Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Salad table planting and yogurt issues

It's early spring and besides the fact that the weather hasn't cooperated it's still time to get some cool crops going.
Pete improved the salad table he made last year so furry mammals of all sorts would keep out of the soil. We can also cover it with a sort of row cover to continue getting greens as long as possible.
Owen and I (Ty is fighting off a stomach bug today) got some seeds in the table today and made signs to remember what's what.

Owen planting peas

signs and reminder map

happy gardener!

Now onto another issue ... I got 2 quarts of yogurt form the farm yesterday and they were VERY liquid. Basically, it was thickened milk with a slight yogurt taste. Not knowing exactly what I should do to fix the issue, I asked questions to people I knew might be able to help. One of the thoughts was that the live active cultures might not have had time to truly develop and ferment the yogurt ... the fix for that is about 110 degrees for about 6 hours. If after that the yogurt is still liquid, oh well ... just use a straw :)
Ok, maybe another solution is adding a thickener in there, which I don't wanna do. There is also the option of pouring the yogurt into a double or triple layer of cheesecloth to drain some of the whey or simply use the yogurt for smoothies, shakes and such.
So what did I do? I am using my nifty little dehydrator and I am waiting patiently for it to thicken my yogurt up ...

there they are!
well, they needed a towel to truly keep warm since the containers are much taller than the space between the shelf and the dehydrator lid. I think I am already noticing some thickening and they have only been in there for an hour.
To be continued ...

UPDATE:
It's been 2 hours and it is TOTALLY working!!!! I can't believe it! The whey has risen a bit and it's now gooey like Jello!! I drained some whey out and LOOK!! one of the batches even looks like yogurt now!!!




2 comments:

  1. good idea Alice! I have a dehydrator that I have yet to use. I am hoping that once warm weather hits and the boys can play on the deck/yard and drive way I can set my dehydrator up. What are some of your favorite things to dehydrate?

    ReplyDelete