Ordinary Day

In my experience, ordinary days are the best kind of days. Interspersed with a day of excitement and change here and there, it makes a very good life.

Yesterday I canned some tomato sauce using tomatoes from our garden. The tomatoes are trickling in and so as not to lose them, I can them a few at a time.

Since I use a water bath to can tomatoes it’s not a big ordeal. This batch had a lot of yellow tomatoes in it so it isn’t as vividly red as most batches.

I used pint jars and boiled them for 40 minutes. They will be great this winter for small recipes of chili, soup, etc. I used to put basil leaves in the sauce when I canned it but the basil turns black and doesn’t do a thing for the sauce. It’s better to add the basil later when you’re cooking with the sauce.

Another thing I did yesterday was to make yogurt. I love yogurt and homemade yogurt made with live cultures has such healthy probiotics. I bought a culture from Homesteader Supply called Ly-Pro Y+. And it it super! I use a Yogotherm these days to make yogurt. I don’t like tying up my Instant Pot and I have some serious struggles using the IP with yogurt, mine gets too hot.

A Yogotherm is simply a little bucket that sits in an insulated container. The bucket holds about 3 quarts of milk . You heat the milk, let it cool to room temp and then add the culture/inoculant, stir well and pour it into the bucket. Then you cover the bucket and place it inside the Yogotherm and put the lid on that. It is ready in 5-8 hours. You could use about 1/3 cup of live, active culture yogurt instead of the culture. I think you could use a small styrofoam ice chest to do the same thing if you wanted to.

I will say though that this Ly-Pro Y+ culture is pretty great. I had two quarts of milk left that wouldn’t fit in the Yogotherm so I just put it in quart jars and wrapped the with a towel. They will firm and ready in about the same time as the Yogotherm yogurt.

I want some Greek style yogurt so I put the two quarts of yogurt in my Hatrigo yogurt stainer. I’ll keep the whey that strains out to ferment vegetables.

That was my ordinary day yesterday. Who knows what today holds!