Crockpot Yogurt!

We eat a lot of yogurt. It probably stems from those old Dannon commercials we used to see as kids ("In Soviet Georgia, where they eat a lot of yogurt, a lot of people live past 100..."), but in our Trash Free month, traditional yogurt in it's plastic containers was off limits.

What to do? What to do? Well, make it ourselves, of course. We followed this ridiculously simple recipe for crockpot yogurt:

Ingredients
- One half gallon of whole milk. (2% worked pretty well, but resulted in more of a yogurt smoothie)
- 1/2 cup store-bought natural, live/active culture plain yogurt (you need to have a starter. Once you've made your own, you can use that as a starter)

And that's it.

Plug in your crockpot and turn it to low. Add an entire half gallon of milk.
Cover and cook on low for 2 1/2 hours.
Unplug your crockpot. Leave the cover on and let it sit for 3 hours.
Scoop out 2 cups of the warmish milk and put it in a bowl.
Whisk in 1/2 cup of store-bought live/active culture yogurt. Then pour the bowl contents back into the crockpot. Stir to combine.
Put the lid back on your crockpot. Keep it unplugged, and wrap a bath towel all the way around the crockpot for insulation.
Let it sit for 8 hours.
In the morning, the yogurt will have thickened. Put in the the fridge for at least five hours for maximum deliciousness, and add any fruit or sweetener you want.

Crockpot yogurt. It's cheaper, tasty and you'll use a heck of a lot less plastic!

And with luck, you may end up looking like this: