How to make bone broth and yogurt: a helpful combination

   Today, I want to share how I make bone broth and yogurt in my kitchen. I have been making both of these for quite a while, and have found some techniques that have made the process easier. 

Bone Broth
Why bone broth? It is one of the healthiest substances you could consume. It is essential for healthy tissue and strong bones. Some of the healthiest cultures in the world consume broth daily. Store bought broth is not a substitute, it cannot even be compared to homemade broth in health or taste.

What do you need?
A crock pot
bones
filtered water

 Here is my pot with the bones in it. You can do any amount of bones, I always scrape any leftover juice or fat in from the cooking pan. I have a large crock pot and there are two carcasses in here(one duck, one chicken). This will make me about 4 quarts of stock. Stock can be made with any type of animals bones. The ones I like the best are chicken, pork, and beef.

What if I don't have many bones? Save them in a freezer bag till you have enough from several meals. Waste not, want not, right?

Cost of this- nothing but the energy to make it. You already ate the meat, and just added water. The product you will get is, amazing and delicious!

Cover bones as best you can about 1 inch over the bones. Using filtered water is preferred if you have town water. The chlorine can keep your stock from gelling.






Now turn on high. (If you are leaving for the day or think you might forget to turn it down, just put it on low.) Leave on high for about 2-3 hours. Then turn to low.

Yogurt, a cultured milk product good for your tummy and tasty too.

What do you need?

2-3 glass quart jars with lids

1/4 cup measuring device

yogurt starter

milk

This is the starter I like to use, and this is what I would recommend if you where to buy yogurt in the store for consumption. Carried by our local White Market store. You will quickly see how easy, and cheap it is to make your own. It costs about $5 to buy a quart of yogurt in the store.

Put 1/4 cup of starter in each jar. That's only .31 cents per quart.

The average gallon of whole milk costs $5.
$1.25 per quart of milk, with a grand total of....

 $1.56 per quart of yogurt!

Top off with milk* and stir. Put on the lids and your done.

*I have only made this with raw milk, but don't see why this wouldn't work with store bought. Of course, I can only recommend drinking/using raw milk, but I am a bit of a food snob :-)






The helpful combination: producing yogurt by indirect heat from your crock pot. This is what I do, and what it looks like. This is really important if using raw milk. You are keeping that delicate bacteria and structure of the milk the same and are allowing the new bacterial cultures to multiply.

It goes between the wall and the crock pot. Periodically I will turn the jars, maybe once or twice during the process, and yes, my crock pot is very dirty :-) 

Now all your stock and yogurt needs is time. This process is flexible to your lifestyle and time availability. I generally let both the yogurt and the stock go at least 12 hours It is possible the yogurt will not be ready until 14 hours. You can check the yogurt by turning the jar and see if it looks gelled. The stock can go as long as 24 hours(or longer).

 It's up to you and how strong a flavor you want from it. 

The results

 This yogurt probably could have gone slightly longer, it isn't a super thick yogurt, but the recipe always gels. Our favorite way to have yogurt is with berries in it. We like the small frozen blueberries you can get at the White Market. Make a great snack or breakfast. 

Look how beautiful this broth is! This broth was cooking for something like 32 hours. No need to go that long, but that is what worked with my schedule yesterday :-) 

I use a funnel, and ladle the stock into quart jars, cover and put in the fridge. It will keep at least a month. 

This is a wonderful health food and would be excellent warmed in a mug with some sea salt, you could add a little turmeric, or curry. It gives you the option for homemade gravy with any meal. Soup is my fast food around here. Saute your veggies till soft, add stock and bring to a boil, season to taste. 

If you don't want to make stock, you can still make yogurt this way, just put water in your crock pot and everything else is the same. 

These might seem time consuming, but they really only take several minutes of your time to make. The waiting is the hard part :-) 

Enjoy!

Beauty in pain~

What an odd title, but appropriate, for each time I go through something hard in my life I am learning to see the beauty in my pain. When my eyes want to focus on the immediate and the future all at the same time, and when I "must" know everything that will happen in my life, I am being stripped and molded to conform to another image, the image of Christ. The study of 1John has been a meaningful one to me, and a timely one as the year started with a call to repentance and forsaking sinful habits and attitudes. How my life, if truly in Christ, should reflect Him. This last week I was studying 1John 2:15-17.

¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

The thought that struck me as I studied the meanings of the words in the Greek, was that it wasn't just this super sinful worldly stuff that I wasn't supposed to love, but it was more than that.

The lust of the flesh-It is the inner sin, any sin, that is leading me away from God. My desire to be independent from Him.  Am I saying the same thing as God does about sin in my life? Am I being honest about who I really am?

The lust of the eyes(literally the eyes of the mind)- The sin that leads me away from knowing God and what He wants me to do. Do I really think I know what is best for my life, or does God? Am I conforming to the knowledge of this world?

The pride of life-Am I trying to be independent from God physically? Am I thinking of myself in such high esteem as to hurt those around me? I was blown away by this definition of pride by BLB
"an insolent and empty assurance, which trusts in its own power and resources and shamefully despises and violates divine laws and human rights"

Not only do I do all these things, it is truly the struggle we have between the spirit and the flesh. John's call to a life in Christ is more than just avoiding the "bad" stuff of the world, it is avoiding the thinking and independent spirit of the world. It gets right down to the nitty gritty of surrendering our every desire and thought to Christ. John's words are not easy, in fact, he is quite stern as he says that God's love is not in us if we love the world. This message was so timely as I had a choice to conform to the thinking of the world, or the thinking of my Heavenly Father.

In the midst of renovating the 2nd floor of our house, I have had to restore different objects, and I was cleaning the hardware to the doors the other night, and I was seeing God speak to me during my work. I would take a rusty hinge, caked with old paint and it looked ugly, and possibly useless, but as I started scraping away the surface and letting the water wash over the hinge something started to appear, a beauty, a design, scrolls and pictures in the metal, something that was hidden by rust and paint, had suddenly come to light, it was being restored to reflect it's original design. I couldn't help but see the perfect analogy in my life. Christ scrapes away the sin, the mire, the things we have clung to in our lives. His goal is not for our comfort, but for our redemption. The water of His word washes me clean, the painful things He allows in my life are revealing who I was meant to be, and slowly I should start reflecting the design, beauty, and functionality of who God desires for me to be.


When it comes down to the moment of decision, if He is in us, then we will choose that which abides forever- a life in Christ. It doesn't all happen in a moment, no, it takes our whole earthly life to learn, but what a joy the process is, when our eyes are fixed on the unchangeable, the best, the most beautiful, and the most wonderful, the one who created the universe- God.

A Skunk, a Kitchen and the Roosters

How are skunks, a kitchen, and roosters connected? Well, let me explain…

It all started out like a normal evening, crawling in bed around 10:30 and falling in a deep sleep from the busyness of the day. All to be awakened at 12:30 in the morning by the most ghastly choking smell of a skunk. I think my face turned red and horns came out of my head as I swore to kill the skunk with my bare hands, or a pitchfork, or make Seth shoot it. I was convinced it had got in the basement again, the smell was so strong. We lit some candles and sprinkled essential oils on the bed (Ylang Ylang, what was I thinking?) It just smelled like stinky skunk perfume in our room. After 10 minutes of failed sleep I went to the couch, but the smell wasn’t much better there either. So, we moved the mattress into the kitchen at 1am. It was cooler in the kitchen so we grabbed another blanket, so far it wasn’t too bad, we at least could breath. We got about an hour or so of sleep after almost crying, and hysterically laughing about the whole thing. Seth said he needed to smell something good like peanut butter, and I suggested he give himself a peanut butter mustache so he could smell and lick some off when he so desired. We finally settled down, and then around 4am the crowing started. Our roosters crow all the time, the barn is just on the other side of the kitchen, yeah, so we moved the bed back to the bedroom at 4:30am. The skunk smell had dissipated by that point and the candles were still going. I cracked the window just to keep some fresh air coming in. We awoke around 8am feeling exhausted and bewildered by the whole thing. For some unknown reason we have a local skunk who likes to spray just outside our bedroom every few months. Someday if you come up to me and I smell like a skunk, it’s because I killed it with my bare hands. Here’s to a good night sleep for everyone tonight!