Recipes for what I made today. In case you're interested

Whole milk Yogurt

3.25 cups of whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 carton Fage 2% plain Greek yogurt (5.3 oz) for starter- put this out on the counter to warm a bit before you start.  I find if I put it out when I start the milk to heating, it's at a good temp for mixing when the time comes.

Turn on oven light.  In a 2 quart saucepan on medium, heat milk to 180 degrees.  Keep milk at 180 for 30 minutes.  You may have to adjust your heat to keep it at 180.  I have to turn my heat down to just above low.  Meanwhile, take quart mason jar or enough glass containers to hold 1 quarts of yogurt.  Place in a pot of water and bring to a boil.  Boil 15 minutes to sterilize jars.  Turn off heat, remove jars from pot and turn upside down in a clean towel to drain.  If you're using lids and rings, I like to put these temporarily in the now just hot water.  Then remove them and place on the towel.

Once 30 minutes have passed, turn off the heat and allow to cool in the pan til the temp reaches 110 degrees.  Once at 110 degrees, mix in the entire container of yogurt.  Mix well.  Wait a few minutes and then mix again to make sure it's well incorporated.  Pour into your glass containers and add lids. Place in the oven and leave he oven light on.  Let stand in the oven for 4 hours.  Check to see if it has started to thicken.   If it hasn't, leave a few hours longer.  Once you check it and the yogurt has started to thicken, remove from oven and place in fridge.   You can go further and place a pint of this yogurt in a strainer lined with cheese cloth.  Let it strain a few hours for a Greek style yogurt, or you can let it strain over night and make yogurt cheese.  This is much like cream cheese.  After straining to cheese, I'll add a little salt, pepper, basil or other fragrant herb of choice to make a very flavorful cheese you can spread on crackers, celery or wherever you would use a cream cheese spread.

Bulk taco seasoning mix

3/4 cup dried onion
1/2 cup chili powder
1/4 cup salt
3 T garlic powder
3 T corn starch
3 T ground cumin
1 T - 3 T cayenne pepper-  I use 1T

Easy peasy, put all ingredients into a quart sz jar and shake to mix well.  Use 1/4 cup mix and 1/4 cup water to a lb of ground meat browned.  Voila!  Also make a great seasoning for a pot of chili.


Chocolate Syrup

1 cup cocoa powder
1.5 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla

In a 2 quart saucepan mix the sugar, cocoa, and salt.  Pour in the hot water and mix well.  Bring to a boil on medium heat.  Once boiling, turn off burner, but let pan remain on the burner to cool.  When cool, add the vanilla.  Use anywhere you would Hersheys syrup.  Store in fridge.


Dog Treats

2.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup dry milk
1 tsp sugar
1/3 tsp garlic
1 egg
1/2 cup peanutbutter
6 T oil- or I use chicken or bacon fat.  They love this!
1/2 cup water

Preheat oven to 350.  In a medium size bowl mix all the dry ingredients.  Add the egg, oil, water and peanutbutter.  Mix as well as you can with a spoon.  Mix will be dry.  Add a little water if too dry.  In need to be like a really dense cookie dough.  Roll out and either cut into strips or use a cookie or biscuit cutter to make the treats.  I make mine big because I have big dogs.  Smaller dogs I would make them small like the milk bone treats.  Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.  Turn off oven and let them remain in the oven til the oven and the treats cool.  These should be hard.