Slow thinking

February 14, 2009

Just last week I noticed that my food dehydrator has a setting for “Living Foods”. Huh, I thunk to me-self. What could that be? Crickets? It wasn’t until a few more minutes of absent-minded puzzling that it hit me: Yogurt! By gum, that setting is for yogurt!

I never said I was the smartest babe in the woods.

I first experimented with one quart jar of prepared warm milk. It set up into a lovely yogurt in only three hours. The second time I made yogurt, I doubled the amount (two quart jars, not a half-gallon jar), and once again it worked like a charm.


Do you realize what this means, people? It means that I can make at least four, maybe six, quarts of yogurt in only about four hours! All this time I have been putzing along, turning out a single quart of yogurt at a time, sometimes making as many as four different batches in a week.

My life has been simplified and it only took me a year to figure that out.

Crickets, huh.

***


Update, For Lily Girl:
The dehydrator actually has a setting for “living foods” (105 degrees) and for “yogurt” (115 degrees). I totally missed seeing the setting for yogurt and it wasn’t until I saw the setting for living foods that I realized I could make yogurt in the dehydrator. Like I said, I’m rather slow.


The dehydrator functions in two ways: it uses electricity to raise the compartment’s temperature, and it has a fan that blows around the hot air, helping to dry out the food. Even though the fan is blowing while I’m incubating the yogurt, it is not drying out the yogurt because the jars are tightly lidded. It is the hot air part of the dehydrator that is at work, slowly “cooking” the yogurt. Does that make better sense?

And by the way, I think I could easily fit eight quart jars in the dehydrator, and maybe even use half-gallon jars, too. It’s a fabulous machine.

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12 Comments

  • Lisa Zahn

    February 25, 2009 at 11:11 pm Reply

    That sounds awesome…I may have to get one of those dehyrdators yet. In the long run, making all that yogurt so easily would save so much money (besides time). I’ve been making mine in a cooler made into a “haybox cooker” and while it works, I too often forget it’s there!

  • Steve

    February 25, 2009 at 2:15 am Reply

    Hey don’t go knocking crickets! Crickets are perfectly edible and a mere one cricket contains 13 grams of protein, 10mg of iron, and 76mg of calcium. Read more about Entomophagy

  • Jennifer Jo

    February 17, 2009 at 6:15 pm Reply

    Sarah, I used the yogurt setting. (I totally missed seeing there was such a setting and it took the title “Living Foods” to alert me to that small detail…)

    Lily Girl, I’m doing a little update at the end of the post to better explain the process.

  • Sarah

    February 17, 2009 at 7:48 am Reply

    Just curious…did you use the Living Foods setting or the Yogurt setting? What was the temp? BTW, I made a gallon of yogurt today!

    sem

  • Lily Girl

    February 16, 2009 at 12:02 pm Reply

    Okay, I’m a little confused. When I first saw “living foods” I immediately thought of the raw food movement, as in dehydrating sprouted nuts and the like so that their live enzymes are not destroyed. But then you said yogurt, and quite frankly I’m am utterly perplexed as to the logistics of making yogurt in the dehydrator. So would you please take a picture of it next time (why do I feel like I’m asking for something indecent…)? If it is not too much trouble of course.

  • Sarah

    February 16, 2009 at 5:03 am Reply

    I’m going to try that tomorrow. I can make 2 1/2 qts at a time in my yogurt maker (2 now that I broke one of the cups), but the food dehydrator method seems so much simpler.

    Also, I LOVED your last post, but didn’t comment on it earlier. J’s citation reminded me a little of the “Lightning Rod Poem” my dad composed that starts like this…

    Did a boy, or some boys, with toys known as BB guns…?

    sem

  • Jennifer Jo

    February 15, 2009 at 11:37 am Reply

    K, I looked the word up and didn’t see anything odd. The two spellings are synonymous, with putzing being the more common one. What’s the laugh?

    I’ll change it, though…

  • Anonymous

    February 15, 2009 at 1:11 am Reply

    So you’re a writer who spells funny and I’m a speller who writes funny. Usually I don’t correct your spelling, but I just have to say that you must have been putzing around, right? (Maybe you should look up that word, for a laugh, since I know you don’t blush.)

    K

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