Home Made Yogut

So if your kids are like my kids they would eat yogurt all day long every day. I don't know about you but as a single income family of 5 soon to be 6 I can't afford that. So what else was I to do. I went looking online for ideas on home made yogurt and found it to be super easy. You don't need a fancy yogurt maker or anything like that. I used my crock pot. Now I have made it on the stove top before, but I found the crock pot to be a 1000 times easier.

So here is what you need for your home made yogurt:
Milk- I use whole milk, but have used 1% as well and it came out just fine. I have heard that you should not use skim milk. If you want to do a dairy free yogurt then you might want to do some more looking online for other sites that would have better info. I do plan on making a dairy free one someday but just have not done it yet. But when I do I will do a post about it.
Starter Yogurt- This is a yogurt from the store that has LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES in it. That is a very important part or your yogurt will not turn out right.
Crock pot- any size will do, but the bigger the bigger the batch of yogurt.

Take your milk and pour it into your crock pot to the top. Turn it on high and let it sit. You want to have little bubbles around the top, but not boiling. It should be around 200 degrees at the highest temps. What your doing is killing off any bacteria in the milk.
Next turn your crock pot off and let it cool down to about 115-120, this is important that it's below 120 degrees.
Once it's cooled off scoop out some of the warm milk into another container, you don't need much maybe 1/2 to 1 cup of milk. Take your starter yogurt, about a 1/2-1cup depending on how much milk you are using. (you can't use to much) and mix that with the milk you scooped out. Mix this well. This will warm the yogurt up before adding it to the main mix. Once that's done then pour it into your crock pot and mix well. You don't need to make bubbles while mixing, you can be gentle about it.
Once it's all mixed up take your crock pot and place it in your oven, make sure your oven is turned off. Wrap a towel around it and let it sit over night.
The longer it sits the thicker it will get. I have let mine sit for up to 14 hours before.
The next day take the crock pot out of the oven, remove your lid and check out your yogurt. Now there will be a watery part on top, you can either just mix that in (which will make your yogurt a little thinner) or scrape it off the top, that's what I do.
Your home made yogurt will not be as thick as store bought yogurt, because most store bought yogurt contains pectin in it to help thicken it up. You can however strain your yogurt through cheese cloth to help make it thicker.
Scoop your yogurt into containers and place them in the fridge and your done. That's it. It's ready to eat.
If you want to add flavor like vanilla or honey to your yogurt you can, add it when mixing your starter yogurt into the batch of milk.
Also set aside about 1/2-1 cup of your yogurt you just made for your starter yogurt for next time. You can do that about four times before you need to buy another starter yogurt.

We now use our home made yogurt in place of sour cream a lot. We have put it in tacos, and made ranch dressing with it so far. It came out perfect, though I would not add honey or vanilla to the batch if you plan on doing that, not sure that would taste just right.
Enjoy!

Car seat safety

There are a lot of great car seats on the market today to help keep your kids safe. Well the wonderful people over at My Precious Kid are doing a give away!   http://www.mypreciouskid.com/blog/2013/01/diono-radian-r120-car-seat-giveaway/ follow the link to enter! But hurry today is the last day! 

How to stretch a whole chicken into many meals

So you have a whole chicken you need to cook and you want to get as many meals out of it as possible. Well how many meals you will get out of it depends on the size of your family you are feeding. You should be able to get at least two meals out of it no matter what.

Day 1: Place the whole chicken in your crock pot. If your chicken is still frozen make sure you get it in there in the morning so it will be done by dinner time. If it's thawed out then you can place it later in the day like around 12 or so. Or you can cook it all day on low as well.

Frozen cook on high most of the day, check with a meat thermometer to be sure it's fully cooked.
Thawed either low starting in the morning, or medium heat in the afternoon.

Once the chicken is in the crock pot add your spices and seasonings. You can add things like a pinch of salt, garlic, bay leaf (this will come in handy the next day for sure), thyme, rosemary, and just about anything you think sounds good. Play around with the spices and find some your family really likes.
There is no need to add water, let the chicken cook in it's natural juices for the day.
DINNER TIME: Now your chicken is done it's time for diner, I normally pair mine with a side of rice and a veggie for the first night. It's simple and easy.
When you go to clean up after dinner let your crock pot cool down and place the whole container with all the left over chicken in the fridge. This will make it easier for you tomorrow for dinner.

Day 2: Pull your crock pot with your chicken left overs out of the fridge and place it back in the base of your crock pot. Fill the crock pot with water and make sure the whole chicken is covered. Set the crock pot to medium heat and let it simmer most of the day.
Now you can think about what you might want to make with your chicken, there are a number of recipe's out there that call for chicken. But keep in mind the spices you used yesterday while cooking your chicken when choosing another dish. I have done a chicken casserole, open faced chicken sandwich with gravy, chicken over rice with gravy, things like that. This will also depend on how much chicken you have left on the bird. If you have a large family there might not be much left. If that's the case you can skip down to day three. If you have a small family you might be able to de-bone the chicken and get two days of "Day 2" out of it. ( I will explain de-boning in a moment).
De-boning chicken. Once your chicken has been simmering in the crock pot most of day under water it's time to de-bone it.
You will need two forks, a plate, bowl, and a pasta claw thing (don't know what they are called for sure). Take your claw and soup out some of the chicken and place it on the plate. Take your two forks (it will be very hot so I would not want to touch it) and start to pull the meat away from the bones. Place the meat in the bowl as you pull it off the bone. Keep doing this until you have all the meat off the bones. Place the bones, skin, and fat back in the crock pot. You now have your chicken for your second dish all ready to go. Let your crock pot cool off and place back in the fridge.
Day 3: Place your crock pot back in the base and place on high for a couple of hours. After a little while get out a strainer and strain all the bones and fat out of your broth. Now add some chopped up carrots, celery, pea's, and other veggies you would like to have in your chicken noodle soup. Taste your broth to see if it needs any more spices and seasonings. Turn your crock pot to low and let it simmer all day.
Just before dinner take some of the broth out and mix a little bit of either flour or corn starch in a cup. make sure to blend well, and add it back into your soup to help thicken the soup up. If you want to add some dumplings do so about 20 mins before dinner time so they have time to cook. I just use Bisquick for my dumplings.

So there you have between two and four or more days (again depending on family size) of dinners from one whole chicken.