Yogurt Recipe

Mix the following:

20 cups of water

5 cups powdered milk (must be 100% milk product like the kind you get at the cannery.)

2-3 cups sugar

Mix in big pan on stove and heat to 180 degrees (we had to go out and buy a candy thermometer for this). Stir continually. (On our stove it took about 20 minutes to get to 180 degrees.)

Then turn off heat and cool to 115 degrees. This took over an hour for it to cool down to 115, stirring every once in awhile. (I found that you can speed up the cooling down process by putting the whole pan into a bigger pan or bowl of ice water).

When it gets down to 115 degrees add:

1 cup of Dannon plain yogurt (for the “start”) and

2 tsp. Vanilla

Pour into 6 different quart jars and 1 pint jar. Place jars in Styrofoam cooler (we didn’t have one so I just used a regular cooler) and put in fleece blankets. We only had two little fleece blankets so I used other blankets to stuff around the sides, bottom, top etc. and it still turned out fine). Leave in cooler with lid on for 7-9 hours. Then refrigerate and serve when cold. You can pour out the little bit of excess liquid.

When your yogurt is finished save one cup of it to use as the “start” for the next batch. (You can continue to do that for about six batches and then it starts to weaken and so you start over with a new start from another Dannon plain yogurt again.)

We tried some different flavorings (bought from a kitchen store used to make candy) but the plain vanilla is great too and yummy with added fruit. We also added some food coloring to some of them just for fun.

It is also yummy frozen! We have made this several times now and love it!

Home-made Yogurt!

A couple of weeks ago a friend of ours taught Janika and I how to make yogurt. I was surprised by how simple it is! One batch fills six quart jars and one pint jar (used for the start of the next batch). We have been making it twice a week since our family goes through it so quickly. We freeze some of it in little containers with lids for snacks. It is a lot cheaper than the store-bought variety and we love it!

Splash Pad

Last Saturday we started Josh's Potty Training and so during his big "Potty Party" I took all of the rest of the kids to the Splash Pad for a few hours. They enjoyed it!

Cub Scouts

For Jared's Pack Meeting today they played "water baseball" with little pools for each base and a slip-n-slide to slide into home base. Fun idea!

Forts

Our kids love making elaborate forts in the basement. They made this huge one and they all slept in it. It was out of the way and so it was fine with me. Until we went to eat dinner the next day and there were no kitchen chairs to eat on. They were all in the basement holding up the fort!

Baby in a Bucket

Tomatoes and Chicken Eggs

A neighbor hired Jase to water their plants/yard and feed their chicken for four days while they were gone on vacation. They paid him some cash each day plus all of the tomatoes he could pick and any chicken eggs that were hatched. They also surprised Jase with a giant king-sized candy-bar and a bag of cookies.

Jase was in heaven! I think the favorite thing for him was picking the tomatoes and getting the eggs.

Every morning he was up and taking care of their yard before I was even out of bed. (And as a side note, a month or so ago Rick put Jase in charge of our yard and he has done a good job. He has completely taken over mowing the lawn, much to Rick's delight!)

Anyway, Jase was only required to go to our neighbors once a day but he kept wanting to go more. He kept begging me to let him go back over so that he could see if any more eggs had hatched. This afternoon I was worried because he went to check on things and was gone a very long time. I drove over to see if he was okay. He said he had pulled some weeds and then was in the chicken coop waiting... That's right. He was sitting there waiting for an egg to hatch...for like and hour and a half!

Honestly! I think we need to get Jase chickens for Christmas!