Happy Valentine's Day!

Gawd, I hate computers sometimes. I had a full blog post all typed out, and it just....vanished.

Disappeared. NO reason.

We are trying to make home made yogurt today, despite many obstacles in our way.

I had tested the oven previously, to see if it was even a feasible idea to try to make yogurt without a yogurt machine. The oven passed with flying colors....set on "warm," it maintained a steady, low temp around 105, 110.

BUT, of course, today, putting it on warm resulted in it going to 150. Too hot for culturing yogurt.

So, Dave went out and got a heating pad, something I read about on two home made yogurt web sites.

The heating pad only allowed the milk in the pot to get up to about 85. Not hot enough.

Back into the oven. What I am doing is periodically putting the oven on, and turning it off, and praying that all of the work that went into getting a half gallon of organic milk up to the culturing stage will not be wasted....

along with the actual half gallon of organic milk, a third of a cup of powdered milk (to make the yogurt more creamy), a quarter cup of organic maple syrup, and a table spoon of organic vanilla extract.

Just gonna have to pray it turns out. Damned unreliable oven.

At this rate, because of all of the delays and the bad heating, I will be up all freakin' night waiting for it to be ready to put in jars.

(it's supposed to culture at a steady temp for 8 to 12 hours)

We went out to Cheesecake Factory for lunch yesterday...holy freakin' crap... $60 for two sandwiches and a dessert that we shared. Absurd. It was really good, though!

That was our Valentine's date, a day early.

Dave got me some Godiva truffles, and a rose. I got him a pair of cute "sleep shorts." They're more for me, actually. And we exchanged cards.
This is our first Valentine's day together, in the same state, county, town, and dwelling!!

Happy Valentine's Day to those who celebrate it!

UPDATE: what a complete EFFING waste of time, energy, money, and milk. The oven got too hot, even with trying to cycle it on "warm."

The culturing milk went up over 150 degrees, and that most assuredly killed the cultures.

I will not be trying this again.