There is such a thing, I believe.

People who shop for food and are inspired.

People whose brains are bursting with new food ideas.

People who can look into a fridge filled with random ingredients, and then concoct a delicious dinner that uses all that assorted food.

That’s just not who I am, though.

I can cook, certainly.  I do that almost every single day.

And I can bake.

But the successes I experience in the kitchen are not the result of some special gift that has been bestowed upon me.

And that should be an encouragement to you. Proper cooking is not a skill that can belong only to those for whom it comes naturally.

No, anyone can cook.

As my mom likes to say, if you can read, you can cook.

I would add that if you’re willing to practice and you’ve got good recipes, you can cook.

I’ve been practicing in the kitchen since my early teen years, but I haven’t produced any new, exciting creations.  I just follow recipes.

And you can do that too.

Will you be a little slow at first?  Yes.  Will you botch some things?  Yep.

But if you hang in there, and if you read and follow the instructions, there’s no reason for you to say, “I can’t cook.”

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Pictured food in order of appearance:

Applesauce

Shrimp Viennese

Whole Wheat Bread

Grilled Pizza

Cook’s Grilled Fajitas (I haven’t shared this recipe)

Sloppy Joes

Cherry Danishes

Spinach Salad, which just follows a basic formula (Spinach, some fruit, some nuts, plus cheese if you like.).  And I got the idea for that from my friend Laura.  See?  Not creative.

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Today’s 365 post: Know what’s surprising in this picture?

Joshua’s 365 post: Manekineko

My mom gave me some more tomatoes, so I had another little canning session.

It was a lot less nerve-wracking this time since I knew what I was doing.

Anyway, I now have seven more quarts of local, organic tomatoes, which makes me happy.

While I was in kitchen mode, I did some other cooking too.  I made some chocolate pudding, and it was really, really good.  I used some cocoa powder from Tropical Traditions and I also used some local milk, and I’m not sure which made the difference, but it was fabulous.

Somehow I have not posted the recipe I use for chocolate pudding.  I will try to rectify that.

I also made a batch of whole wheat bread.

And a batch of yogurt.

To finish things up, Lisey helped me make a double batch of energy balls.

You know what is one of my favorite things about homemade food?  I love how much packaging waste it prevents.

My tomato jars can be completely reused except for the lids.

My pudding ingredients all come in recyclable/compostable containers and the finished pudding is in reusable glass containers.

My whole wheat bread is stored in reused plastic bags.

My yogurt packaging produces no waste at all (even the lids can be reused since I’m not actually sealing my yogurt jars).

My energy balls are just fine in my lasts-forever Pyrex container.

Plus, everything I made is delicious and inexpensive, and a number of my ingredients were organic/local.

Sometimes, trying to minimize the food packaging we bring into our house seems like an impossible and/or expensive task, so I’m always thrilled when I manage to do that AND be frugal.  Yay!

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Today’s 365 post: A little storm blew through

Joshua’s 365 post: Archeopteryx

I’m sorry.  That is a really long title, but I couldn’t think of a more concise way to put it.

And since I’m the managing editor of my blog, I get to do rule-breaking things like publishing posts with really long titles.

It’s quite a position of power, I tell you.

Ok, so, today’s blog topic is for those of you that are sort of new to this whole cooking/baking thing.  I’ve observed a phenomenon among you that may very well be hampering your efforts to feed yourselves and your family more homemade food.

Sometimes, when someone has subsisted mostly on prepared food (takeout, frozen food, mixes, etc.), seeing the ingredients that go into a recipe can be sort of alarming. It’s not so much that homemade recipes are inordinately riddled with unhealthy ingredients, it’s that the person in question is not accustomed to seeing what goes into the food they eat.

For instance, if you’ve only ever bought jam in the form of commercial jars, when you see that the recipe for homemade blueberry jam calls for 5 cups of sugar, you may very well faint.  The thing is, though, the jam you’ve been buying in the jars from the store? It’s got at least that much sugar, and more than likely, the sugar is coming in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

And when you try making yogurt, the fact that the vanilla version calls for a cup of sugar may make you uncomfortable.  But it’s good to bear in mind that most commercial yogurt (except for the sugarless plain stuff) has at least that much sugar (likely HFCS).

And if you were horrified at the amount of fat and sugar in the Coffee Shop Corn Muffins I posted, you should know that the ones at the coffee shop and the ones from the mix and the ones they sell in the grocery store bakery probably have as much or more fat and sugar (and the fat in the boxed mixes is usually a Crisco-like substance).

So.

The difficulty comes about when the horror at the fat, sugar, and salt content of recipes causes a person to heavily modify said recipes.

It’s not that recipes cannot be modified successfully (though you should never tinker with a jam/jelly recipe because it probably won’t set up properly), and it’s not that reducing the sugar/oil in a recipe is an awful idea.

The problem is that if you and your household are used to eating the prepared version of these foods, making a homemade, uber-healthified version is probably not going to go over super well. You’ll probably dislike the homemade version and go back to eating the store-bought stuff, and that’s not going to save you money or help you be healthier.

For instance, if you cook up a big pot of plain brown oatmeal with no sugar and try to serve it to kids who are accustomed to eating Dinosaur Egg oatmeal, they’re probably going to refuse to eat it.  So take a deep breath, stir in some cinnamon, some brown sugar, and top it off with some half and half.  It’ll probably still be healthier than Dinosaur Egg oatmeal, and it’ll be a heck of a lot cheaper.

And if you’re switching your fruity-sweetened-yogurt-cup-consuming family over to homemade yogurt, it’s probably not a good idea to stick bowls of plain, unsweetened yogurt in front of them.  Make the vanilla version, stir in some fruit, and they’ll be much more receptive to the homemade stuff.

As a last for-instance, if your household routinely eats frozen pizzas, don’t serve up a whole-wheat, topped-with-only-vegetables pizza.  Make a crust with white flour and use the toppings you normally eat (the Thin-Crust pizza recipe is a great one to try and it doesn’t even require any kneading).

Once your household is accustomed to eating homemade versions of food, you can feel a little more free to adjust the recipes gradually (you could try using 3/4 cup of sugar in your yogurt instead of 1 cup or you could try adding a bit of whole wheat flour to your pizza crust).

But really, the bottom line is that even if you don’t gradually make your homemade recipes more healthy, you’ll probably still be better off eating homemade food than prepared food. Homemade food almost always uses more natural ingredients (you can’t exactly buy high fructose corn syrup to stir into your homemade yogurt!) and homemade food can easily be made without artificial preservatives and additives.  Plus, since homemade food is fresh (it doesn’t have to sit on a shelf for a long time before it’s eaten), it doesn’t require nearly as much salt as processed food does in order to taste good.

And as a bonus, homemade food usually produces less trash than processed food does.

So, if you’re just getting acquainted with your kitchen, don’t stress yourself out by trying to prepare only foods that are utterly and completely sin-free.  Relax and follow the recipe.

It’s ok. 

(p.s. Please know that I am not trying to condemn every packaged food. In fact, I often feed my kids a box of mac n cheese from Aldi on our Friday night takeout date nights.  I’m just trying to offer help and encouragement to people who are desirous of reducing their dependence on more processed foods.)

Today’s 365 post: I’m always grateful…

Joshua’s 365 post: What I’m Reading

Recently a reader emailed me with the following question.

HOW does one get started being frugal? I stink at it, but know that God’s wanting me to be a much better steward.

I’m overwhelmed and have no idea where to start.

-CM

Normally, I would say that in order to have a frugal transformation, a person needs to have a changed mindset. Trying to live frugally when your heart is still in spendthrift mode is awfully hard. But, you, dear reader, sound like you’ve already got the itch to live frugally and are just wanting to practical where-to-start advice.

So, I’m going to share my top ideas and then I’m going to ask the rest of my readers to chime in with their top five beginner frugal activities!

1. Cut back on eating out.

Eating out is insanely expensive. This was brought home to me on vacation when a sit-down meal for the six of us at a mid-priced chain restaurant cost over $80 (I did have gift cards, never fear!). In a pinch, I can feed all of us for an entire week for $80, and we spent that on just one meal at a restaurant. Yikes.

Takeout food and fast food, while not as expensive as sit-down food, are still far more pricey than eating at home., If you want to save money, cooking and eating at home is one of the most effective ways to accomplish that.

Here are a few tips to avoid eating out.

-plan a menu. Keep it simple. If you plan difficult meals, you’ll want to eat out.

-make a grocery list and stick to it.

-do a little dinner prep early in the day. (get meat out from the freezer, chop some veggies)

-if necessary, buy some convenience foods at the grocery store. They’ll likely be cheaper than takeout.

If you want to start cooking dinner, check out some the main dish recipes I’ve posted.  A lot of them are very easy, and my family and I think they’re all delicious.

2. Don’t shop unless it’s necessary.

Unless you’ve got tons of self-control, stay away from malls and department stores. Only go there when you’ve got a specific purpose in mind (taking a frugal person with you is a good idea for accountability purposes!).

3. Switch to a cash budget.

I personally use credit cards (I pay them off every month and only buy things I’d buy otherwise), but if you’re having trouble controlling your spending, consider switching to cash only. This will keep you from splurging at the store and from online shopping sprees.

4. Explore the second-hand market.

Of course, buying second-hand stuff willy-nilly won’t save you money, but when you need to buy or replace something, consider looking second-hand before you buy. Freecycle, half.com, Ebay, Craig’s List, the Pennysaver, flea markets, and thrift stores are all good places to find gently used items. And if you’ve got kids, hand-me-downs are an awesome thing…put the word out and let people know you’d be happy to be a hand-me-down recipient.

5. Hang out with frugal people either online or in real life.

I’ve written before about the power of positive peer pressure, and I’m still convinced of its value. Being with people who are trying to be careful with their money will likely inspire you and help you to be careful with your money.

If you have frugal friends in real life, make it a point to hang out with them so that you can learn from them and be encouraged to carry on!  And by the same token, if certain people in your life tempt and encourage you to spend, it might be wise to limit the time you spend with them.

If you don’t know any real life frugal people, though, don’t give up!  Read some good books on frugality (The Tightwad Gazette*, which you can probably find at your library, is a good place to start) and subscribe to frugal living blogs (you can find some of those on my list of favorite blogs)

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To that list of 5 things, I’d add that you should not give up when you experience a frugal living setback.  The goal here is progress, not perfection.  I’ve been living the frugal life for an awfully long time, and I still chuck my menu plan and order pizza sometimes.  Don’t throw in the towel if you order takeout or overspend at the grocery store…just dust yourself off, pick yourself back up, and keep on going!

Readers, what are your top 5 suggestions for a frugality newbie? Also, please do share your favorite frugal living blogs so that CM can get herself surrounded with like-minded people.

*Amazon affiliate link

Today’s 365 post: Joshua vs. Mr. FG

I’m going all Amy-Dacyzyn-y again! (in case you weren’t aware of it, she’s the Tightwad Gazette mastermind and she possesses the patience to do very detailed price comparisons down to the penny.  That doesn’t come naturally to me, unfortunately!)

For my super-scientific (!) comparison, I bought a package of Jello Pudding Pops at Aldi, where a 12-pack box sells for $2.50.  Aldi’s ice cream novelty prices usually look pretty good to me, so I’m guessing that this is probably on the low end of the price spectrum. If you happen to remember how much pudding pops go for at a regular store, do leave a comment and share that info!

I’m going to compare the cost of the real pudding pops to homemade pops made with my recipe for homemade chocolate pudding. I could swear that I’ve posted it (the pudding recipe) on my blog before, but I couldn’t find it!  I’ll try to rectify that soon.

Anyways, here’s the ingredient list:

2.5 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
2 cups milk
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Generic cocoa powder (8 oz.) is $2.99 at Weis, so each tablespoon costs 6.8¢.

Generic sugar is $3/5 pound package (less at Aldi, usually), so each cup costs 26¢.

A gallon of milk at Aldi costs $2.69, but we’ll bump it up to $3. Each cup costs 18.7¢.

Generic cornstarch (16 oz) is $1.29 at Weis, which means that each tablespoon costs 2.4¢.

I don’t have my vanilla price handy, but the Tone’s variety on Amazon costs about 9¢/teaspoon.

2.5 tablespoons cocoa powder-17¢
1/2 cup sugar-13¢
pinch salt-negligible
2 cups milk-38¢
3 tablespoons cornstarch-7¢
3/4 teaspoon vanilla -7¢

So, the total for the homemade pudding is $0.82.

What about pudding pops made with packaged pudding mix?

A package of instant pudding mix is $.50 at Aldi and probably $.75-$1.00 elsewhere. So, the pops made with packaged pudding would cost anywhere between $.88 and $1.38.

A homemade pudding pop weighs almost exactly the same as a packaged pudding pop, but the homemade version makes only 8-9 pops and there are 12 in the Pudding Pops package.  A theoretical 8-count package of pudding pops would then cost $1.66.

So, here’s how things stack up.

8 pudding pops made with from-scratch pudding-$0.82

8 pudding pops made with boxed pudding mix-$0.88-$1.38

8 packaged Jello pudding pops from Aldi-$1.66

The homemade versions are definitely cheaper, but not by an amazing amount (though percentage-wise, it’s a big savings…50%).  If the pudding pops were purchased at a regular grocery stores, I think the homemade ones would be more of a win.

Is it….food?

Price is really not the only consideration here, though.  Take a peek at the ingredient list for the commercial pudding pops.

There’s high fructose corn syrup, two kinds of hydrogenation oils, and several non-food-ish items at the end of the list. Dear me.

Trash Output

Then too, there is the fact that eating a box of commercial pudding pops leaves you with this, a pile of nonrecyclable trash.

And eating a batch of homemade pudding pops leaves you with this, a pile of washable, reusable containers.

Of course, the ingredients for homemade pudding come in containers too, but every single one of my ingredients comes in a recyclable or compostable containers.

What about taste/texture?

I think the commercial pudding pops have an advantage texture-wise, as they’re fairly soft straight from the freezer.  Homemade pops need to sit at room temperature for a few minutes before they’re soft enough to bite.  This doesn’t bother me at all, but it might concern someone who’s used to the commercial pops.

Taste-wise, I think the chocolate commercial pops were similar to the homemade ones, but the vanilla ones tasted awful to me.  They had a very processed, fake-vanilla taste to them.  I imagine a homemade vanilla version would have a superior taste (I’ll let you know!).

So, the homemade pops are a win over the commercial variety in every area except texture, and that is mostly solved simply by letting the pops hang out at room temperature for a few minutes.  Honestly, I wasn’t even aware that the texture was an issue until I tried the commercial ones (this was my first box ever!), and I still feel like it’s not a big enough deal to warrant spending more, eating weird ingredients, and producing more trash (especially if you’re like us and aren’t used to the commercial pops in the first place!).

Today’s 365 post: Pre-Vacation Fridge Cleaning

Also, I want to know what you eat for breakfast on the weekends!

Every Wednesday (ok, most Wednesdays!) I share a baking recipe. And lots of pictures of said baking recipe. I don’t call this Wednesday Baking because I bake solely on Wednesdays…no, my oven gets a workout much more frequently than once a week! Wednesday just happens to be the day I share baking recipes with you. All the past baking posts are archived in the Wednesday Baking category, which can also be found in a tab underneath my blog header.

Recently, a reader sent me the following email:

I love the fact that you bake most of your breads and have tried to start doing that more often, but my question is this: How much does it save you to bake all of your breads, rolls, buns, english muffins,etc. especially when you can get them at ALDI for next to nothing? Have you ever figured it up to see the savings or do you do it more for the healthy part of it? Just curious!
Thanks!

-Sara

Sara is not the only reader who’s wondered this, and I’ve never even sat down to figure out the nitty-gritty price details either. So, I thought a Wednesday Baking post devoted to this topic would be good for me and for you!

First off, I should say that in my mind, homemade bread is more about eating really good, really fresh bread than it is about saving money.  I could probably buy uber-cheap bread at the store and save some money over homemade, but I infinitely prefer the experience of eating homemade bread, especially when it’s warm from the oven.  You really can’t buy bread like that from the store.

There is some pretty good bakery bread out there, yes, but I’m pretty sure that buying truly good bread would cost me way more than it costs me to make truly good bread.

Though not every bread I bake is healthy, I do bake partly because I can control what goes into my breads. I never have to worry about what preservatives are in my bread or whether or not there’s high-fructose corn syrup in the ingredients.  I never have to worry about finding hydrogenated oils or soy products in our breads.  I can use freshly ground whole grain flours when I bake (though I don’t do that all the time!), and you can’t get that at a bakery.

Even when it comes to the more indulgent breads I make like Cinnamon Crisps or Overnight Cinnamon Rolls, I still think what I make is better than what you can buy at the store.  I use butter, not hydrogenated butter substitutes, I use real ingredients in my frostings (no stabilizers or fillers…just butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla), I use local eggs, and I use unbleached flour.

I know about all the ingredients in our breads, and that makes me happy.  Nothing unpronounceable or unrecognizable goes into what I bake (Michael Pollan would be proud!).

I also like to bake my own bread because I can make whatever variety I want. I don’t have to search the local stores for cardamom bread…I can just bake my own.  I don’t have to try to find a bakery that makes Cinnamon Crisps because I can make my own.

Ok, but what about the cost?

To do am Amy Dacyzyn-like comparison, I bought a loaf of super cheap white bread from Weis.  It’s a one pound loaf and it cost $.99.

Here’s the ingredient list.

Basically, this bread consists of flour, water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, oil, salt, gluten, and a bunch of preservatives that I am too lazy to type out.

However, I am very certain that this bread fails Michael Pollan’s real food test if only because it contains azodicarbonamide (it’s hard to pronounce and I don’t know what it is!).

My sandwich bread recipe is probably the most similar to this type of bread, although my recipe calls for milk instead of water.

I’ll go through the ingredient list and do a price breakdown so that we can figure out what’s cheaper…store bought or homemade.

5 3/4-6 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

I often get my flour for $.99/5 lb bag.  However, let’s assume that you’re paying $2.50 for that bag.  That means each cup of flour costs $0.125.  So, six cups of flour costs $0.75.

1 pkg (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast

I buy my yeast in bulk, which is the only way to go if you want to save money by baking.  Yeast in packets is way, way, too expensive.  Two pounds of yeast costs me about $3.50.  As best I can figure, this means that each 2 1/4 teaspoon portion of yeast costs almost $0.03.

2 1/4 cups milk

The cheap store-bought bread contains water, not milk.  Water costs a negligible amount, so I’m not even going to count that in the cost per loaf.

2 tablespoons sugar

There are 180 tablespoons of sugar in a 5 pound bag.  Generic sugar can be had for $2.50/bag, which makes each tablespoon cost $.013.  So, two tablespoons costs $.026, and we’ll round it up to 3 cents to be generous. 

1 tablespoon butter or vegetable oil

The store bought bread uses oil, so that’s what we’ll use too. Generic vegetable oil is usually about $3 for 48 oz, which means that each tablespoon costs $o.03.

2 teaspoons salt

Generic salt is $.50 or less (I think it’s $.33 at Aldi), and there are 122.75 teaspoons in a 26 oz container.  So, two teaspoons of salt costs $o.008. ‘

So, the ingredients for this recipe (which makes two loaves) comes to $0.818.  We’ll round it up to $0.82 to make things simple.  This makes two loaves of bread, though, so the ingredients for a single loaf only cost $0.41.

What about electricity costs for the baking, though? Mr. Electricity estimates (though he thinks this is high) that an hour of 350 degree baking costs $.24.  This assumes a price of $.012/kwh, which is higher than what I pay (I pay below $0.10/kwh).

So, the half hour of baking this bread calls for would cost $.12, and we can assume this is probably on the high end of things.

If I baked only one loaf of bread at a time (I almost never do that!), the ingredients would cost me $.041 and the baking would cost me $0.12.  That’s still only $0.53 for a loaf of bread. If I bake two at a time, the cost per loaf goes down to $0.47/loaf.

What about the time cost?

Bread baking does take a few hours from start to finish, but actually requires very little hands-on time.  It takes me about 10-15 minutes to make a batch of dough, and then the dough needs to rise for an hour.

It then takes me another 5 minutes to shape the risen dough into loaves, at which point the dough needs to rise for another 30-45 minutes.

And then it takes me all of about 1 minute to put the risen loaves into the oven, where they bake for 25-30 minutes.

Add in another few minutes for doing dishes and wiping counters, and I’d say there’s maybe a 25 minute hands-on time investment.  I have bread baking down to a science, though, so I think I get it done in less than 25 minutes.

What’s the bottom line?

A loaf of storebought white bread costs $.99 (though it might be less at Aldi.  Readers?).

A loaf of homemade white bread costs $0.47-$0.53 plus a 25 minute time investment.

So, without including the time factor, homemade bread is cheaper or at least as cheap as most storebought white bread (the cheapest I’ve ever seen bread for was $.33/loaf), especially if you take into consideration the fact that a loaf of homemade bread weighs more than 16 ounces.

Once you add in the time factor, though, storebought bread wins.  Even assuming a minimum wage time value, 25 minutes of effort bumps the homemade bread cost way up.

Why don’t I give up baking my bread?

Mainly it’s because I like good bread.  Comparing a loaf of freshly-baked homemade bread to a loaf of processed, airy bread isn’t really fair…it’s almost like comparing apples and oranges.

It would be much more fair to compare a loaf of homemade bread to a loaf from Panera, and if I did that, the homemade bread would win hands-down price-wise.

So, it’s much cheaper to satisfy my desire for good bread by baking my own than by buying good bread.

Along those same lines, once you start getting away from bargain basement bread comparisons, homemade bread really starts to gain an advantage.  Whole grain bread, English muffins, bagels, cinnamon swirl loaves, coffeecakes, dinner rolls and the like are all fairly expensive, and I am positive that the homemade versions save me money.  Maybe making sandwich bread doesn’t save me a bundle, but making cinnamon bread does.

What should you do?

I don’t know…that’s for you to decide!  Your time, your tastes, and your priorities may be different than mine, so I can’t say whether or not you should take up yeast baking.  I’m positive that I’m going to keep baking most of my family’s baked goods as long as I’m able, but that might not be the best choice for you.

If you are a happy baker like myself, though, I think you can rest assured that at the very least, you’re not putting yourself into the poorhouse by baking from scratch.

Readers, what do you think?  I’m really interested to hear your thoughts on this topic!

Today’s 365 post: Hand-Me-Ups

but I’m always still amazed at how a few simple steps transforms a gallon of milk into this:

And I always feel really satisfied when I load my fridge up with a fresh new batch.

Learning how to make cottage cheese is next on my project list (I will, of course, share with you if I manage this successfully.).

Actually, these can be Bacon-Chicken-Cheddar Quesadillas if you prefer. That’s what’s pictured here.

Quesadillas are endlessly customizable. As long as the filling ingredients include cheese (which melts and holds everything together), you can put almost anything into a quesadilla.

Another lovely thing about quesadillas is that they can be on the table fairly quickly, so they’re a good thing to have on your menu when you are short on time and are tempted to order a pizza or get takeout.

Bacon is perhaps not the most inexpensive meat out there, but it can be had on sale almost without fail, and this recipe doesn’t use that much of it. Plus, even if you make quesadillas with shrimp (which I do sometimes!), you will still end up spending less money making these than you would if you got takeout or ate fast food. Honestly, I can usually feed my family crab cakes for the price that we would pay to get fast food for the six of us. Restaurant/take-out food is so expensive that cooking at home will save you money over eating out almost every time, regardless of what you happen to be cooking.

So, learn how to make quesadillas…it could save you big bucks.

Bacon Cheddar Quesadillas-makes 4

4 strips bacon
1 1/3 cups shredded cheddar cheese
4 flour tortillas
butter for cooking

Cook the bacon until crisp; break into bite-size pieces. Sprinkle cheese evenly over half of each tortilla. Sprinkle bacon over cheese.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add butter to coat the pan. Fold tortillas in half, and place two into the skillet. Cook for 2-4 minutes on each side, adding butter as needed, until both sides are lightly browned and cheese is melted. Repeat with remaining tortillas.

Cut into wedges and serve with sour cream or guacamole.

To make Bacon Cheddar Chicken Quesadillas, add several strips of cooked, sliced chicken to each tortilla along with the bacon and cheese.

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Here are a few more meal ideas to help you resist takeout temptation:
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Shrimp Quesadillas
Hibachi Chicken and Shrimp
Thin-Crust Pizza

Homemade yogurt is a slightly unusual thing to make, and since yogurt is widely available, you might be wondering why in the world I bother. Here are a few reasons.

For starters, yogurt is a really inexpensive food to eat if it’s homemade. A quart of non-organic yogurt costs $2-$3 in my area, but I can make yogurt for $.50 a quart, which is a large savings. Four quarts of grocery store yogurt per week would cost me between $416 and $624 a year, and this yogurt(from milk purchased at $2/gallon) costs me a measly $52 a year.

You can even make yogurt from organic milk and save money. A $5 gallon of milk produces four quarts of yogurt, each of which costs only $1.25. Even if you pay $7 for a gallon of milk, a quart of yogurt made from that milk will only cost you $1.75.

If you usually buy individually packaged yogurts, making homemade yogurt will save you even more money.

In addition, homemade yogurt is environmentally friendly. The only trash (which should be recyclable) produced in this process comes from the original milk carton. The yogurt itself is made and stored in reusable Mason jars.

Lastly, homemade yogurt is delightfully natural. It has exactly two ingredients: milk and yogurt cultures. There’s no pectin, no starches, no guar gum, no colorings, and no preservatives. I love that. Despite the fact that it has no preservatives, an unopened jar will keep for at least a month in the fridge, and an opened jar will last for at least a week.

If you’d like to make some inexpensive, green, and healthy yogurt, check out my homemade yogurt recipe.

Those of you who’ve been reading here for a while will recognize the bones of today’s post. When I first posted it here, I used some old pictures from my original food-waste blog. Since then I’ve learned to post larger pictures and my camera equipment and skills have improved a bit. So today, I’m posting the yogurt recipe with New! and Improved! pictures.

Also, for some reason my search box here on the blog was having a hard time finding this recipe and so I was getting a lot of emails asking, “WHERE in the world is your yogurt recipe anyways???”. Hopefully the new post with the new title will be easier to find.

The first time I made yogurt, I thought it was a total pain-in-the-rear and I was SO never doing it again. But, after I did it a few times, I realized that it didn’t really take that much hands-on time, and that I could get some kitchen tasks done easily while I waited for the jars to boil and for the milk to heat up. And of course during the three hours that the yogurt sits in the cooler, I’m free to do whatever I want to do as the yogurt requires no supervision.  If you still need convincing, you can read about why I bother with this process each week.

When I can get raw milk, that’s what I make my yogurt with, but when that’s not available, I use commercial whole milk. Unless you’ve got a specific reason for avoiding milkfat, I would caution against using lower fat milk products to make yogurt. Whole milk will make your yogurt much thicker and creamier than low-fat or fat-free milk will.

You can feel free to make a smaller quantity of yogurt if you worry you won’t be able to use 4 quarts. Just use a half gallon of milk and two quart jars.

The recipe requires no special machines…you probably have most, if not all of these items in your kitchen already. Here’s the equipment that I use (plus a un-pictured cooler).

The recipe I have suggests sterilizing the jars. I’ll include the directions for that, but I have to tell you that I’ve tried the recipe with and without sterilizing, and I haven’t noticed a difference. If you don’t have a dishwasher, this step might be more essential, but if you run your jars through a dishwasher, they should be sufficiently sterilized already.

To sterilize the jars, you just boil them in about an inch of water, along with the bands and lids for 10 minutes.

Next, you need to heat the milk to 185-195 degrees. A heavy bottomed pot works best for this because your milk will be less prone to burning and sticking to the pot bottom while heating.

If you own two stockpots, you can just leave the jars and lids in the first pot and use a second pot to heat the milk.

Once the milk reaches 185-195 degrees, take it off the heat and place it in a sink filled with cool water until the temperature drops to 120 degrees.

My cast-iron stockpot will break if I put it into a sink full of cold water, so at this point I pour the milk into the pot I used to sterilize the jars.

Once the milk drops to 120 degrees, it’s time to add the starter. The starter is just previously cultured yogurt, which will spread the yogurt cultures all through your gallon of milk, turning it into yogurt. If this is your first time making yogurt, you’ll want to use 6-8 ounces of plain (or vanilla) yogurt. If you’ve already got jars of homemade yogurt in the fridge, though, you can use a cup of that as your starter.

When I made this batch, it was my first post-vacation yogurt session, so I bought a starter.

I can heartily recommend Yoplait or Dannon as starters, but any other brand or store-brand might be iffy. I used an off-brand cup as a starter once and my yogurt didn’t turn out at all. Better to be safe than sorry, I say, so pony up the extra $.25 and buy a name-brand cup. Once your yogurt turns out nicely, you should hardly ever have to buy a starter again.

The original recipe I have specifies that you should not open your starter until you’re ready to use it. I don’t know how necessary this precaution is, but I haven’t been brave enough to try using an opened quart of yogurt as my starter. I’ll let you know if I try, though!

At any rate, you’ll need to whisk the cup of starter into the 120 degree milk. Make sure it’s entirely mixed up so that the yogurt culture is spread throughout the whole gallon.

Once it’s mixed up, pour the milk into your quart jars. I’m no good at pouring from a pot, so I pour the milk into a clean pitcher and then pour it into the jars. Since the milk usually develops some skin at some point during the heating process, I like to strain my it through a small wire mesh strainer while I’m pouring it into the jars.

The milk will probably have some bubbles on top, which you can leave if you like. I prefer to skim them off with a spoon, though, so the jar looks like this:

instead of this:

It just improves the surface texture of the yogurt.

Top each jar with a lid and band and place into a cooler. The size of the cooler doesn’t matter a lot except that it needs to fit four quart jars and a gallon of warm water.

Heat 1 gallon of water to 120 degrees and pour into the cooler. Shut the cooler lid and leave it in a draft-free place (not outside, for example, and not right by your front door in the wintertime) for three hours.

After three hours, remove the jars to the fridge. The yogurt should be fairly firm at this point. It will firm up more in the fridge, though, so don’t panic if it’s still a little sloshy.

Once it’s been refrigerated, your yogurt should be about this thick.

And when spooned into a bowl, it’ll look like this, as long as you’ve made it with whole milk. Yogurt made with lower fat milk will not be as firm.

Homemade Yogurt (makes 4 quarts, which will keep for at least a month in the fridge)

For vanilla yogurt directions, see the bottom of the recipe.

Ingredients

1 gallon of milk
1 cup yogurt starter(you can use a small cup of plain Dannon or Yoplait yogurt, or you can use a cup from your previous batch.)

1. Place four quart glass canning jars, four lids, and four screw-tops in a large pot. Fill with an inch of water; cover with lid and heat to boiling. Boil for ten minutes. Leave the lid on the pot and move it off the heat until you are ready to use the jars.

2. Pour one gallon of milk into a large, heavy bottomed stockpot or Dutch oven. Heat the milk to 185-190 degrees Farenheit(90-90 Celcius).

3. Place the pot in a sink filled with cold water and let the milk cool to 120 degrees fahrenheit(50-55 degrees celsius)

4. Stir one cup of yogurt starter into the cooled milk, using a whisk. Stir well to ensure that the starter is thoroughly incorporated into the milk.

5. Pour the milk into jars, and put the lids and bands on. Place them into a cooler.

6. Heat one gallon of water to 120 degrees F(50-55 degrees C) and pour into cooler.

7. Shut cooler lid and leave in a warm place for three hours. When the three hours are up, place the yogurt in the refrigerator.

To make a delicious vanilla version of this yogurt, add 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar to the four quarts of milk when it’s cooling in the sink. Then stir in 1-2 tablespoons of vanilla, depending on your preference, and proceed as usual with the recipe.

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Here are more of my yogurt-related posts:

Why I Make My Own Yogurt
Cost Comparison of Yoplait and Homemade Yogurt
Yogurt Q&A