Today I was the domestic goddess. M. and I made yogurt:
The little jar on the right is the starter for the next batch. It will be kept tightly shut in the refrigerator until we make yogurt again so it doesn’t pick up any yucky little beasties. Two of the other jars will be drained to make greek yogurt. The remaining jar will probably go in our favorite waffles or biscuits. I have a yogurt maker, but I prefer making it in larger containers so I don’t have to fuss with lots of little jars. I was never really happy with the yogurt from my yogurt maker anyway. I now use David Fankhauser’s method with great success. Fankhauser incubates the yogurt at a little higher temperature than normally recommended because the yogurt bacteria are thermophilic and like the higher temps and it inhibits the bad stuff growth. Leave it to a biochemist to tweak home yogurt making procedures! A nice benefit of the higher temp incubation is that the “yogging” (highly technical yogurt-making term) takes less time, and I think the finished product is less tart, or less unpleasantly tart, since yogurt is always going to be tart due to the lactic acid fermentation process that makes it all happen.
We made pizza dough this morning and put it in the refrigerator for tonight’s dinner:
Homemade pizza is such a yummy treat. One of my fondest 4-H memories is doing a pizza making team demonstration with my best friend. We made and ate so much pizza while we were practicing!
I pulled out the sourdough starter and fed it to make bread tomorrow:
I’ve had my starter for four years, but it’s terribly deprived and mistreated. It has no name. Apparently it should have a name to be a completely fulfilled starter. So now I’m stressing about what to name the jar of boozy dough in the refrigerator.
I even did some mending today. I must have caught some homemaker virus! My dad brought some shirts up for mending a (mumble) few (mumble) weeks ago and had been dropping hints that he’ll be forced to go about shirtless if I don’t get them back to him.
Of course all this domestic activity was an excuse for putting off what I really should be doing: finishing midsemester grade reports and writing new genetics labs. There’s always next week! I did knit a few rounds on the Dalegarn husband hat, just to make sure I was a well-rounded domestic goddess today.
