Month: July 2012

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How to make yoghurt at home with a yoghurt maker. Natural Yoghurt with Granola

I thought it was about time to do this since I’ve talked but not really gone into depth about how to do it on Twitter, or how it works.  Making yoghurt at home is easy and really quite simple.  I wish I had done it years ago as it would have saved me a small fortune in lunch boxes.

I’ve certainly cheated by using a yoghurt machine, but how easy it is to have home-made yoghurt is ridiculous.

I bought my yoghurt machine from Lakeland, and it isn’t a bad price considering there isn’t any more outlay once you’ve bought it.  I did consider the Easiyo one.  Looking looking at the stats, it might have been cheaper initially, but it would have needed endless topping up of their sachet systems to make yoghurt with, and I thought those were very expensive.

Ok, ok, I know you just want to get into finding out how to make yoghurt, and miss out my long-winded explanations.

Starter

I was slightly apprehensive about getting my machine as I thought it would be more hit and miss, but it really was very very easy.  For this recipe, I sprinkled Granola on the top.

Home Made Natural Yoghurt Recipe

Lesley Smith
5 from 3 votes
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Ingredients
  

  • 1 litre milk. It can be cows goats, soy or sheep.
  • 2 teaspoons live culture.
  • 2 teaspoons of skimmed milk powder if you like your yoghurt very thick.

Instructions
 

  • Switch on yoghurt maker to warm up before you start.
  • Put 1 litre of milk into a jug or the dish for the yoghurt maker. I have used UHT versions of milk as to use non UHT means that it would need to be heated up. Keep UHT milk at room temperature and not in the fridge, unless it has already been opened..
  • Optional: Heat the milk gently in the microwave for a minute to take the edge off how cold the milk is.
  • Stir the milk, and add the live culture and skimmed milk powder.
  • Stir thoroughly and place the lid of the yoghurt maker on.
  • Leave for 8 hours and come back to lovely thick yoghurt.
  • Put straight in the fridge to chill for later.
  • When chilled, add any sugar, fruit or spice to taste, it can also be used for cooking.

Notes

You can use skimmed, semi-skimmed or full fat milk, and the only difference will be the thickness of the yoghurt. Adding some milk powder takes care of that and gives you a lovely thick and creamy yoghurt.
Soy yoghurt doesn't seem to take as long as the cows milk and I've found that at 6 hours, it seems to be ready.
For your starter culture, buy a plain yoghurt with live culture. Some health food stores and online will sell a powdered yoghurt starter, but I find these expensive.
Save a couple of teaspoons of your freshly made yoghurt to make your next batch 🙂
If you are using unpasturised milk, ensure that you heat it up to boiling point and let it cool before you use it for yoghurt making. This ensures that any bad bacteria are killed off before you add the lovely good live culture to your milk.

 

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Introducing cats to cats. You Tube Video Find (Cute)

I found this on Youtube, and I really couldn’t resist sharing it.  I once had to introduce a teensy kitten to two adult cats and the process was pretty similar.  We had our cats eye each other up through glass doors for a few days, but the steps seem to be pretty common and I still get asked how to introduce cats.

The cats protection league has a section titled : How can I introduce my new cat to my existing cat? which gives us good pointers on how to make the introductions slowly and with care to make sure that they accept each other.

The general steps for introducing cats to each other seems to be.

1.  Allow the animals to smell and see each other through a door for a few days, each cat with plenty food, water and comfort.

2. Slowly introduce them to each other by scent on your clothes, and on hands until they get used to the scent of each other.

3. Allow them to be in the same room in your presence where you can supervise and ensure that a vulnerable cat is safe.

4. Take your time as some cats will take longer to get used to new cats than others.

I challenge you not to say awwwww at the end of this video introducing a kitten to a cat …

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Funky Foodies July (Month 2) & WINNER for June 2012

STAR RECIPE WINNER – for June 2012 is Mama Cook with her recipe for :  Spanakopita (spinach and feta pies) for the whole family.  Congratulations.

JULY FUNKY FOODIE LINKY IS OPEN

Apologies for being a couple of days late with the start of the linky.

  • Funky Foodies is a monthly linkie, which will be opened on the first day of the month and will close on the last day.
  • A medal will be awarded for the Star Recipe every month, and the fabulous trophy in the blog badge will be awarded at the end of a whole year of the Funky Foodies.   If you want to find out more about it, read here.
  • All you have to do is share as many recipes from your own blog a month as you’d like.  If you struggle to add your recipe, send me your link and I’ll add it for you.
  • Try to pop around and share the comment love with other funky foodies.  We all like a little love and might come across some fabulous recipes.
Simply add the link to your recipe on your own blog, and share your latest recipe with everyone taking part.  If you don’t want to miss the linkie being opened, subscribe to RSS or by email in the blog header.

I’ll add recipes of mine to share, although I don’t count in the recipe challenge.

Funky Foodies

Feel free to copy the badge or use the html in the widget at the bottom of the page to add the small blog badge to your own blog / post.  It makes finding you easier for other funky foodies.

If you want to add the July blog hop to your own recipe, get the InLinkz code and add to the html.


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FREE Telecare Systems for Special Needs, Eldercare or Disability

This post isn’t one for bleating or winging about what some of us can’t get, or miss out on for our disabled or elder care families.  This one I am actually very pleased with and at the same time, massively surprised about as it seems to be UK wide, but at what levels I am not quite sure.

It started at parents night at middlers special school.  The alarm system man was there to show off the systems that can be used to help families who need to know what is happening through the night.

Imagine waking up by hearing a crying child who’d been kicked out of their bed.  Imagine hearing a noise downstairs and then investigating to find a child with front and back doors open and four burners of the gas turned on !!!!!  The potential is enormous for many parents of special needs children.  Our solution was to have one adult sleep downstairs permanently.

I had asked doctors, consultants, social workers and more for solutions to it, and the only answers I could get were to lock the doors so he couldn’t get downstairs, or put new doors on so that they could be locked.  I had visions of horror in the event of fire, or if something happened and the kids couldn’t get downstairs or out of the front door as the key is under my pillow.

Cutting a long story short, coming across these alarms is kind of bitter-sweet.  We’ve struggled for years, when there was a solution on our doorsteps, and one that the council also provides for free here.  The only charge is for things like elder care fall alerts at  £1.80 a week to link up to a call centre.

The equipment is free for us in Aberdeen, and it looks free from a lot of the local authorities I’ve had a look at.  I think Aberdeenshire is £4 month, but I think most people could stretch to that for peace of mind.

After persuading my mother that she needed an alert too after falling downstairs and making this mess of herself, she finally gave in to the fact that there needs to be some way of raising an alarm when I’m here as well as when I’m away.  I was two rooms away and had no idea she had fallen face first from the top to the bottom of the stairs.

The picture was 2 days after falling.  By 5 days, the bruising had joined up under her eyes and cheekbones.  The kids said that her bruises were “growing”.   Although she looks nowhere near her 77 years, she has arthritis which makes falling actually quite easy.  There were no broken bones which amazed me.

She has two pendants and a wrist watch style fall alert.  If she falls with the watch on, it automatically sends an alert to my wrist watch and to the care centre, just in case I don’t hear it.   She can use the pendants to either just get my attention, or to go to a call centre for help if I am not here.

We have a door alarm on middlers door which is actually quite small (wandering alert).  It goes to a unit which I keep beside my bed and wakes me up if his door is opened.  He doesn’t know how I know that he has left his room and I can usher him back to his bedroom and safety.

Alert Handset

In Aberdeen, they are raising awareness of the systems as too few people seem to know about them.  My first question was “how much will it cost”.  Sceptical as usual….    The equipment was installed within 2 weeks of my initial self referral.  An assessor came out to do an assessment of what would be needed, and two fitters came a mere few days later to install all the equipment.

The service was absolutely amazing, and I don’t say that lightly.

If you know someone who could benefit from peace of mind, let them know to look for it in their area.  They really are worth having and I have to say it again, I have been enormously impressed by the Aberdeen Telecare Information Service.

We’re sleeping easier and the wrecked lounge come bedroom is getting a makeover to celebrate it’s return to being solely a lounge.