Successes With Making Yogurt After a Long Break

I hadn't made yogurt in at least a year. I just lost interest in making it, and my family wasn't eating it as readily. But in cleaning out the freezers, I found a few containers of homemade yogurt to use as starter. Combine that with early in the month I had picked up a gallon of whole milk. So . . .

The other day I did make yogurt, again, and had several areas of success that I thought I'd share.

• using old starter --the starter in my freezer was about one and a half years old, and it still worked! Who knew the starter would stay viable for so long?!
• chain yogurting for years -- the starter that I used this week is a direct descendant from my original container of Yoplait, bought in July of 2012. I think that's incredible. I never expected my starter to last for all of these years. Every few batches, the day after making yogurt I pack several small containers to use as starter for future batches, and keep in a 0 degree F freezer. It just keeps on going.
• incubating part of the yogurt for less time, to have some of it ready sooner -- I like to leave the yogurt to incubate overnight, but one daughter was asking if any would be ready for her to pack in her lunch, before morning. In that moment, I was thinking, well no, as I'd be leaving it in the incubator overnight, and then it would need to set up in the fridge for several hours. And then it occurred to me that I don't have to leave all of the jars in the incubator overnight. I could take one out after 3 or 4 hours and refrigerate, but leave the other 3 jars to incubate the length of time I prefer, for flavor and thickness. While this doesn't seem like such a monumental thing, it was to me as I was thinking outside of the box and doing one thing with part of the yogurt and another thing with the other part. When I think outside of my own boxes it makes me feel like I am opening up new opportunities for myself.
• adding milk powder to add extra nutrients to the yogurt -- two of my kids are not eating as much as they should (for completely different reasons), so I wanted to add a few extra nutrients to the foods that I prepare. I added dry milk powder to the heating milk. This isn't new or novel. A lot of yogurt-makers do this to thicken skim or low-fat milk in yogurt. But I've not done this before, and I was pleased with how well it worked. No noticeable change in texture or taste, except it is slightly thicker.

For anyone interested in my original attempts with making yogurt, this post covers what I did in July of 2012, along with a couple of follow-ups to that post.

Stretching a Small Can of Tuna

I know I am not the only one who does this; so tell me what do you add, to stretch a can of tuna?

The size of canned tuna that I have always thought was the "regular" can is now the 5-ounce can. It used to be 7 ounces. When I was growing up, there were three sizes, the jumbo, large family size ( I don't even know how many ounces that was), the "regular" size can, that up until a few years ago was 7 ounces, and the individual size can, which I think was about 3 ounces.  That "regular" can has shrunk over the years. A 7-ounce can used to be large enough to make 3 or 4 sandwiches.  Shrinking down to a 5-ounce size, it's pretty tough to get enough tuna for that many sandwiches. So, I stretch tuna.

Friday, I made tuna salad on beds of lettuce, to go with fresh-baked bread.  To the tuna, I added cooked rice, chopped celery, chives, lots of relish and mayo, and 1 chopped, boiled egg.  It was easily enough for 4 mounds of tuna. Obviously, we're not getting the amount of protein that we used to get from a 7-ounce can. However, I'm hopeful that by adding a chopped egg, we've added some protein.

So, what do you add to stretch a can of tuna?