Homemade Yogurt Success!!!

I did it!!!! The yogurt finally turned out good enough that the children will eat it! Brad and I have now successfully made our own yogurt in addition to the butter, buttermilk and the cream cheese I'm doing today.....along with the homemade, non-edible laundry soap and cutting back to only 1 T of Snuggle p/ load. I can hardly wait for the cloth diapers to get here!!! That's just plain insanity! And Brad loves all of this new stuff and has taken to making the butter so he's done that the last several times. A friend started the yogurt for me and I finished it up. It turned out great! I flavored it with some jello until I can come up with a better option. We've almost completely forsaken most refined sugar and I am now slowly trying to cut out most food colorings and refined or processed flour. We've slowly transitioned to whole wheat spaghetti and pastas and brown rice for rice needs. I found an organic oatmeal that everybody loves. The oats are bigger and are true old fashioned oats. They taste a ton better too.

The "Homemade" Baby

Since I'm trying to find ways to get around food dyes flavoring the yogurt with packaged jello was't all that optimal since it is of course... nothing but that. I still wanted to experiment though and see what I could do and I figure they've been eating food dyes for a long while so seeing what a pkg of jello does in some yogurt isn't going to hurt much. I just [prefer to stay away from it if at all possible. So, I'm now working on thickeneing it up with just plain gelatin and some essential oil flavorings. When I get the Vitamix I'm going to puree real fruit, pretty much anything and everything, and just flavor it with that since the children won't eat chunky fruit and it will sweeten it more evenly with it being pureed. I can add some honey to do the rest of the sweetening job. I'm sooooo excited!

The bread and the butter

And I'm beginning to make our bread in the oven using the Kitchenaid to do the dough job. Slowly but surely I'm giving up the crutch of the bread machine....and truth is....the loaf is only enough for 1 meal for everybody. I found long loaf pans here and am going to order those today.

Sharing the "normal" yogurt. This is what happens when there's a ton of siblings that LOVE you. And, yes...Garrett fed him and then he lovingly let Gavin feed himself.

I don't think I've ever felt more frugal and fulfilled in all of my life. Not only am I loving this but Brad is too, surprisingly, and I have seen huge health changes in the children. I guess I just always figured this stuff was out there and people do these things but I would never be one of them. It sounded way too radical and "crunchy", I suppose. Way too earthy for me. But hereI am and just loving it all. I guess the health and financial payoff is just so huge that it's really incredible to me. It seems like such a basic thing to go back to such simplicity as what they did so long ago but there are such huge rewards to be reaped. And...it's not really that simple. I'll admit it's so much easier to go buy bread, buy yogurt, and buy the easy dinners to make. But overall, I figure my job is here and I have been placed here over everything household-wise, not to mention responsible for my children's nutrition. I never dreamed of the fulfillment it would bring with it. Paring down, decluttering, setting this simpler home based approach example for the children in doing these things is such a life changing thing for both Brad and I and for them. And I'm still just astounded at the overwhelming financial difference it is making for all of us.

Gavin's 1st bubble bath...with much thanks owed to Garrett who emptied the entire contents of the baby shampoo bottle into the running bath water. A clump of bubbles has been strategically placed for modesty purposes. You can credit Garrett for the clump on his head.