Memorial Day, homemade yogurt, homemade frozen yogurt

good early evening y'all!!          I hope and pray that this finds everyone doing well and happy to be a part of such a beautiful day.         it's been a very pleasant change from the last couple of days with all the storms that rolled thru my neck of the woods.          I'm thankful for the protection of God over us and I pray for those who have lost loved ones to this and all the other storms. 

today is the day that Americans celebrate Memorial Day to remember all the people who have given their lives in service to this great country.         many Americans have died trying to keep people safe all over the world.        it's one thing when the rest of the world doesn't appreciate the sacrifice, but it's a totally different kind of disrespect when some americans don't appreciate the sacrifice.        so I just have to say that I'm thankful for all the men and women who have given the most that can be given to a country, their lives.         the saying, "all gave some, some gave all", really has more meaning on this day and I pray that we have all remembered what today is all about.        thank you to all the veterans and active service people who are serving this country now.       you are our heroes.       thank you for your service!!

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I finally got back to making something that I absolutely love.         homemade yogurt!!!        it's made in the instant pot that has a yogurt setting.         it has to have a yogurt setting or it won't work.        it takes "ultra high pasteurization" milk, such as fairlife or kroger carbmaster.         fairlife is not quite a half gallon and kroger carbmaster is a full half gallon.        I mention that because with the kroger carbmaster, I feel like you get your moneys worth and not so with fairlife brand.    then I  add a couple of tablespoons of a really good plain, unsweetened greek yogurt such as chobani brand.     make sure that what ever you get has lots of different live active yogurt cultures in it.        the more the better.

I put the milk and yogurt in the instant pot and set it on the yogurt setting and put about 18 to 20 hours on the countdown.        I like my yogurt to have a lot of tang.         you can set it to 8 hours and that's what most people like, but I love a lot of tang.

this first pic is of the finished yogurt.         I stuck my spatula in it to see how thick it was.         it's looking really good.

I have a basket that I use in my electric pressure cookers to cook meats and veggies or anything that I want strained and it turns out that it's the perfect strainer for me to strain my yogurt with.        I set the strainer in a bowl on top of a rack in the bottom of the bowl to give lots of room for the whey to strain off.    I line the strainer basket with a flour sack towel and pour the yogurt into it.

here the yogurt has been poured into the strainer and it's already staining the whey off.    I try to get the yogurt in the fridge, straining, just before I go to bed, that way early in the morning it's ready to take from the strainer and get dished up and back into the fridge.

I take the flour sack towel and twist it up and just lay it on top of the strainer.         if you let the towel hang over the edge of the strainer, it will wick the whey out into the fridge and that's a mess you don't want to have to deal with.          trust me on this.       hahaha         I learned the hard way.   

once I got the greek yogurt made, I decided we needed to try some frozen greek yogurt.        my friend had made some and I wanted to make some too.          my hubby's favorite all time frozen yogurt is black cherry yogurt.        it just turned out that I had some frozen black cherries in the freezer.       Yay!!!         I got out about a cup of them and thawed them some and sliced them up.        I got my ice cream freezer bowl out of the freezer in the garage and put the yogurt and black cherries in it and in about 15 minutes I had frozen yogurt.      

it does look pretty good, if I do say so myself.           my hubby thought it was delicious!!         and it was.

it look really nice in the bowl and it was really creamy.

this is what we enjoyed and I do mean enjoy.

my one take away from this experience is that the next time I make the black cherry yogurt, I will thaw the cherries completely and maybe put them in the food processor for just a pulse or two.         slicing the cherries didn't break them up enough and I think pulsing them in the food processor would also give a little more color to the overall color of the finished yogurt and I think it would also add more actual flavor to the yogurt.          we really enjoyed this and I'll be making it again.

back to making the yogurt.           I went to the dollar tree and got a got couple quart cartons of shelf stable whole milk to try.          it was ultra high pasteurized and I wondered it if would work.          well, I'm happy to say that it did work wonderfully.          it was the creamiest and smoothest yogurt that I've ever made.

and, when I made the black cherry yogurt, I forgot to save enough to start my next batch.         you always want to save 2 or 3 tablespoons per half gallon of milk.       well, I didn't have any yogurt, but I did have a quart of whey from that batch.         I used about a cup of whey to the 2 quarts that I had gotten at the dollar tree and that worked wonderfully!!!!!         I had never used whey as a starter, but had heard you could.          and as it turns out, you can.         

I always pour up the whey into a quart jar and save it to use in soups and breads and whatever, and as it turns out, I was really happy that I had saved it because I would have had to go to kroger to get some yogurt to use as my starter.         but I didn't have to.         and I can say that this yogurt will stay in my fridge for the foreseeable future.          it's so very easy to make, just a little time consuming and I'm ok with that.

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I hope you have a great day and I pray that you have a restful night or healing sleep.        I pray that you can sleep tonight knowing that "God is; all is well".         I pray that if you don't Christ as your personal Savior, that tonight will be the night that you ask Him to save your soul.         He's just waiting for you to ask Him.       

I guess this is about all I have for tonight.         I hope to be back with more real soon.        I hope you check out more of my blog posts and feel free to leave me a message.       always remember that God loves and so do I.         hugs and blessings, patty