just call me martha...

...stewart! or raechel rae. or better yet, call me emeril! because that's who i am...the next emeril! i'm not like a professional chef, i am a professional chef! i'm a cooking extraordinaire. i'm a master of culinary arts...

or at least i'm on my way!

hehe. i decided to go on and give making yogurt a try since i find making homemade baby food so easy and enjoyable. it really is amazing how simple it is to make some of the best stuff on earth. thanks to WholesomeBabyFood and A Year of Slowcooking for these great and awesome recipes! although i follow the baby food website to a t because i don't want to botch up the food my precious ecobaby has to eat, i changed up the directions for my yogurt recipe. instead of heating the milk in the crockpot, i simply scalded it on the stove, poured it into my preheated crockpot, let it cool to a temperature of 110 degrees, and then mixed in my yogurt. so in essence, all the recipe calls for is hot milk, plain yogurt, and a place to keep the milk warm while the cultures reproduce. simply let the milk cool down before adding the yogurt because the cultures will die if the milk is too hot.

i have to say, both ecobaby's food AND the yogurt are DELICIOUS! because ecobaby has no teeth and hasn't developed her chewing motions, i thin out her baby food so it has NO chunks in it, just a tad thicker than soup. and because i love my yogurt thick, i seperate the whey from it until it's a thick consistency, like sour cream or greek yogurt. it's easy to seperate the whey as well. simply line a colander with cheesecloth, add the yogurt and let the whey drip out from the colander. make sure to put the colander into a larger bowl so the whey can be collected (and don't throw it out--there are tons of other uses for it: making cheese from it, watering your plants, incorporating it into baking recipes and shakes, drinking it straight--although i hear it's nasty--or giving it to your pets for added nutrition).

i don't know what i'm gonna make next for ecobaby--so far she eats carrots, applesauce and applejuice, peas, sweet potatoes, bananas and rice. i was thinking about summer squash, but i believe that's a bit too mature for her stomach to digest. i also want to wait to start beans. i'm thinking maybe pears and avocado?

as for the yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and cheerios all the way baby!