When you know someone very well...

... it becomes more and more difficult to surprise them.

Last night Elliot discovered a single hole punch on the dining table. He immediately knew that I made him a birthday card earlier that day. Though I thought I had carefully cleaned up the traces I missed one vital piece of evidence. Elliot's birthday is on Thursday and he has already guessed what kind of cake I'm making and what will be for dinner (the telltale ingredients were in the fridge!) My attempts at hiding things could be better but since I know that he doesn't mind knowing in advance I don't try too hard.

Homemade Yogurt

I've been trying my hand at homemade yogurt these last few weeks and it is actually pretty easy. Initially I wanted to try making kefir but decided that I probably wouldn't use it as much as homemade yogurt. I checked out a book about homemade dairy by Ashley English and went to work.
In a nutshell the keys are to have some tasty plain yogurt to start with (a few T.), milk, a thermometer and something in which to keep your yogurt warm. The key is to incubate the cultures + cooked/cooled milk for ~7 hours at 110 F. I use our crock-pot. I set it to low while I heat the milk (to 180 F then it must be cooled to 120 F so you don't kill the cultures). After cooling the milk and adding the starter (yogurt from the last batch or the store is fine) I put it in jars and place them in the crock-pot. Then I turn the crock-pot OFF and stuff dish towels around the jars to keep them nice n' warm.
Once the yogurt is set several hours later I whisk it a bit and refrigerate.

We eat it with homemade muesli or fruit. Yum.