Bahasa Inggris 2 ( Tulisan )

How to Make Yogurt at Home

We've been making our own yogurt for about a month now and we don't think we'll ever go back. Not only does it actually save us money, but the yogurt is seriously good. The method we've adopted is very basic - no special ingredients or fancy incubating equipment required. We had no idea homemade yogurt could be this easy! Once you have the basic method down, there are all sorts of tweaks and changes you can make. Some people like to add dry milk powder or gelatin for extra thickness, others like to strain off the liquid whey for a dense Greek-style yogurt. Using different brands of commercial yogurt to culture the milk can also give you subtly different flavors and nutritional benefits.
We'll be talking about all this and more in the coming days. What's your favorite method for making yogurt?

What You Need

Ingredients
• 1/2 gallon milk - whole or 2% are best, but skim can also be used
• 1/2 cup commercial yogurt - be sure that the yogurt contains active cultures
Equipment
• a sauce pan or dutch oven with a lid - large enough to hold 1/2 gallon of milk with a few inches of head room
• spatula
• thermometer - a candy thermometer that clips on the side of the pan is best, but an instant read thermometer is also fine
• small bowl
• whisk
• an incubator - this can be anything from the dutch oven used to heat the milk to a commercial yogurt machine (more on this in Step 4 below)

Instructions

1. Heat the Milk - In your saucepan or dutch oven, heat the milk to right below boiling, 200°F. Stir the milk gently as it heats to make sure the bottom doesn't scorch and the milk doesn't boil over. According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, this heating step is necessary to change the protein structure in the milk so it sets as a solid instead of separating.
2. Cool the Milk - Let the milk cool until it is just hot to the touch, 112°F - 115°F. This goes faster if you set the pan over an ice water bath and gently stir the milk.
3. Inoculate the Milk - Pour about a cup of the warm milk into a small bowl and whisk it with the yogurt. Once it's smooth, whisk this back into the pan of milk.
4. Incubate the Yogurt - Now comes the long wait period where the milk actually transforms into yogurt. The trick is keeping the milk around 110°F until it has set, usually 4-6 hours. Commercial incubating equipment is handy for maintaining a consistent temperature, but not necessary.
We've been incubating our yogurt in the oven with excellent results. First, warm the oven to about 115° (an oven thermometer helps to know when the oven is heated). Put the lid on the dutch oven or saucepan with your inoculated milk and wrap the whole pot in a few layers of towels. These will insulate the pot and keep it warm. Set this bundle in the warmed (but turned off!) oven and set the timer. It's important not to jostle the milk too much as it's incubating so that it sets properly - the temptation to peek is so hard to resist!
The longer the yogurt sits, the thicker and more tangy it will become. Check it around the 4-hour mark and give it a taste. The texture should be creamy, like a barely-set custard, and the flavor will be tart yet milky. If you like it, pull it out. If you'd like it tangier, leave it for another hour or two. We sometimes even make yogurt overnight, putting it in the oven around midnight and taking it out when we get up in the morning.
5. Cool the Yogurt - We have found that if we cool the yogurt in the same container we incubated it in, we end up with a smoother end result. Once it's completely chilled, we transfer it to air tight containers for easier storage. Sometimes there will be a film of watery whey on top of the yogurt. You can strain this off or just stir it back into the yogurt. Yogurt lasts about two weeks in the refrigerator.
Additional Notes:
• Cost Breakdown - We eat about a quart of yogurt a week in our house, which was costing us roughly $2.60 a week. A half gallon of milk makes a little less than two quarts of yogurt, which has been just enough to last us two weeks. We buy a local brand of milk that costs $3.70 per half gallon ($1.85 per quart), so we end up saving about 75-cents per week on yogurt. Nice.
• If your milk drops below 110° while it's incubating, that's fine. It will take a little longer to set and might end up a little looser, but the bacteria in the yogurt culture will keep the milk from spoiling. By the way, even after 8 hours in the oven (overnight), our yogurt was still 100° when we took it out of the oven!
• Once you've made one batch of homemade yogurt, you no longer need to buy commercial yogurt to culture the next batch. Just make sure to save 1/2 cup of your homemade yogurt and use that instead.

Source :  http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-yogurt-at-home-125070

Maximising Your Sleeping Bags Warmth

In the past climbers used to look at the fill weight of the bag (the amount of down stuffed into the shell) in order to judge how warm it would be. They were aware that down bags with less than 500g of down were summer weight and for winter use they would look for a bag with 900 or more grams of down. The fill power would then be taken into account, for example a 500g 700-fill bag would give you a ‘warm 500g’. This was in the days when the sleeping bag consumer was well-educated in what they wanted.

Once the outdoors became mass market, manufacturers had to come up with ways of demonstrating how warm their bags were to customers who had only ever slept at room temperature. So, in an effort to make purchases easier, temperature ratings came into vogue, however, by simplifying the process they not only introduced manufacturer interpretation but also steered customers from understanding the mechanics of how a sleeping bag works.

Since it is the individual’s metabolism that heats a sleeping bag, it remains important for you to fully understand the functions of fill weight, loft, internal girth, etc. No amount of simplification will benefit the customer. Only by understanding how a bag works will a customer make the correct choice. To this day fill weights are still listed in manufacturers’ charts because of how useful they really are.

Judging a sleeping bag’s temperature value by looking only at its temperature rating is strongly discouraged. Temperature ratings are nothing more than a rough guide and should only be used as a starting point. Also, one company’s temperature rating has no bearing or relationship to another company’s rating system and some company’s stated rating is literally dangerous.

To give you an idea of usage here’s a rough idea of season, temperature and usage for a well-fed sleeper wearing a thin thermal layer and sleeping on a well-insulating mat.

* 200-300g (1+ season/ +5/0°C). High quality down and construction will allow this weight of bag to be used in mild spring and autumn conditions if used within a tent by a fit, well-fed and dressed sleeper. A common marathon weight bag. * 350-550g (2+ season/ 0/-5°C). Performing a similar role as the bag above but with a little more range for not too much more weight. A good summer weight bag for a cold sleeper. With a well-dressed and high metabolism sleeper this weight bag can be used into the winter although don’t expect to be fully comfortable. A good summer Alpine weight bag or three season ultra lightweight backpacking bag. * 600-800g (3+ season -5/-15°C). A good all round sleeping bag, suitable for four season use within a tent. A fully dressed climber can use this bag in the open in high mountain conditions comfortably and this weight of bag is used by most expedition climbers. * 900-1,200g (4+ season -15°C to very cold indeed). Expedition weight and suitable for four season mountain use and a popular weight for sleepers who don’t want to wear clothes in their bag or want total warmth whatever the weather (1,000g of standard quality fill).

Fuelling the fire
In November of last year I spent a cold week waiting in the Hornli Hut for the weather to improve on the Matterhorn. Although my bag was rated to -18°C and I had plenty of clothes on, I froze my ass off even though the hut temperature could only have been just below zero. We’d only had our hill food to eat, which comprised of small portions of couscous and after two nights of poor food and sleep we decided to walk down to Zermatt and get some better ‘soul’ food. That night after slogging back up to the hut again (why doesn’t the téléphérique go all the way to the hut?), we ate a mountain of pasta, cheese and tomatoes and then crawled into bed. Wow! What a difference. My sleeping bag turned into an inferno and very soon I had all my clothes off and my feet sticking out of the bottom.

The lesson is that scrimping on fuel is a false economy if you want to stay warm. Fuel the fire and you can get away with a lighter bag. Fats are what you’re after as they produce heat due to inefficiency in digestion. On cold routes I now carry a small Nalgene bottle full of olive oil and also take nuts (pine nuts are great things to add to any meal) and cheese.

Let the down do its job
If you are cold and jump into a cold bag it’s a bit like jumping into a flask, you’ll remain cold. Down is not warm in itself, it’s simply an insulator. I’ve woken up on the top of El Cap in scorching heat totally oblivious because the bag was keeping the heat out.

Firstly, you have to heat up the bag. Getting in hot is the best way. Wearing tons of clothes stops the heat getting into the down. You may not be cold as your clothes will provide some insulation, but you’re not making the most of the potential warmth of the down. Heat will seep out into the down slowly if you are wearing all your clothes and you may wake up warm in the night, but it’s better to get warm from the start.

One trick is to do sit-ups in the bag, or jog around before you jump in. Take off clothes inside the bag so you don’t lose any of the precious heat you already have, allowing the warmth to pass from your clothing to the down. Insulation that allows convection like thermal base layers or open fleece can be worn as the heat is able to pass through it into the down. Following these rules will allow you to sleep warmer if your bag is up to the job, if it is not then you take appropriate action in order to increase your bag’s insulation or else spend a long cold night.

Boosting bag performance
The snow is lying thick outside your tent, you’ve eaten all your cheese and drank all your olive oil, you’ve taken off all your clothes, yet your 200g bag just isn’t doing it for you.

Firstly, make use of any other insulation you have. Down is the best insulation to hand so this should remain your first insulation layer. Anything else should be placed on the outside of this. Are you losing heat through the ground? If so lay on your side to reduce surface contact and try to increase your under insulation. You can do this by laying on your pack, or by laying your clothing underneath you. I often suffer from a cold backside and knees so I often slip my gloves into my trousers to increase their insulation. If the top of the bag isn’t keeping you warm then drape clothing over the top of the bag. I cannot overstate how effective this can be, even if it’s just a shell jacket. Of course, the down side is that you can’t move around. Make good use of your partner, as they may well be as cold as you. Spooning together is a great way to gain heat that would otherwise be lost and a good way of getting to know your partner better.

Make sure the clothes you’re wearing are dry, especially your socks and hat. Cold feet will cool you as they won’t be able to warm the down in the bottom of the bag. If you don’t have dry socks wrap them in a spare thermal or pop your mitts on the end once you’ve warmed them up by hand. Down boots are a good investment if you suffer from cold feet. Because you lose 6% of your heat from your noggin it’s a good idea to insulate your head well. If you’ve got a down jacket with a removable hood, or can buy a down hood, you can use this to improve the rating of your bag with very little bulk or weight.

A bag may not perform due to many factors, with the two most common being either a fill weight too low to insulate the user and, secondarily, a fill that has lost some of its performance. The first one is easy to remedy before the event if experience is applied and an over optimistic attitude is kept in check when planning your nights sitting in a warm room. The second factor can be limited by a good understanding of what can go wrong and using this to care for the bag.

INSULATION CARE
There is nothing as great as a bone dry down sleeping bag. Unfortunately there is also nothing as grim as a wet one. Saturated down loses 90% of its insulation as the delicate structure of the clusters stick together and collapse. The down absorbs a lot of water and because it loses most of its thermal performance it must be dried via an outside heat source like the sun, a tumble dryer or a body.

In many cases where there is moisture present, a down bag will lose performance each night it is used, as the down becomes slowly saturated. The rate at which this happens is dependent on the skill of the user and the conditions in which it is being used. This water contamination comes both from without and within the bag and learning to slow the speed of this performance drop is one of the skills needed to use a down bag effectively.

Down just doesn’t work in high saturated environments and best suits cold and dry conditions, or the protected sanctuary of a dry space like a tent, hut or snow hole. Open bivvys in the rain, even when using a bivvy bag are asking for trouble. When the temperature drops the down begins to really come into its own. All the nasty moisture is now frozen and so what would otherwise have wetted out your bag can be brushed off. Care must be taken to limit any frozen moisture melting on to the bag (like lying on snow that has fallen on your mat). This includes bivvy bags with hoar frost coating the inside due to you breathing into it, warm parts of the bag pressing against snow. If boiling water within a tent or snow hole, try to keep your bag packed away so it doesn’t become damp, or if that’s not possible then limit the damage by covering the bag with clothes. The modern water-resistant shells are just that (apart from the Mountain Hardwear Banshee), as moisture can get through the untaped seams, but they still provide a very good barrier to secondary contamination (i.e. not direct rain).

Try not to get into the bag with wet clothes on and don’t breathe into it either as this will increase the amount of moisture in the bag by several thousand percent. If you must get into a down bag with frozen clothes on then try and remove any snow off your clothes and pay close attention to ice on the Velcro on your shell, removing it with a knife or peg before it can melt in your bag. If you must dry clothes then lay them on top of the bag, or lay on them, or just leave them wet and aim to dry them on the move the following day. The only exception to this rule is socks and gloves which should be placed flat against the skin (stomach, groin, armpits) under your base layer to dry. When you get up in the morning stuff the bag away straight away so the warm moisture within it is pushed out before it can cool and condense within the down. Make sure your stuff sack is waterproof and consider buying a dedicated dry bag to store it in if doing a very wet trip.

Source :

http://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/articles/view/maximising_your_bags_warmth

How to Make Buttermilk from Plain Milk with Lemon Juice or Vinegar

How many times have you found yourself in desperate need of pancakes, but without the requisite buttermilk in the fridge? Or there's the other scenario: you want to make a recipe, but you're reluctant to buy an entire carton of buttermilk when you only need a half cup. For either situation, we have a solution. It's easy to make a very quick buttermilk substitute in less than ten minutes.
Whether we're talking pancakes or quick breads, the role of buttermilk in almost any baking recipe is to add tenderness and lighten the batter. Once the acids in the buttermilk get in contact with the baking soda or baking powder in the batter, a giant fizz-fest takes place. The reaction with the baking soda (or powder) cancels out the sourness of the buttermilk, leaving our baked goods airy, tender, and tasty beyond reckoning.
If we don't have buttermilk in the fridge, the closest substitute would be another dairy product with a little acidity added — milk with a spoonful of lemon juice or white vinegar does the job quite nicely. This mixture won't get as thick and creamy as buttermilk, but it will perform its role in the batter just as well. Incidentally, yogurt or sour cream thinned with milk (or plain water, in a pinch) also work well as buttermilk substitutes.
Thank goodness for buttermilk substitutes. Because a good pancake craving should never go unsatisfied. Here's how to do it:

How to Make a Quick & Easy Buttermilk Substitute

Makes 1 cup, recipe can be halved, doubled, or tripled as needed

What You Need

Ingredients
1 scant cup milk (whole, 2%, or heavy cream)
1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar
Equipment
Measuring cup
Measuring spoon
Stirring spoon

Instructions

1. Combine the milk and lemon juice. Measure 1 scant cup of milk. Stir in 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar.
2. Let stand 5-10 minutes. Let the mixture stand at room temperature for 5-10 minutes. When it is ready, the milk will be slightly thickened and you will see small curdled bits. (This substitute will not become as thick as regular buttermilk.)
3. Use the buttermilk. Use this substitute (including curdled bits) as you would buttermilk in your recipe.

Other Buttermilk Substitutes:

• Yogurt: Mix 3/4 cup plain yogurt with 1/4 cup water to thin. Use as you would buttermilk.
• Sour Cream: Mix 3/4 cup sour cream with 1/4 cup plain water to thin. Use as you would buttermilk.
• Cream of Tartar: Mix 1 cup of milk with 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tarter. Let stand 5-10 minutes until slightly thickened and curdled.

Source :

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-a-quick-easy-buttermilk-substitute-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-185757