I Made Yogurt and Granola

First, thank you so much for all of your sweet comments, encouragement, and tips in response to my last post.

Second, the night I wrote that post, I got lost on 100daysofrealfood.com (via Marth via Audrey). It's a pretty kick-butt blog concept, the whole eating-real-food thing. And it completely convicted me, especially when I thought about how much I eat that comes from a box in the center of the grocery store.

In response, I made her granola (for our cereal...J must have cereal in the morn):



Sans coconut, with flaxseed. Nothing like the smell of melting butter with honey!



(you can either make bars at this point, or break it up for cereal, like I did.)

Close up:



Yum! Jonathan likes it too. I need to price this and see how much it cost to make it compared to a box of Kashi...

Next, and lots more exciting in its groundbreaking-ness, was making yogurt in the crock pot. Yes you heard me. Making yogurt in the crock pot. How genius! Recipe I used is here.

All you have to buy is a half-gallon of milk and a small carton of plain yogurt as your "starter" (but you can use 1/2 c of your first batch as your next starter! and on and on...). Worlds cheaper than buying yogurt loaded with sugar. And it's so flippin' easy.

You just cook the milk on low in the crock pot for 2.5 hours. Then turn it off and let it sit for 3 hours. Then ladle out some of the warm milk, stir it with your "starter" plain yogurt, dump that back in and stir into the pot. Then cover the whole crock pot (lidded, of course) with a towel, and let it sit for 8 hours. So easy!



The recipe actually made 7 of these containers, but one had already been consumed when I took this photo. (FYI: I used 2% organic milk instead of Vitamin D milk and the texture is fine...very very similar to what we had while in Italia!)



Yummy with strawberries (and the granola above too!) and a little honey. I haven't tried making flavors yet, but the recipe says you can blend it with fruit (and maybe add a little gelatin to thicken). You can also strain it through a coffee filter inside a colander to get more Greek-style yogurt (will try that soon).

Making yogurt is definitely something I will continue doing. I love yogurt! And I will LOVE not paying out the nose for it too, especially when bebe comes. I've heard babies like yogurt.


What next? Bran muffins?

Any healthful recipes that have blown your mind lately like this crock pot yogurt did mine?