After asking a co-worker if she makes it at home I learned that yes, a lot of people make their own yogurt and it’s not difficult at all.

I decided to try it out for myself last night.

What you need:

• Milk
• Yogurt with live active cultures
• Thermometer (not required, but it helps. see links for thermometer less options)
• Pot for heating milk
• Jars for storing yogurt
• Crock pot and/or oven  (see links for other incubation methods)

A high level overview of the process is:

1) Get live active yogurt cultures from somewhere (existing home made yogurt, yogurt from the store, packages of live active cultures…)

2) Decide how much yogurt you want…Get the same amount of milk then (I got a quart of a gallon)

3) Heat up milk to 180 F

4)Let it cool to 110 F

5) Throw in yogurt  (I used a tablespoon)

6)Somehow keep the temperature of the yogurt around 110F

• Any temp much higher will most likely kill the yogurt and you’ll get warm milk
• Any temp much lower and the bacteria might not reproduce fast enough
• I used two methods: oven and crock pot 
• Oven: Heat to 170F, turn off as soon as it reaches temp. Put yogurt in there for several hours (I tried 4)
• Crock pot: Heat crock pot to Low setting for 10 min, turn off. Put yogurt in. Repeat the heating every hour (I tried for about 3)

7) Insert into fridge as soon as milk has turned harder and into a custard like..thing

If you want a more detailed explanation, this is the reference I used while trying it out myself.

The Real Food Revolution

There’s also a lot of videos on youtube. Just search for “make homemade yogurt”.

And withouth further ado, here are some pictures of my experience.

Some things I learned:

My yogurt turned out very smooth and not too tangy. I think I would like it tangier and I read keeping it in the oven longer will do so. I will try that next time.

Never throw away old sauce jars. They were a life saver for this experiment.

Making yogurt is EASY!

Here in seattle its beggining to look like springtime…

One of my current obsessions is looking for red winged blackbirds on the way to work. These birds are very new to me and I just love the loud pop of color on their little wings. The males are the actual red winged ones while the females are brown. Usually we see the males standing on top of cat tail plants, and they brighten my day whenever I see them.

I’ve learned a lot about birds from one of my favorite radio shows Bird Note. It comes on KPLU at 8:58am every weekday, and they talk for a few minutes about birds and their habits. Such a lovely show.

P.S. – I just realized you can search in flickr for works under creative commons license, awesome! For more info on the pics, click on them and you’ll be taken to the owner’s flickr site.

One kind of pastry that has been popping up everyone is those blasted macarons. I had them once and honestly didn’t like them. Maybe I had some bad ones….or maybe they are all that way. But I have to admit that they are the cutest thing ever.  

I also had to make a donut….because it was just too much to fun. I ended up with a marble effect and then used paints to create glaze and sprinkles on top of the finished donut.

Tasty...sculpey macaron and donut

That’s it for my sculpey adventures!

Until next time.

xoxo,

Laura

And now for another sculpey experiment: those pesky little turrets from Portal. These were seriously my favorite part of the game and months after finishing portal I still enjoying quoting the little turrets at random.

My sculpey turret

 

The biggest challenge with this figurine was making the little legs and figuring out how to bake them in the right position.

After a little thinking I decided to make an aluminum paper stand that would hold it in the right position while it baked. With the piece of foil you see on the image below I was able to hold the main body in the right position while the skinny little legs baked and  became sturdier.

Securing turret during baking

 One thing missing from this figurine is the tiny antenna the real Portal turrets have on the  upper back of their “heads”. I couldn’t figure out how to make something proportionally thin, so I decided to get rid of it completely. After baking and giving the sculpey a little coat of paint (I could see stains on the white clay) I covered it in gloss and proceeded to enjoy my little turret.

 

" I see you..."

If you havent played Portal I highly recommend it. It’s one of my favorite puzzle games and one of the few games that has created a lasting emotional connection.

Have you enjoyed watching my attempts at sculpey figurines? One more sculpey post to come this week!

xoxo,

Laura

It looks like Im participating in Antique Crochet Pattern’s monthly contest!

It’s a short post about what my favorite crochet tools are (and why they are so special to me)…feel free to stop by and rate my little post.

This week I’d like to bombard you with posts about different sculpey figurines I made over the weekend.
Throwing all of these into one post wouldn’t do them justice, and I’d like to take my time telling you about them.

The first I’d like to share with you is….My Neighbor Totoro!

My Totoro figurine

My Neighbor Totoro is one of my favorite Hayao Miyazaki movies and as I brainstormed what characters to create into sculpey figurines, Totoro came into mind immediately.

One thing I’d like to improve on (if I ever make a Totoro figure again) is make his body a little rounder. If you look at him from the side you’ll see he is quite flat front and back, and making him rounder would help in making the resemblance better.

I experimented with the edges of his belly, to see if I could make him look a little fluffy, and I think it worked a bit. As I keep learning about working with sculpey I think I’ll practice textures (because right now you can see my fingerprints over everything I make, hehe).

My Totoro figurine

I mixed black and white sculpey clay to create the gray color you see, and I’m glad I did. I really don’t think I’ll be using gray clay that much so there’s no need to buy a whole package of gray.

All in all, I’m very happy with my little totoro. I think  that for my lack of experience with sculpey he looks quite awesome.

Stay tuned this week…I have a couple more sculpey figurines to show you!

xoxo,

Laura

I went to the craft store last week and came back home with a skein of Mary Maxim Mohair Glitter yarn after being mesmerized by the beautiful colors and the soft sparkly glow it had.  Sparkles alone dont usually entrance me so quickly, so  I suspect I also bought it to experiment with a new fiber.

Sparkle Sparkle

Well, I spent a few days just staring at the beautiful skein of yarn, wondering what I would do with it, until last  night when  I decided I would just crochet a simple, double crochet scarf for myself. This is how far I made it…

Notice all the missed stitches on the left, which create that slant on the side

I had issues everywhere….issues with the tension, issues with seeing the stitches and issues with the texture. First, the tension…I usually crochet very tightly, but for this scarf I was trying out an I hook (recommended on the yarn label), which forced me to crochet a lot more loosely that I normally do. Next, seeing the stitches…I always have problem seeing the stitches when its a very dark yarn and also when the stitches themselves are fuzzy. This yarn is of a light color, but I still couldn’t make out where the stitches where after I had made them. This made me miss several of the final stitches and my scarf ended up looking like a funny looking square. And finally, the texture….the yarn looks very soft, but it isn’t. I’m not sure if it’s the nature of mohair or the fact that it has metallic glitter in there that makes it quite rough to the touch.

Something else I’m trying to understand is why is this considered a bulky yarn. The strand itself is super thin, so I was thinking it would be better to crochet this with a much smaller hook. I’m trying to find a “mohair fanatics” site so I can learn more about this yarn and the proper way to use it.

All in all, it was a very good learning experience, but until I figure out how to conquer the mohair I don’t think I will be purchasing it again.

That’s all for now! Happy weekend!

Sushi, including dragon roll

I was amazed at the all the cute additions they made so it would look like a real dragon…

Fierce little dragon

And I also loooved the little “wasabi” flowers all around the plate. So cute!  And spicy!

Little wasabi flowers

 I’ve heard real wasabi is really expensive, and what we usually have in restaurants is horse-radish and some other ingredients…so im guessing that’s what I had. But it was very good!

Do you like sushi? I didn’t eat it until recently but I adore it now!

After a nice dinner we realized we still had room for a desert, so I went ahead and made some chocolate lava cakes with the chocolate th bf got me for Valentine’s Day. The recipe is very easy, but after seeing how much of it isn’t chocolate you might hold back on eating it too often (it’s mostly oil, egg, and butter )

The recipe is very simple, but I used two different recipes (this & this) to verify I was baking it right.  I baked it a little more than the recipe called for to make sure that the top of the cake wasnt completely liquid. After baking the cake you turn it over, so the top becomes the bottom…and i didnt want chocolate spilling all over the bowl.

Chocolate Lava Cake

That’s all for today! Now to sleep and get better!

xoxo,

Laura