, so, weather permitting, looks like that's what we're gonna do Friday night.

That heading, Hippo Birdie, is from a birthday card I got many, many years ago, and it's one of my favorites. It's a pictoral pun, with a drawing which depicts "Hippo, Birdie, Two Ewes." This has now become a standard birthday greeting in our house and in our close circles. So in case you didn't already, now you know about Hippo Birdie.

Another favorite birthday card contained a drawing of a piece of bread, animated like a little stick man, only bread instead of a stick, with a toaster in the background. This bread-character is holding a table knife with butter on it, and saying, "You're not getting oleo, you're getting butter!"  Some who know me and my love for sweet cream lightly salted dairy butter will appreciate the humor.

Speaking of cute cards, early on in Steve's and my relationship, he gave me a card that had on the front, a drawing of a little red lawnmower up on a hill, and when you opened the card it said, "Each day I love you a little mower." We've had so much fun with that over the years!

So Hippo Birdie to my friend Lisa on the 25th, and thanks to everyone who has already wished me a Hippo Birdie while you were thinkin' of it. Y'all are a big ol' bunch of sweethearts!

Mud Season Update

In my last post I mentioned that WeatherBoy was threatening winter weather (again). You can see by the picture the little darling delivered as promised!  This photo, taken January 29, 2010, depicts about six inches of snow. With ice under it.  Out at our place the ice was only about a half inch on wires and tree limbs and such. On our concrete surfaces the icy underlayment was more like two inches because of the way the precip evolved from freezing rain to sleet to snow.   

Many Oklahomans lost power in this storm and as of the first week of February, some 28,000 of them were still waiting to be reconnected. Most of those folks are in Grady County, around Chickasha, about 33 miles south-southwest of us. I am grateful to report that we did not lose power during the storm, big-sigh-of-relief.  

Last post I was waiting for the Propane man and of course he was swamped. I think we may have been triaged a little farther down the list than I would have liked. Complicating that, they lost a family member (another one in a year's time), so they not only had their usual customer overload of frantic customers dreading a winter storm, they also had another funeral to plan in the midst of all that weather.  Always wise to have a good solid Plan B in stock, and fortunately we had our contingencies lined up. 

In a small twist, we kept power through the storm and once the melt was well underway we had an outage. It was in the middle of the day for about two and a half hours earlier this week. I got a little frantic about it at first because the propane man hadn't been able to get out here yet, and it was the day of their family member's funeral, so I knew he wouldn't be coming that day either. But good ol' OEC located the trouble and fixed it and we were back on well before dark. Yay OEC! 

This picture was taken one week after the one above. in one week's time, this shows significant melting in a particular form we call "Mud Season."  This is way too wet to walk on unless you don't mind getting in up to your ankles or deeper. I know from personal experience that this mud is soft enough to suck the shoes right off your feet, not my favorite thing. 

Just because I can't get right out in the middle of it doesn't mean I'm not planning this season's garden, though!  I'm thinking about starting a few plots of Square Foot Gardening.

Now WeatherBoy is saying rain tonight and tomorrow, which may melt the rest of this snow, but then more snow tomorrow night. Sigh. Criminy, where does he think we are, Central New York?! 

That's okay. We can use the moisture. And I do know, to quote an old friend, who is probably telling all the angels in Heaven now, "It too'll pass, Hon!" It'll be Spring soon.

Happy birthday shout outs to my Dad,  my nephew Jordan, my friend Roxanne, my old pal Chad, and to Judy.

I "friended" Judy on FaceBook ages ago, but it turns out the Judy I friended, while from Texas, is not the Judy I know, which I discovered when I went to her wall to post a happy birthday message to her. There was a picture of a woman I didn't recognize, and a little girl who might have been Judy as a child, but something was off. This woman appeared to be about my age, too old to have been Judy's mother when she was a little girl. Then I realized that the pictures of the little girl were recent instead of from the time period when Judy would have been a little girl. Then I looked at this Judy's other friends and did not recognize a-one of them. Not one. I realized that I have friended a Judy I do not know. Oh, well. Judy, wherever you are, Happy Birthday!

Channel 9 weather boy was going on and on about a winter blast that's headed our way. About the fifth time he went through his routine I thought, okay, enough. Let's see what Channel 4 has to say about it, and it was like they had co-authored their scripts. Supposed to be getting a wintery blast with precipitation about Thursday or so. They're predicting freezing rain (which makes ice wherever it lands) and then sleet and then maybe some snow. We are in the big fat geographic middle of the rather wide band that they think will get 6 to 12 inches plus drifts, after the sleet, after the freezing rain.  Yuck.

So I checked our propane levels and called our propane people. Nice folks out in Minco. The kind of business where you call 'em up and say your name and they know who you are. I like that. I said to her, "We're at about 33% and the weather boy is calling 'Blizzard! Blizzard!' this coming weekend," and she said to me, "I know, I'm gonna fire him!" I laughed and said, "Yeah, I didn't like what the first one said so I changed channels, see if I could get a different report, but they're all saying it!" So we're on the list for a fill up before Thursday. I'm also working on a contingency plan in case we get a power outage, which is a distinct possibility when we have an ice storm. 

The good news is that it should only be in the thirties and twenties for a few days once it arrives, instead of low teens and single digits. It may be difficult for some folks to see any distinction there, but there is a difference. Don't know if I've mentioned it, but I have lived to see the day that 20 degrees seems warm, comparatively speaking.

In other matters, Muffin the cat was camped out soakin' up some  rays on top of Mommy's notebooks.  Ordinarily I would not begrudge him a nap in a sunny window, but I need to work in here today. I said to the old darling that a nap in the sun is a great idea, and I know right where you can get all the sun in the world, and set him outside. What does he do? crouches under the steps IN THE SHADE and tries to run back inside every time anyone opens the door. I think it's not so much the wanting to lay in the sun as it is that he's feeling a little clingy lately. Looking out this window I see a great spot he could curl up and be quite toasty, but I guess he wants to nap in the sun AND be within arm's length of Mommy. I believe that if I got one of those baby carriers and packed him around all day he'd be happy as a clam. Sorry, pal, no can do.  Paperwork to do, errands to run, preparations to make! We got a blizzard a-comin', weather boy says so!

Speaking of which, I gotta sign off and make busy!  Thanks for reading.

V~

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, y'all!

Our exciting New Years Eve consisted of a quiet evening at home, including supper and a movie - The Godfather on DVD - to which we both fell asleep before the end. That's okay. We are Godfather Movie watchin' fools. I love some of the quotes, such as, "I have a special kind of practice. I only have one client," and "Leave the gun. Take the canolis," for example.

Daylight now, and January One of a new year, new decade, and look who got their first garden catalog of the season! Perusing it and possibly formulating an order are definitely on my List of Things to Do today.

Still snow on the ground here, but on the days it's been above freezing we see melt. The white stuff is receding, revealing the brown earth under it. Those relatively warm days are definitely Mud Season days (ick!). Still winter, though, and our chief concerns these days tend to run along lines of keeping a faucet drip going and making sure we have plenty of propane.

We have a pot of Black Eyed Peas cooking. I'll make cornbread later on, so we can start the year out right.

You know about that, right? Black eyed peas?

On January 1st, you eat black eyed peas. Some folks also recommend other items, like certain kinds of greens, or maybe a particular scrap of meat, but the central figure is black eyed peas. The first time I remember hearing about this was from Grandma Susie, who said that you eat black eyed peas on January first because it's humble fare and represents humble beginnings. Start the year out humble and things can only become more prosperous.

The last few years we were away from home on January 1, so wherever we might be on the 1st, we would make a point to find some black eyed peas to eat. It got pretty interesting some years - trolling a Safeway store in some strange town for a can or seeking out an open restaurant along the way. Got to have black eyed peas on January 1.

I am happy to report that we are home this January 1 and have a pot of BEP on the stove as I write. Humble fare to start out this 2010 year, and a gardening catalog for desert.

Happy New Year, y'all!

Snow Thank you

Looks like all those years of Oklahomans praying for a white Christmas finally paid off.  We ended up with over 14 inches, according to the Official Report, but it had to be real hard to count because the dadgum wind blew so hard that we really got everything from bare spots to six foot drifts. Not us personally, but throughout the state. The official count came from the airport, which is about eight miles east of us. Out here at the True Light Carrot Patch I'd say that between the bare spots and the drifts, we probably averaged two to four inches.

I know a snow like this is common enough in the upper regions, y'all, but it is an all time record breaker for Oklahoma. Hot potatoes!

BTW, WeatherBoy (or WeatherGirl) is the name I give, individually and collectively, to our television meteorologists because they always look young, fresh-scrubbed and  Sunday-best. Children grown tall, telling the weather.

We got the porch cleaned off, and the sunny part of the sidewalk at the barn. The shady parts are too icy to clear yet. I think it's supposed to get about 35 degrees today, so maybe....

We traditionally have a Big Family Doin' at my parents on Christmas Eve. This tradition within my family started when I was a child. My mother and aunt's families liked to meet on Christmas day as so many do, and Grandmother liked to have everyone together, so the sensible solution was to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve. We'd all eat and open presents. The grown-ups would always reserve a few for Christmas morning as well, and of course there's always a few packages from Santa Clause.

When Grandmother passed on my own mother picked up the Christmas Hostess baton, because she really likes to have everyone together, too. Unfortunately, this blizzard kept people in. I did not even go outside on the 24th.

We cleared the porch and sidewalk on Christmas Day, and just before dark decided to brave the elements to see if we could find anyplace open where we might sit down to hot food that someone else cooked. We ended up over at the Flying J truckstop restaurant and had whatever we wanted from their buffet. They had one, count 'em one, waitress, who had probably been there for a very long time, but she was still friendly and got us all fixed up. We got home without incident, although there are certainly a few patches of pretty scary road out there.

Steve gave me the gift today of taking our laundry in to wash today and found our local Mustang laundry closed. There was a sign on the door saying, "Closed Christmas Day," but this is the 26th now, so I hope she's okay. She comes over from El Reno (about ten miles west of us) to open the place up every day, and they had some pretty dramatic multi-car pileups out that way, so  I suspect she may be unable to get through. I hope she's okay. Having found the Mustang laundry closed, he ventured up into Yukon to our second choice in laundromats.

Grandmother always said, "If you're going to say anything, say something nice," so I'll have to think of something nice to say about that laundromat - oh, yeah, here's one - their washers and dryers were in good working order the last time I was there. Anyway, it took him over an hour to make a twelve minute drive because it's still pretty awful out there everywhere except right out on the Interstate highways. He got stuck in the slush somewhere along the way but a Good Samaritan helped get him unstuck.

This all reminds me that another thing to appreciate from our time in Cooperstown is  experiential reality in the Importance of Clearing Snow Accumulation. I catch myself thinking they'd have this cleared by now in Otsego County, and then I remind myself that I'm certainly free to go back there if I wish. I think I'll stay put, though. Hopefully this weather event will be enough to satisfy most of those Snow Pray-ers for a good long time!

A Beautiful Asset to the Community

Steve found the bell the other day and I hung it in the Sweetgum tree in front of the house. That bell is made of sheet metal, iron, I think. The clapper is a wooden disk, and the triangle you see hanging below is the handle of the clapper.  

   

A three-sided bell, the wind catches the clapper and makes it ring lovely sounds in three tones.

Steve picked it up at the Festival of the Arts way back in the seventies when tthat event was still held in front of what was then known as the Civic Center in Oklahoma City.

Steve said Sid and Michi would be excited to see and hear this bell because it hung in the back yard of the house of their youth. When we lived here before we hung it from a Pecan tree out where the barn now stands. It went to Cooperstown with us, where we hung it from a Maple tree behind that house, and now it's back here at the True Light Carrot Patch, hanging in the Sweetgum tree.

Perhaps interesting only to me, the Sweetgum from which the bell hangs came forth as a volunteer seedling. It was a skinny little four or five inch diameter tree the first time we moved here in 1995. The Maple tree from which it hung in Cooperstown I suspect also started out as a vounteer seedling and was also about four or five inches in diameter when we first moved there. When we left Cooperstown to return here that Maple had grown to twelve or thirteen inches in diameter and this Sweetgum, now a good fourteen inches in diameter.

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I went out to haul the trash dumpsters to the curb this morning, this being trash day at my address. Neither of them were quite full, so I spent about forty five minutes out at the edge of our woods pulling trash out of the sticks and leaves to fill the dumpsters. I swear, it looks like several successive families, rather than pack and move, simply hauled their stuff out to the woods and dumped it. Either that, or they abandoned their stuff and the people who came in after them hauled it to the woods. I am still just blown away that people would do such a thing.

There now stands a Mulberry tree out in the yard that, when we first moved here in 1995, was a volunteer in the fence row. We cleaned and cleared and cleared and cleaned, put in a garden and a garlic patch and a chicken house and cleaned and cleared some  more. We kept the field on this five acres mowed, along with the yard and the right of way along 59th street. Had the place looking pretty nice! Then we moved away...

When we returned after the seven years in Cooperstown, much of what we had cleared had been reclaimed by nature and overrun with human debris. We've been cleaning and clearing as we go, but our first priority is to get the house finished, and then we can focus even more on the landscaping. It already looks a hundred times better now than when when we first returned, and will only get better as we work on it.

Everyone raves about what we have done and are doing here! The week doesn't go by that someone doesn't stop by to admire our progress and express their gratitude that we're cleaning up, renovating, and making it better.

Everyone is most supportive and happy we're here except one particular city official from Mustang.  This is a surprise to me. I should think the City of Mustang would be as happy as our neighbors are to see what we are doing here in cleaning up, making improvements and restoring the property as a beautiful asset to the community. I would certainly think that the City of Mustang would be pleased to think that the owner of this land might be interested in developing a portion of it into another nice residential neighborhood here in Mustang. Unfortunately, in spite of all the kudos, encouragement and support we get from everyone else, the actions and attitudes of this one city official indicate to me that the City of Mustang is not interested in seeing this thirty-plus acre corner developed after all.

On the bright side, this particular city official seems to be fairly ambitious. Who knows, maybe we'll all get lucky and she'll get a better job somewhere else. Hopefully whoever gets her job after she's gone will easier to work with. In the meantime, this land is perfectly happy to keep on being the farmland it's been for as long as men have owned it, and that's okay with me, too.