green is the new black

my neighbor came over to help me make yogurt last week. it was an idea i had because i was having trouble finding the baby yogurt at my local grocery store. she told me what ingredients to purchase and we set a date. i do not want you thinking i am a granola type: a vegetarian driving a hybrid who always recycles. maybe that is the woman i would like to be, however, life gets in the way for me. i try to recycle and i have a relatively fuel-efficient car. but i sometimes forget to bring my grocery bags when shopping and the baby and i drive around a lot. this makes me feel like i am ruining my child's future by poisoning the earth. so i stopped buying so much processed baby food and started shopping the farmer's market for local produce. last week it was turnips, the week before beets. and it really has not been that hard to turn the produce into baby food. all i needed was a blender or food processor and some encouragement. that came in the form of my neighbor, diana. she stopped by while i was writing this post. "people in tents make this stuff," she said. not the pureed produce but the yogurt. i am sure they use a mortar and pestle to process their veggies. however it is done, it is easy. so back to the yogurt. i picked up a small container of plain yogurt with live, active cultures and some milk. since this batch was for baby i got whole milk. i also cleaned a few of my canning jars to store the end product. diana came over and told me the plan. there was no recipe, just a little of this and some of that. for this batch we used almost an entire half gallon of milk and a 6 ounce container of yogurt. we first brought the milk to 200 degrees slowly and whisking the entire time. this keeps the milk from scalding. after we got the milk to 200 degrees we had to let it cool back to around 100 degrees before adding the yogurt. "so we do not kill the cultures," diana explained. i whisked the milk for the first half of the cool-down time and then let it alone. it took a little longer for me because i have culinary quality pots and they retain heat. after the milk was cool we added a small amount to the yogurt, "like when you make gravy," diana told me, "so lumps do not form." then we mixed it together and poured it into the canning jars. you have to keep the yogurt warm for an hour or two while it sets up so we put it in my oven. i have a warming feature that keeps it toasty. while the yogurt sat we gabbed about children, life, and everything else. i learned a lot about diana that day. and that was the best part of yogurt making, friends. i shared my batch with another girlfriend who made me preserves. she mentioned that the yogurt had a great taste to it. the store bought plain yogurts have a little bite to them but not mine. it is mellow and mixes well with anything. audrey loves it. i do not think i will make my next batch alone, yogurt is more fun with friends. and you need someone to entertain your child while you whisk.