Two yogurt makers: Part III

Not even a year ago I got Gertie my first new yogurt maker, well ever, since my first yogurt maker was in fact a hand-me-down from my Mom.  Last November, Gertie went to live with my Mom.

It is not that I didn't love Gertie, I did, mostly.  But it was one of those relationships that happened so fast.  There was an empty place in my life where a really really old yogurt maker had been & things were fine until one day, a new cow arrived & then I was up to my eyeballs in milk & that is when I realized my old yogurt maker was just too old.

Gertie was a beauty (& still is, I didn't just dump her; she has actually gone on to live with my Mom--yes, all my life's a circle).  She was the first yogurt maker I ever met who could handle a full two quarts.  She was enchanting & we were very happy...at first.

But Gertie had some flaws.  She has a curved lid, making it very hard to find a place for her in a rather full kitchen cabinet.  I have lost track of how many times the top slid off when I was moving here & it was just a matter of time before it cracked.  Also, Gertie came with only one canister for making the yogurt itself.  I tried to get more but it just was not possible.  Finally, that canister was not the best design anyone ever thought up; in order to get it out of the yogurt maker itself, I usually ended up flipped the lid off.  Even with my small strong fingers, I had trouble getting a good enough grip.

Then I saw May (that's right, my new yogurt maker is called May.  Her full name is Yogourmet, but I call her May).  May has a flat top, it is possible to buy extra canisters (I bought three), but more than that, May works on a different heating idea.  Inside May, the canister rests in a water bath, making a nice even heat throughout.  No more much cooked milk at the bottom & runny sludge at the top.  Because of the water it is possible to make yogurt from irregular sized batches of milk (which is how they come out of the cow; I am still stunned by people who think she has a spigot & a scale).

I hope to be happy with May for many many years.  But I am also glad the others have all gone to good homes.  Recycling & all that.

Yogurt maker the second

Yes, yes it is true my previous post a tale of two yogurt makers actually only had one yogurt maker in it.  I ran out of time.  So without further ado, here she is My New Yogurt Maker!  I call her Gertie & she is a dream.

One of the reasons there was no second yogurt maker in the other post is I did not get around to using her until late last month.  Hey, I was busy.  & then I got a new cow (NEW COW!) & then I had more milk than I usually have & went looking for a purpose.

Now I finish the morning milking & I take those results & do the whole heat-cool-mix in cultures thing.  Then into Gertie it goes, somewhere between 10:15-10:30, out again eight hours later & into the fridge overnight.  For breakfast the next morning we have two quarts of the best yogurt you have ever, ever tasted.  This week I have been mixing it with M******'s homemade granola & the blueberries A got from a co-worker (we swapped for farm fresh eggs). 

A tale of two yogurt makers

It has been many many years since I made yogurt the old-fashioned way: heat the ingredients, cool the ingredients, add the culture & let it sit, warmly, for upwards of eight hours.  It has, in fact, been decades.  The last time I made yogurt this way had to be sometime before 1992.  How can I be so sure?  Easy:  in 1992 I moved to north joisey & they have laws against doing anything good-for-you that does not involve a hefty gym membership...

OKay the real reason is we moved out of our apartment in Storrs, CT.  & what made this such a magical yogurt making apartment, you ask?  Well, let me tell you: sometime before my residence there hot water was included in the rent, but that changed.  As a result each apartment had to be fixed with its own hot water heater & in almost every case this meant what was the front closet became the hot water heater closet.  The hot water heater filled most of the space, but there remained a shelf at the top (for storing anything that could be subjected to daily increases in temperature with or without high humidity depending on the water heater's state of repair).  Between the water heater itself & the shelf there was a gap just big enough for a glass topped bowl & with a little big of plywood rigged up a yogurt making/bread dough rising space was created.  All I had to do was the heat, cool & add cultures thing, then A took a shower, then I took a shower, maybe did a few dishes, etc.  With adequate insulation & spreading these tasks out over six or so hours, it was perfect.

After we moved & alas, no such space existed, or could even be made to exist.  In Joisey, landlords never ever included hot water so there was space accessible only from the outside for the hot water heater & I caved & got a yogurt maker.  Actually I acquired my mother's yogurt maker, a machine that was looking retro even then.  & for many years we were happy together.

Sure, me & that old yogurt maker, we had our ups& downs.  That timer looking thing on the top there is more like a dial; you set it to the time you should turn off (which in the absence of a fancy-shmancy switch means unplug) the yogurt maker; the appliance itself does nothing on its own except make kinda-even heat.  More than once I had a batch of very very tangy yogurt when I left it too long, but it made lovely cheese so all was not lost.

Last week, I taught C****** the heat & add & keep warm thing & sent her home with a batch of not-yet-yogurt & my mother's old yogurt maker.  I did this, of course to make room for my new yogurt maker.  It arrived on Tuesday, just in time for me to gaze at it longingly while I got ready for bookclub.

Color: the beginning & the end

Last Tuesday, we had our second to last bookclub of the year; yes we have an off-sort-of schedule.  This means that in addition to our regularly scheduled book discussion, we also picked the books for the upcoming year (which starts in May).  Last March-ish we choose the book we read last night & we really had no idea how things would line up.  So it happened that on Fat Tuesday, we had our discussion for Color: A Natural History of the Palette.

As I may have said before (I cannot recall & I cannot be bothered to look), we have food with our book on the second Tuesday of nine of the twelve months (we rest in July, August, & December).  Sometimes we try to match the food to the book, sometimes we don't, sometimes some of us do & some if us don't.  For whatever reason, last night -with the least accessible book food-wise that I think we have ever had- we all decided to eat-in-theme.  & that theme was color.  I made white bread, white rice & a yogurt spread that was....white.  Others brought pickled beets & carrot soup, chocolate, black beans & so forth.  We also had a dessert of white cake, white creme & a painters palette of fruit.

As for the selection, it is always a surprise to me what people will choose bookwise.  I sat down thinking there was really only one of my candidates I really wanted; less than half-way thru the process I was completely prepared to cut it loose & forget about it but others were now very interested (in what is a I admit a bit of dated dime fiction-that is what I like about it).  We ended up with:

May 10th - Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
June 14th -Waking up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson
September 13th - Palace Walk by Nagib Mahfouz
October  11th - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
November 8th - The Dining Room by A. R. Gurney
January 10th - The Thousand  Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
February 14th - Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
March 13th - Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
April 10th - Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
  with the extra for the overachiever of  Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout .

We also had a lively discussion about how obsessed a woman has to be with the origins of color to go wandering around Afghanistan looking for a guide who can she her where the lapis lazuli comes from.  These are the kinds of people we love to read about & are mostly glad not to be. 

The meeting ran late & by the time we wrapped up I was ready for bed.  B****** looked ready too; I almost offered her the futon in A's office, but I know she has dogs to get home to.  S**** & L**** were driving M****** home; she was planning to stay up for several more hours packing for a trip to Vancouver.  C****** left us to go on to a Mardi Gras party that was more or less just getting started.

Next month our book is The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle.  This most recent time was the first time anyone came in costume, but I am kinda hoping she does it again...

Happy Cow Mating Day

A long long time ago, decades even my sister was a freshman at an educational institution in the great state of Vermont. Wait, let me go back a bit further: in addition to being the homeland of the Green Mountain Boys (& if you are big on your own patriotism & you don't know who they are you should hang your head in shame), it is also the birth place of Ben & Jerry's famous ice cream.  & those B&J cows are everywhere.  Not just as Ben & Jerry's trademark, but the actual cow-cows. 

Back to my sister.  She is ticking along, being a student-that whole gig, when she learns there will be no class on March the first because it is Cow Mating Day.  She already knew they took their cows seriously & as a family we have a long standing bad habit of asking fewer questions the crazier something sounds & so Happy Cow Mating Day it was.  As for how long it took to get resolved, I either never knew or just plain forgot (my money is on never knew-see previous sentence) but it did eventually get straightened out.  While many of the original thirteen colonies/new england states do still have old-time-y town meetings, only Vermont has such a day designated as a state holiday & they call it Town Meeting Day.  Go ahead say it aloud...with a Vermont accent...while standing next to a giant cut-out of a holstein:  Cow Mating Day?  It could be.

This means the people of Vermont, if they choose, may take this day to participate in local politics.  Even in 2011 many towns still hold their annual meetings on this day & vote on budgets; in Vermont all town budgets must be approved by a direct vote of the electorate.

What else can I say except that this is hardly the strangest idea coming out of Vermont to take hold nationwide.  Those born in Vermont include Brigham Young & Joseph Smith (yes, him of the magic underwear), Rudy Vallee, Robert Frost, Wilson Bentley, etc.  As for those who worked & died in Vermont how about Shirley Jackson, Norman Rockwell & even one who while never in my lit classes was associate with Vermont wrote his most famous work there: Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book in Brattleboro.

Finally I would not want to forget those Green Mountain Boys at the top of the page.  Green Mountain for the vert mont in which they lived & boys because they were a band of high spirited testosterone-overloaded youngsters who were not about to let some occupying government collect taxes & give them nothing for it. In an interesting statistical sidebar: Vermont has also registered the most casualties in Afghanistan & Iraq as a percentage of their overall population.  Yes, other states have lost more, but Vermont barely had them to lose. 

So let me be the first, probably, to ever wish you a most joyous Cow Mating Day.  You can celebrate by eating all natural diary products & participating in the day-to-day administration of your local governing body.  I will observe the day teaching C****** how to make home-made yogurt.  No, really.