Homemade Yogurt!

We eat a lot of yogurt in our home and it is delicious! It's full of wonderful good for you fat and probiotics. Matthew and I love Greek Yogurt - Aidan prefers the Horizon Organic Yogurt in a Tube (not exactly completely whole foods but not filled with artificial stuff). So at about $1.25 for 6 ounces of yogurt times 2 a day for myself and sometimes 2 a day for Matthew, that adds up quickly! So, I decided to invest less than $30 on a yogurt maker from Amazon and get the starter grains for Greek and Bulgarian yogurt. Well - it's incubating and I am hoping it will turn out good! The above picture is my yogurt maker in action!
I am learning a lot more about the benefits of milk in one's diet. Even if you are lactose intolerant, you can benefit from yogurt and cheeses - especially homemade or made with raw milk products. Right now our family is drinking some delicious low pasteurized, non homogenized milk from JD Country Dairy out of KY. It's a little on the spendy side - about $9 for a gallon - but OMG!! It's sooooo worth it! Shake it up to mix the cream in and you have a wonderfully tasty delicious glass of milk. Even my non-milk drinking husband loves it! I stocked up yesterday at the Amish Country Pantry - 2 1/2 gallons so I could make plenty of yogurt after I get my serial culture up and running (when you make yogurt with a starter, you reserve a little of it to the side to produce other batches with - thus a serial culture). I will go more in depth about the great benefits of WHOLE, FULL FAT milk and even raw milk in a later post. I am reading about it now and it's pretty interesting. But one tidbit - a mammals milk - breast milk, bovine, goats milk is the most complete form of milk! It has all of the nutrients, ingredients, vitamins and everything one needs. Even though I breast feed for many reasons, I am learning what the HUGE benefits for a baby really are - brain development, gut development, antibodies, the list goes on!
Oh and a word about my sprouting grains - I have rinsed them and I am leaving them to sit for 24-36 while they sprout. Check out the pic of my new wide mouth sprout straining lids! So much easier than cheese cloth held on with an extra small hair scrunchy - LOL!