Friday, January 22, 2010

We made Yummy Yogurt!

If you look in our list of blogs, you will see the Wissmann family blog.  This is a great family from Nebraska.  They have 13 children and have a family ministry where they perform Gospel music in Branson and on the road travelling.  Well, recently they had a post about how they love to make Yogurt for their large family.  Now, our family LOVES yogurt.  I buy the natural yogurt (without high fructose corn syrup in it) in the large 1 quart cartons and we go through that at one setting.  It is a little pricey for us to eat it often, so we usually only get it about once a week.  1 quart is about $2.20.

I have heard of many homeschool friends who have done this, but we've never tried it as I thought it was a little harder than this.  So, once we saw the post, the kids and I went searching for all the supplies and got started making our own yogurt!  Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the prep-you'll have to get those pictures from the Wissmann's post- but I did take pics of the results!

This is our 1 gallon jar of yogurt when we took it out of the refrigerator this morning.  1 gallon of Yogurt!  the recipe makes 2 gallons, so we have 2 of these in our fridge right now. Oh, and I love our jars we found.  These are 1 gallon jars and we found them at Walmart.  They are the PERFECT size for making yogurt.  I was also very determined to use GLASS jars to make sure they would not hold odors/tastes and to make sure I could use them for a very, very long time.


We opened to see it had completely set perfectly!


It was super creamy.  We were so excited.  Notice the bowls in the background??  Okay, now I will tell you that this is PLAIN yogurt.  It does NOT taste good to us plain.  We experimented this morning with all sorts of flavors.  We tried adding strawberries to some, vanilla to some, coffee, and would add some sweetener to each mixture.  They were all yummy.  We put some strawberries in some and sealed them up til the afternoon and we think that if we did that overnight it will hardly need any sweetener at all!  Best of all, it cost all of about $6 to make 2 gallons of yogurt (minus the additives like strawberries, etc).  Even once we add strawberries or vanilla, this is still less than half what it costs for natural yogurt like this from the store.  Oh, and Mrs. Wissmann said this can last up to two weeks in the fridge!





The kids had yogurt twice today and each time asked for seconds.  If you try this, let me know what flavors YOU add to yours!

"As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby"
1 Peter 2:2

6 comments:

Corina said...

Cool!! I might even be able to make that. My boys love yogurt (of course, we eat the full-of-sugar kind when we can buy it cheap) and so do I. You'll have to let me know what things work out best to add in there because they won't eat the plain kind (I've tried!).

Our Army of Six said...

I really think that preparing strawberries like you would for strawberry shortcake (with some sugar and letting them set several hours) and then mixing them into the yogurt and letting it set overnight or for several hours will probably be our favorite. A few of us LOVED the coffee flavored and the vanilla was good too. I'm sure the options are unlimited! It really is very, very easy and inexpensive and SO much better for you than Yoplait and other kids' yogurts. Andy and I can hardly eat Yoplait anymore because it's just so sweet. Although I do really like their Whipped yogurt :)

Always an Adventure said...

You're so inspiring, Kathy! I'm going to give it a shot!!!

BTW - you should read my post about my thrift store finds today. Thanks for sharing such good secrets!!!

Our Army of Six said...

Jenn, YOU are inspiring. I have been wanting to ask you about making butter. I would really like to try that too.

I saw your FB posts about thrifting. That's so GREAT!! I haven't been out to thrift stores here yet, but I can't wait.

Rachel Wissmann said...

It was such a blessing to discover your post! I'm thrilled to hear your yogurt-making was a success! We're already brainstorming other posts along those lines as we know feeding a large family healthy food on a tight budget is challenging! We loved the pictures of your smiling children. Thanks for sharing!

Oh! And our favorite yogurt sweetener (before getting used to the plain variety) was always a bit of cherry pie filling. Mmmmmm!

Our Army of Six said...

Rachel what a surprise and blessing to have your comment! Do you all eat the yogurt plain? I know it would be much better for us but the flavored yogurt was an acquired taste for me, so I imagine learning to eat it plain would be even more so. We will have to try the cherry pie filling! :)

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