08 September 2013
Dr. Who & the Yogurt of Doom
08/09/13 14:47
They say that you really don’t want to know what goes into sausage or politics. Now, I don’t know about politics, well to be honest I don’t know about sausage either, but I did find something the saying applies to. Yogurt.
It happened last weekend when we had all gotten together for a big party. We talked about many things and overall it was a nice evening. At one point we got talking about making things from scratch at home. Jess, our cousin, makes flavoured oils, and simple syrups and vinegar and such. We’ve gotten them from her at Christmas and they’re nice. She described making vinegar out of wine and it sounded like a cool way to use up any leftovers. (Marsha: Yeah, like we have leftover wine around our house.)
Then she got talking about making her own yogurt. Now I had no idea how yogurt was made. I never thought about it. Like most people I just would grab the container and a spoon and slorp it down. Sometimes I’d add Grape Nuts or blackberries, but as to how yogurt came to be, I’d honestly never thought about it. Actually I’d aggressively never thought about it. I assumed that it was just something I really didn’t want to know. I knew it had something to do with a cow but beyond that I was a bit...shall we say...squeemish. When I was growing up we’d go to the fair every summer. When we went by the animal barns while everyone else was oohing and aahing over the cows’ beautiful brown eyes or the coat on the horses or the fuzzy rabbits all I noticed was the manure and trying to not step in it. I don’t do well with ‘biological’ things. When it came to the milking demonstration I’d slip off and look at the tractors or the cars. Machines, I could understand. I found the idea of squeezing something to drink out of the underside of a cow was...disturbing. I wanted to believe that a cow had nothing to do with the milk I drank. I could prove it too, because the milk I drank came from a powder we mixed with water.
Which probably explains a lot about me.
Anyway, back to the yogurt. Jess went on to describe in detail how she makes her own yogurt. She starts by heating the milk. I’d call it scalding but apparently there’s a particular temperature it gets heated to that only kills the ‘bad bacteria’, (like there’s any other kind). Then it’s cooled a bit, and she mixes in some organic yogurt as a ‘starter’. In a disturbing twist this step is called ‘inoculating’ the milk. Understand that I’m not 100% comfortable with anything dealing with inoculation. Maybe it’s the memories of getting shots when I was a kid. You know, the way they always suckered you in. One visit would be with some white haired nurse that was so experienced the shot was over before you knew she’d started. Then the next time they hand you off to some trainee that gave shots like she was trying to drive nails. Yeah I don’t have good memories of anything to do with inoculations either.
But I digress.
The next step is to pour the hot, inoculated milk into a jar and seal it tightly. Then you wrap the jar in a towel to keep it warm. So far I was still on board with her, but this was where things took a disturbing turn. The jar is put into the oven, the oven is off but the light is on. The light will keep the oven and milk, warm. You let the warm milk, full of bacteria, sit for some hours to overnight. Hours? Milk kept not at room temperature, or better yet in the fridge but nice and warm for hours? Really? After you knowingly put bacteria in the milk then you do everything in your power to make it grow as fast as possible? This isn’t food, it’s a biological weapon. I had visions of left wing radicals throwing jars of yogurt as organic Molotov cocktails. I’m sure the next Bond movie will have a climactic scene where the mad scientist is about to contaminate all of New York, not with a nuclear dirty bomb, but with one bottle of home made yogurt.
And we were supposed to eat this?
The funny thing was that, with one exception, you could see that everyone under 30 thought this sounded like fun. Those over 30 were thinking “no bloody way am I ever going to do that.” Maybe it’s because I was brought up in a household where sterility was next to godliness. Maybe it was that we were taught to wash and dry everything and then put it in the dishwasher “to make sure it’s clean”. Maybe it’s possible that I’m just a tiny bit neurotic about my food. (Marsha: Ding, Ding, Ding, Right Answer.) But that just doesn’t strike me as something I want to try.
Then someone mentioned making their own cheese and I put my fingers in my ears and started humming The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Nobody’s going to mess up my Tillimook.
Doug & Marsha
PIX:
Two additions to our collection. A gorgeous, probably Cenozoic clam sent to us by my sister, Jean and her husband, Ron. The picture doesn't really show how pretty it really is. Then there is an early sand dollar or heart urchin. The dealer said it was Triassic but I think more likely Cretaceous or Cenozoic.
Then we went to Cathedral Grove with nephew Andrew and girlfriend Martha.
It happened last weekend when we had all gotten together for a big party. We talked about many things and overall it was a nice evening. At one point we got talking about making things from scratch at home. Jess, our cousin, makes flavoured oils, and simple syrups and vinegar and such. We’ve gotten them from her at Christmas and they’re nice. She described making vinegar out of wine and it sounded like a cool way to use up any leftovers. (Marsha: Yeah, like we have leftover wine around our house.)
Then she got talking about making her own yogurt. Now I had no idea how yogurt was made. I never thought about it. Like most people I just would grab the container and a spoon and slorp it down. Sometimes I’d add Grape Nuts or blackberries, but as to how yogurt came to be, I’d honestly never thought about it. Actually I’d aggressively never thought about it. I assumed that it was just something I really didn’t want to know. I knew it had something to do with a cow but beyond that I was a bit...shall we say...squeemish. When I was growing up we’d go to the fair every summer. When we went by the animal barns while everyone else was oohing and aahing over the cows’ beautiful brown eyes or the coat on the horses or the fuzzy rabbits all I noticed was the manure and trying to not step in it. I don’t do well with ‘biological’ things. When it came to the milking demonstration I’d slip off and look at the tractors or the cars. Machines, I could understand. I found the idea of squeezing something to drink out of the underside of a cow was...disturbing. I wanted to believe that a cow had nothing to do with the milk I drank. I could prove it too, because the milk I drank came from a powder we mixed with water.
Which probably explains a lot about me.
Anyway, back to the yogurt. Jess went on to describe in detail how she makes her own yogurt. She starts by heating the milk. I’d call it scalding but apparently there’s a particular temperature it gets heated to that only kills the ‘bad bacteria’, (like there’s any other kind). Then it’s cooled a bit, and she mixes in some organic yogurt as a ‘starter’. In a disturbing twist this step is called ‘inoculating’ the milk. Understand that I’m not 100% comfortable with anything dealing with inoculation. Maybe it’s the memories of getting shots when I was a kid. You know, the way they always suckered you in. One visit would be with some white haired nurse that was so experienced the shot was over before you knew she’d started. Then the next time they hand you off to some trainee that gave shots like she was trying to drive nails. Yeah I don’t have good memories of anything to do with inoculations either.
But I digress.
The next step is to pour the hot, inoculated milk into a jar and seal it tightly. Then you wrap the jar in a towel to keep it warm. So far I was still on board with her, but this was where things took a disturbing turn. The jar is put into the oven, the oven is off but the light is on. The light will keep the oven and milk, warm. You let the warm milk, full of bacteria, sit for some hours to overnight. Hours? Milk kept not at room temperature, or better yet in the fridge but nice and warm for hours? Really? After you knowingly put bacteria in the milk then you do everything in your power to make it grow as fast as possible? This isn’t food, it’s a biological weapon. I had visions of left wing radicals throwing jars of yogurt as organic Molotov cocktails. I’m sure the next Bond movie will have a climactic scene where the mad scientist is about to contaminate all of New York, not with a nuclear dirty bomb, but with one bottle of home made yogurt.
And we were supposed to eat this?
The funny thing was that, with one exception, you could see that everyone under 30 thought this sounded like fun. Those over 30 were thinking “no bloody way am I ever going to do that.” Maybe it’s because I was brought up in a household where sterility was next to godliness. Maybe it was that we were taught to wash and dry everything and then put it in the dishwasher “to make sure it’s clean”. Maybe it’s possible that I’m just a tiny bit neurotic about my food. (Marsha: Ding, Ding, Ding, Right Answer.) But that just doesn’t strike me as something I want to try.
Then someone mentioned making their own cheese and I put my fingers in my ears and started humming The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Nobody’s going to mess up my Tillimook.
Doug & Marsha
PIX:
Two additions to our collection. A gorgeous, probably Cenozoic clam sent to us by my sister, Jean and her husband, Ron. The picture doesn't really show how pretty it really is. Then there is an early sand dollar or heart urchin. The dealer said it was Triassic but I think more likely Cretaceous or Cenozoic.
Then we went to Cathedral Grove with nephew Andrew and girlfriend Martha.