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A little ‘coucou’ from the Dordogne!

I couldn’t resist to head over to an internet café this afternoon to share an experience I had last night. We made our own yogurt! For those of you who are like me and have never ever made anything from scratch, much less something as simple to buy as yogurt, you might get a kick out of this too.

My belle-mère is, as we know, one of the remaining traditional homemakers – in the whole sense of the word. She honored her title once more this break by serving small cups of homemade yogurt after dinner last night.

Intrigued as I am by everything homemade and traditionally French, I asked if I could try it too and I took some pictures. She recently bought a yogurt making machine (which you can find at Sears), which makes the whole process even easier. Before buying the electric machine, she was using her mother’s ceramic set with small white cups and heating tray that she would put in the a warm oven for over an hour. The electric machine takes 20 minutes, and how fun to eat your own yogurt from small glass pots!

Notice the white ceramic cups era before the war.

All you need is 1 liter of whole milk and 1 natural yogurt (for the yeast) or fresh yeast. Mix well and fill the containers. Twenty minutes later, refrigerate the cups for a few hours until cool and enjoy.

You can also add your own fruit at the bottom or honey or sugar, as you like.

And, for summer (it’s 37 degrees C down where we are right now!), you can then put the yogurt in plastic cups and freeze them for a wonderful, homemade summer treat! We have all the little nieces and nephews we us, so we have some Smarties type candies to decorate. It’s a perfect, healthy snack (and we know exactly what’s in it!)

Tomorrow we are going to a wine château, one of our neighbors in Saint Emillion, and I’ll try to get back to the internet café later this week to share that experience with you too.

For now, bonne dégustation!

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