Experiments - or making Yogurt in a Crockpot

While visiting a Ukrainian mother and talking about food - I mentioned that Saphira adores yogurt. You want her to eat something, you douse it with yogurt. (We joke that she is all set for India). Well, the mother wanted to know if I was making my own.

"No," I said.

"Why," she asked, "or are you lazy?"

I explained I could find sugar-free plain yogurt that was tasty and saw no reason to buy yet another machine to make it. Honestly, I've been quite skeptical of the growing popularity of yogurt makers here in Kiev. Some of my friends have them and when it comes to babies - this is always a question that comes up. Still, this was the first time that I'd been called lazy for it.

"Why do you make yogurt instead of buying it?" I asked.

She explained that it is for the pro-biotic effects - that you get the most good bacteria and that the stuff in the store might not even have anything living in it anyway.

Still not convinced, I nodded.

Fast forward a week when we met up again. Our visit fell over lunch and so she shared some yogurt with us and I shared some of Saphira's cutlets and sirnik with them. Saphira gobbled up the yogurt. I mean, she loves yogurt - but this was obviously something extraordinary. Skeptical as I was, I couldn't deny her response - so the research began.

1) Economic cost of yogurt making: Despite the readily available cheap and yummy yogurt - making it yourself ends up saving you HALF the cost. Even if you factor in the average cost of a machine, you break even around 32 liters - or in about 27 weeks for my household.

2) A little searching and I discovered that I could make yogurt without a machine - in fact I could make it in my crockpot. Now there are recipes out there for making yogurt in a crockpot that really are pretty high maintenance - you have to do all this preheating and wrap a towel around it overnight - blah. I wanted something that was an EQUAL substitute for a yogurt maker - so I read some other ways to make yogurt and here is what I came up with:

Easy Yogurt in a Crockpot

Materials: 1 Crockpot, preferably with a keep warm setting; 1 serving of natural yogurt with live bacteria or a yogurt culture starter, glass jars that fit in your crock pot, At least 1 liter of milk - if you use more you may need to increase the yogurt and starter you use and add more jars, a cooking thermometer that registers temperatures from 80 to 200F

Prep work: You should test your keep warm function the day before to ensure that it won't heat your yogurt too high. I did this by pouring hot water into the crockpot and leaving it on keep warm for a few hours and checking it periodically. I did find that on my crockpot, if left for a long time (3+ hours) the temperature will rise - so I took this into account when making my yogurt.

Instructions:

1) Pour hot water into your crockpot - about half way full - check the temp to ensure it is not higher than 100F - Turn your crockpot on to its lowest setting.

2) Heat your milk on high in the microwave a few minutes - you don't want it to boil but you do want it to reach a temp of around 180 to kill things - check the temp periodically with the thermometer and stir the milk. This process took about 10 minutes. Alternatively you can do this on the stove.

3) Allow milk to cool to 110 - 100F. (I Covered it and put it in the fridge)

4) Mix in your yogurt or yogurt culture

5) Fill your clean jars with milk mixture

6) Place the jars in the crockpot - make sure the water in the crockpot does not get into the yogurt - remove water if necessary

7) insert your thermometer, close the lid and go do your thing - the yogurt should be ready in about 3 hours.

I checked mine periodically to ensure the temperature was fine and turned it off after one hour while we went on a walk. It stayed off the remainder of the time and at 3.5 hours the yogurt was a lovely soft set and mild. Other sites say that a more tart yogurt can be achieved by leaving the yogurt for more time. During the remaining two hours - the temp had dropped 10 degrees - not bad at all since the lid doesn't close fully due to the height of the thermometer!

I'm very pleased with myself - not only can I now say I'm not lazy, but I start saving 50% on yogurt immediately - without buying another machine to clutter up the kitchen!

Ethnic food

While sushi is readily available in Ukraine - other ethnic food is oddly absent. There are a few Chinese restaurants - and they have good food - but its expensive and one item that is sadly absent are egg rolls.

So I experimented a few weeks ago when ground pork was on speacial and found it really wasn't too hard to make eggrolls - the most formidable obstacle - the wrappers - was overcome by discovering that lavash works perfectly.

A friend also pointed out that I could make bean sprouts from lentils found in the market and as ginger has suddenly become readily available - we cam make some really tasty Chinese food. The rolls turned out so well, that paired with stirfry and fried rice - we're not sure if we'll be dining out for Chinese in Ukraine ever again.

Context

Sunday, my day of Bible reading catch-up, found me tackling chapters 7 - 15 in Jeremiah. Maybe it was the culmination of 8 chapters of doom and gloom, and the memory that six chapters of doom preceded it, but for the first time I thought “where does the hope of verse 29:11 come in? Probably one of the most quoted and published “comfort verses”, this verse falls after 28 chapters of God telling his people that he would judge them, bring disaster on them, and break them so they could not be repaired. Twenty-eight chapters and suddenly a verse, not isolated, but in a paragraph:

¹⁰ This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. ¹¹For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.^[a] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

A few thoughts strike me:

1) If I were in Jerusalem and I've been hearing 28 chapters worth of doom and gloom - I'm not sure how I would feel about the phrase "¹¹For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you,"

Everything in me would be saying - what? I've just HEARD you tell me all your plans that you have to HARM me and now you're telling me it will "prosper" me?

In fact, in the context of all that came before, this verse is not comforting UNTIL you consider the paragraph that surrounds it.

2) In the surrounding paragraph we see that 1) God did not abandon his people but rather he goes to them and brings them back. 2) This happens after the people call on God and seek him out 3) God again repeats that when he is sought, he will be found and he will bring them back.

3) The ESV translates verse 11 as “plans for wholeness and not for evil”. I prefer this translation because it points towards the greater context – wholeness developing through suffering, growth from brokenness. It also makes it more difficult to manipulate the verse for a prosperity gospel. “Wholeness” doesn’t mean riches, wealth, or even success – it is deeper than all of this. This translation too reminds me of Paul’s summary of suffering in Romans 5:3 - 5

4) Considering the context of suffering, this verse can only ever be comforting to the Christian who desires his continued sanctification for the glory of God and his ultimate unification with him.

5) The comfort waiting for the Christian in this verse is well summarized by Jeremiah Burroughs in Chapter 3.9 of The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment:

”in all the afflictions, all the evils that befall [a Christian], he can see love, and can enjoy the sweetness of love in his afflictions as well as in his mercies. The truth is that the afflictions of God's people come from the same eternal love that Jesus Christ came from. Jerome said, 'He is a happy man who is beaten when the stroke is a stroke of love.' All God's strokes are strokes of love and mercy, all God's ways are mercy and truth, to those that fear him and love him (Psalm 25:10). The ways of God, the ways of affliction, as well as the ways of prosperity, are mercy and love to him. Grace gives a man an eye, a piercing eye to pierce the counsel of God, those eternal counsels of God for good to him, even in his afflictions; he can see the love of God in every affliction as well as in prosperity.”

This ultimate comfort is not as warm and fuzzy as the greeting card version of an isolated verse written in French script – but it is more enduring. In the end it actually helps us see through present and future sufferings better as we look past them, past our own time and dimension, and see God’s time and God’s vision of wholeness. We benefit not only from the verses that come before chapter 29 – but from knowing the story that comes after – the preservation of the Jews by Esther, the king himself paying for the rebuilding of the temple, the return of the Jews, the recommitment of the people to follow God – and most poignantly the promise and realization of an ultimate rescue through Christ.

Dirt and Danger

Becoming a parent has taught me that you don't really realize the dirt and dangers surrounding children until you have one and are toddling/ crawling at their level (or dealing with black-kneed pants and socks from running around inside)

I knew there was dirt and garbage on the street, but until I started taking Saphira out of her stroller to toddle on the ends of my fingers, I didn't quite realize how many "no touch" items there were out there . . . . beer bottles, bottle caps, cigarette butts, hypodermic needles . . . . . .

I finally let her tounch a dead and crusty leaf just to have an item that could be explored.

Secondly, after a week of visiting the playground out of the stroller, it is slightly disconcerting that the only adult name I have to show for the encounters with children is that of a probable predator. I'm assuming predator because not only was it an old man without children on the playground, but 1) he approached us 2) he asked us if he could buy us something 3) he gave us his name and asked mine (this has NEVER happened in any conversation with other adults on the playground - strictly kid talk, even obvious things, like my accent, have not been asked about - let alone a name) 4) he said that when we meet again we need to have drinks. Of course,if i'd missed any of those neon signs, there was also the older woman walking by who was also telling me to ignore him, at which point I was already bundling Saphira into the stroller and trying to extract myself.

Maybe its the fact that I grew up in a small, clean, country town with a farm to play on where the most dangerous items were piles of junk and rusty nails (ok - I suppose as a parent these are disturbing too - but I'd rather have a rusty nail over a syringe).

It all just makes you think of what is safe, and where you do let your kids play. S obviously can't play alone yet - but when she can - do I let her go in sand piles and boxes? What could be buried there? It makes me very glad that we've invested in the mud hut and that at least once in awhile we can go out and play in the fresh air and the grass and have nothing more to worry about than bee stings and splinters.

Philosophy

There are so many philosophies you have to take a stance on when you become a parent.

Feeding, Sleeping, diapering, routines, discipline, potty training, eating, learning - and my latest obsession - footwear.

Saphira has extra wide feet - and I am thankful for all the very thorough measure at home guides - especially at Startrite. And I am also thankful for all the new options in footwear (esp wide footwear) that wasn't there when I was growing up.

So I'm sorting through it - the different brands, the different philosophies, the different ways of getting stuff to Ukraine. And while the philosophy behind baby footwear in Ukraine is very far from our own (barefoot is NOT best here) - There are some options for us. (The idea to ask a shoemaker to custom make something didn't pan out- philosophies and language being the key barriers)

My most interesting find? Neighboring Poland actually invented a super flexible shoe. Maybe we'll have to investigate on a future visa run.

Until then, we managed to find some 1st shoes that were wide enough for Saphira's feet. Now when we go for a walk - she can get out of the stroller to bounce on the end of my fingers while she talks to the pigeons.