dreams of a pretty place far far away

recently i’ve been making yogurt! it started when i was in shanghai on vacation, and grandmum took out this really old yogurt-making machine, which is at least as old as i am, but brand new. Essentially it’s like an incubator, and all you need to do it put some milk, sugar and a teeny bit of store-bought yogurt in it (for the bacteria to turn the milk into yogurt), and after 6-8 hours you get this really lovely, creamy yogurt. The best thing is, it’s au natural because there are no preservatives and chemicals (save for the ones from the store-bought) AND the next time you make the new batch of yogurt, you can recycle some from the previous batch for the bacteria to be used! So essentially it’s really fuss free, healthy, and best of all, so adorably simple.

and ever since i discovered that i’m lactose-intolerant (only to diary milk and products with a lot of whole milk in it), i had to give up drinking it. which is quite sad, because i like drinking milk. ): to find another healthy way of replenishing natural goodness, i decided to turn to this solution:

the yogurt-incubator incubating the milk concotion. i used 1 litre of strawberry milk, 5 tablespoons of caster sugar, 1 small cup of strawberry Magnolia yogurt (around 4.t tbsp) and a quarter of a teaspoon of strawberry essense. as you probably can tell, i’m a big strawberry fanatic. but i was more worried about the sour taste of the yogurt overpowering the strawberry taste/smell, so i took (a little) more initiative ensuring that the taste will stay, haha!

after refridgerating: the yogurt acheived the texture of a jelly-like chawanmushi! it was really smooth and a pretty pink colour!  

a closeup of the jelly-like consistency. pity the original flavour of the strawberry milk got a bit wonky compounded with the sour-ish yougurt taste.

for the next batch, i used fresh, plain diary milk and 100% diary yogurt (after my dad’s suggestion that my previous one was total strawberry overkill, lol). it turned out less sweet and powdery tasting (i suspect the strawberry milk was made from condensed powder) and more like true yogurt. however i couldn’t resist butting some strawberry bits in it haha! i diced some fresh strawberries, soaked them in a thick sugar-water solution, and kept it in the fridge for a bit to get the sweetness in.

muahaha looks store bought *ego*

the consistency is more like true yogurt this time round, and tastes less “fake”. i suspect it’s because the bacteria in the yogurt the first time round wasn’t strong enough

hmm, last paper on monday! going out with mingyi and kingkong next friday, can’t wait! we have so much to catch up on.

but despite the fact that the midyears are pretty much over (and that i think i did pretty badly… haha), the huge lead weight still haven’t been lifted off my shoulders.

list of things to complete:

1. IOP essay (long overdue!!)
2. TOK term 3 essay
3. EE proposal/framework + think EE topic and read books
4. Chem revision for monday’s paper
5. CAS stuff (i think i’ll be danger listed S: )
6. 徐志摩 poem analysis/appreciation
7. File stuff
8. Clean room

edit (7 july 08): almost done!