Homemade Yogurt

R and I consume a lot of yogurt. So the next logical DIY project seemed to be "Make yogurt" especially after we went on a culinary shopping spree when my uncle was in town and I spotted a yogurt maker.

Here are the results:

Using the Salton YM9 1-Quart Yogurt Maker
manual directions yielded:

• Liquid
• Lumps
• That gross watery stuff on the top of yogurt that everyone pours out

Every yogurt-making read emphasizes that there are a billion different variations on how to perfect yogurt to your taste, so I guess it was good to know that 2% milk, mixed with yogurt starter packets, and incubated for 5 hours was basically what I would imagine drinking cancer would be like.
Using the 101 Cookbooks yogurt recipe yielded:

• Very thick
• Tart
• I mean so thick that it's a terrible combination if you're having problems with your mucus membranes
• Great yogurt

Leave it to my new favorite food blog, Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks...this stuff is good especially when you combine it with the homemade muesli recipe and drizzle it with agave nectar. The difference here? 2% milk, milk powder, and incubation for 9 hours. Now I need to figure out how to get the silky factor in...otherwise YU-UM.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I made homemade laundry detergent a while ago for several reasons: to both save money and try something out that was better for the environment. Everything I've read on the "green" websites use borax and washing soda, though I think your choice of soap will be the determining factor of how "green" (literally and figuratively) your detergent recipe is.

Anyway I didn't blog about it the first time because it didn't turn out as great as I thought it would. The texture was clumpy unlike the shown picture which made me mostly cross my fingers every time I dumped it into another load. And you bet your a** I was going to use it...I had three gallons of it. Luckily it mostly did the job. Tougher stains required a little additional help from a stain stick, so it's probably not the best solution for someone with kids, but our clothes were otherwise clean--but don't expect that "mountain fresh" smell. There will be no smell at all.

So I just made another batch today and I'm feeling more confident about the results this time around because Ryan finely shredded the soap in the grater (instead of slicing off strips with a knife) and I made sure the soap completely dissolved in the water by pretty much bringing it to a wee boil. Only tomorrow will really tell when it's had time to cool and gel up, but I was a little impatient last time. Fine shreds actually made this time go faster and I was done in about an hour.

Update: The detergent is VERY gelatinous and VERY smooth! No clumps!

New Lomo Tutorial

Lomo. It's an effect I'm continually drawn to. I'm also continually drawn to asking if there's a better way. And guess what? There is.

Let me take you through the steps I've followed just because what did/didn't work for me, may/may not work for you:

• Originally dooce introduced me to the lomo sort of style through her awesome daily photos of her dog and family (besides that, you should subscribe to her very very funny blog). She even posted a tutorial that wasn't too helpful to me at the time because a) it assumes a bit of photoshop knowledge which I didn't/don't have much of and b) Her childhood photo example, though funny, seemed like a poor example compared to the rest of her photography.

• Then I found a more spelled out version on Kingyo Senbei, which definitely improved my attempts. In fact, I still quite like them.
  

And now the newest addition to this collection of lomo tutorials is this one from the Digital Photography School (fellow photog students take note: this site is yet another great forum for photography enthusiasts as well as a great resource for learning and inspiring when your ideas are running dry).

Don't take my above example of the quality of this tutorial--I need to feather my vignette a bit more, and maybe come down on the sharpening among other things, but the author definitely seems to command a greater sense of authority over photoshop and why you should use the settings that are used.

Seems like a lot of steps for one image, but you can automate this by creating an action in the actions toolbar and go back and tweak whatever needs adjusting in the end. Actions, however, are for another post. :)

Burst of Rays Tutorial

I keep telling myself that I'm going to make a masthead for the blog, but am always seemingly drowning under files and files of photos. Well it's time I delved into photoshop a little deeper and I've started with this nifty tutorial on creating a burst of rays from Dr. Photoshop. The result: