Disappointed Yogurt Maker Seeks: A Warm Place

I've had a yogurt tragedy. Well, as tragic as a yogurt situation can be, that is. We've had a death in the yogurt cultures. SAD.

I should perhaps explain that I had not purchased any starter yogurt for three years. Years. I started making yogurt with some yogurt the MiL brought home from the Jersey dairy farm and it just . . . kept going. When I made yogurt, I would just use some yogurt from the last unopened jar from the previous batch in my refrigerator and everything was swell.

Every recipe I have ever seen for homemade yogurt says that it will get thinner over time and eventually you'll have to buy new yogurt and start over. But mine never thinned. Every time, it was perfect.

This yogurt culture was practically a member of the family. It was older than Charlie.

And then . . . tragedy.

One day a month or so ago when I made yogurt, I did it while the children were rampaging around the house and I was trying to referee at the same time I was monitoring milk temperatures. When the yogurt was supposed to be done, I took it out of the cooler on the kitchen floor and . . . it was kind of thin. It was not my perfect, thick yogurt.

DAMMIT.

I figured I had screwed up the water temperature or the milk temperature due to child distractions (it's always so nice to blame things on the children). The MiL brought home some new yogurt from the Jersey farm for me to start again. I did it a few days ago, this time very deliberately during nap time. No distractions. Just me and my yogurt.

Except it didn't turn into yogurt. After four hours in the cooler, it was more like slightly thickened milk.

What the hell? I've lost my magic yogurt touch. ALL IS RUINED.

And then the MiL brought up the fact that our kitchen floor is more or less like a damn refrigerator, thanks to the uninsulated nature of our kitchen and the severe cold this winter.

DING.

Yogurt needs a warm place to grow the yogurt-making bacteria. The cooler of warm water I use is only so effective if it's resting on a forty-degree surface*.

I'm not so swift sometimes.

A. brought home some more yogurt for me this afternoon, from a local dairy. This weekend I'll make yogurt and find somewhere less frigid to put the cooler. Victory will be mine.

Assuming I can find a warm place.

* I bet you think I'm exaggerating. Okay, so I don't actually have a thermometer on the floor, but it is shockingly, horrifyingly cold if you rest your hand on the floor, so I don't think forty degrees is too far off. Just ask my feet, which are frozen stumps after spending half an hour on that floor during dinner preparation. And those are feet that are swathed in wool socks and heavy slippers with a rubber sole. It's cold. COLDCOLDCOLD.