Wednesday, August 17, 2011

In the meantime...

While I keep calm and carry on and pray for Daddy, I'm trying my hand at making yogurt this afternoon.

I mentioned before that I really love full-fat, Greek-style yogurt and cannot find it in our local stores. By local, I mean within a 60 mile radius from my home.  Every store I visit carries several brands of plain yogurt, but they are all of the "non-fat" variety.  I did find a couple of 7oz containers of  2% plain yogurt yesterday. (I had to travel to the bigger-than-my-town-but-still-pretty-small town about 45 minutes away for an appointment with the optometrist. He told me that my eyes are healthy, but I'll be needing bifocals probably by next year. Just call me Gramma.)

So, since I'm mad as heck, and I'm not going to take it anymore with the non-fat yogurt, I did a Google search and found this:  You Can Make Yogurt in Your CrockPot! from Stephanie O'Dea.  I found other methods, but this one seemed to be the easiest. I saw plenty of recipes for yogurt which involved complex kitchen equipment like a double boiler and a candy thermometer or strange items like a foam cooler and a heating pad.  Not for me, thank you.  This way all I have to do is pour the milk in the crockpot and not forget it's there.  Well, there are a couple of other steps, as you can see when you click on the link above.

In other news: I found some Darjeeling tea on my shopping trip yesterday! Finding my favorite kinds of tea is almost as difficult as finding my favorite kind of yogurt.  I usually have no trouble finding Earl Grey, which I love, but Darjeeling is harder to find on a regular basis, and I have given up on ever finding jasmine green tea anywhere outside of the Big City.

I also found out recently that drinking black tea actually helps reduce the stress hormone cortisol, unlike coffee which can elevate cortisol levels.  I think it's time for a fresh pot of tea right now.








4 comments:

  1. Excellent. I really want to try the yogurt thing. And have you tried getting things like tea on Amazon? Sometimes you can get good deals, especially if you subscribe (you can cancel at any time).

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  2. Dear CarlynB,
    I wanted to write and thank you for commenting on my couch. It seems silly, but it was so sweet to get a comment--to not feel alone... I think my husband is just humoring me.
    We make yogurt with a yogurt maker, but it is a hassle. I like the idea of a crock pot.
    I will keep (your?) Daddy in my prayers.
    With gratitude, Bethanne

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  3. Leila, it has never crossed my mind about ordering tea from Amazon! I'll have to look into that.

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  4. Bethanne - I loved your couch! You should try the yogurt in the crock pot thing and see if you like it better.

    Thank you for your prayers. My Dad was having an irregular heartbeat and was in the hospital to have a procedure to get it back on track. It went very well and he's back home and doing fine now.

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