Sneaky Nutrition

I am a mom of an adopted 4 year old whose DNA spells health-disaster. So I make a lot of food from scratch so that I know what is it in, and that it is as healthy for my family as possible. Especially my son. So it is with yogurt. We go through it quickly. I don't give him a ton of dairy (although on homemade pizza, I'm not ditching the cheese!) but we do have granola with yogurt often. Both homemade. But buying tub after tub of the European style organic plain yogurt can get old, and if we run out, we're hosed. But no more!!! As long as I have at least a 1/2 cup of not-too old yogurt left, I'm good! Just google homemade crock pot yogurt and check out the recipe.

Isn't that awesome? This is actually my crockpot with actual yogurt in it! I was SO excited that it worked. (So was my kiddo!) Especially since it failed the first time (which he also experienced and was disappointed), but now I know why (and so does he!- And failure was witnessed, and applied. Yessss!)

It's basically like this:
1. Pour ONLY milk into crockpot. Low for 2 hours 45 mins.
2. Turn OFF and let sit for 3 hours.
3. Take starter yogurt out of fridge to get to room temp if you choose, but don't have to.
4. When timer goes off, put 1 cup of starter yogurt in a bowl with some milk FROM THE CROCKPOT.
     Mix it thoroughly with a whisk. Then add all of it into the crockpot and mix thoroughly. *(this is why mine
     was all weird the first time I made it! Didn't mix in small amount first, or well enough in the big pot)
5. Lid on. Wrap whole thing in blankets for next 10 hours. Wha-la! Yogurt!

Lukas whooped for joy when he saw that it worked. And it DOES look cool in those canning jars in my fridge- I won't lie.

p.s. I never gave my kid flavored yogurt. Ever. Only bought plain. We add granola, or sometimes homemade strawberry jam, or a little honey, but mostly he eats it plain.  Recently he discovered Go-gurt at a birthday party and of course LOVED it. It also helped that "Scrunge-Bob" (as he calls him) was on the side! LOL

p.p.s. Have you ever told another mom your kid is allergic to food coloring just so that you can avoid the awkward debate about why you don't want your kid eating all that junk with food coloring? Met a mom at said birthday party who does just that. Funny to find a friend over food coloring woes.