Yogurt

A friend of mine introduced me to homemade yogurt. It's so easy and really good. I prefer it to store bought yogurt, but honestly it's pretty close. I tried to do the math to see how much it saves you, but it really depends on how much you pay for milk and powdered milk. I bought a gallon of milk for about $3 and a 10 cup container of powdered milk for about $10 and the total cost of the yogurt came to $0.04/oz. My favorite way to eat this is with Nichole's granola and fresh fruit.

Ingredients:

1 gallon whole* milk
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla
4 cups powdered milk
Small** container plain yogurt

Bring approx. half of the milk and all of the sugar to a boil. Take off heat. Mix together the other half of the milk, vanilla, powdered milk, and yogurt. Pour the hot milk mixture into the cold milk mixture and stir. Pour into jars (I use mason jars). Put lids on the jars, then wrap each jar in a dish towel like you were wrapping a present. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees, then turn off once it's heated. Put the towel-covered jars in the warm oven and leave overnight. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks. Makes 5 quarts.

*I've also used 2% milk before, it just makes the yogurt a little thinner.
**I just buy the smallest, cheapest container I can find. You can even use your own yogurt as a starter, I just always forget to save some!