DIY Yogurt

When I was a kid, my mom made a ton of stuff from scratch.  She made her own mixes for things like taco seasoning and pancakes, her own cream of mushroom soup, like everything.  I love that she did that because it showed me how easy it is to make your own food from scratch and probably 90% of the time it tastes way better homemade.  Sometimes it's much cheaper also!  One of the things I remember loving was homemade yogurt.  The consistency is a bit runnier than store bought but the taste is just better to me.

Typically the process of making yogurt includes heating the milk to 180°, letting it cool back to 110° and then adding the starter but I have found in the wonderful world that is Pinterest how to do it with my crockpot and a timer!  It's really super easy, just a long process.  You can totally customize it and add your sweetener or leave it plain and mix in whatever you like as you go. My crockpot is not huge so I have to make a smaller batch at a time but you can do a gallon if you like yogurt and your kiddos will eat it all within a week or so.  Everything I saw said it was good for a week and so far we've eaten ours within 7-8 days so I don't know how well it keeps longer than that.Start by pouring 8 cups of milk (or a full gallon but I'm going to give the half recipe amounts) in your crockpot and add 1 1/2 cups of dry milk powder.

This will help thicken the yogurt.  Turn it on low for 2 1/2 hours.  Then turn it off and if you wish to sweeten yours you could add the sugar now and it will help dissolve it better while the milk is hot.  I would use 1/2 cup with the 8 cups of milk to start with and adjust to your tastes the next time around.  You can also add 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract if you want your yogurt to be vanilla flavored.
Wait 3 hours for the milk to cool down and then dip out two cups of the milk. Stir 1/2 cup of plain yogurt starter into the warm milk and then add back to the crockpot.  Cover with a towel so it stays nice and dark and helps insulate to keep it warm.  Alternatively you could put it in storage containers and place in your oven with the light on but do not turn the oven on!!  Putting in storage containers ahead will help limit the number of times the yogurt is moved and help keep it thicker.  The more it's stirred the runnier it will be


Let your yogurt sit for 8-12 hours.  The longer it sits the more tangy it will be, and the thicker as well.   I was not letting mine sit longer than 8 hours because I always try to start the process first thing in the morning so I can let it get cold overnight in the fridge, but recently I forgot to put it in the fridge before going to bed and it was sitting in the crockpot for probably 16 hours.   It came out so thick and not too much more tangy to be a problem, especially since I had sweetened that batch.  I do sometimes like to leave mine plain so I can use it for cooking (my favorite blueberry muffin recipe calls for sour cream which I never have around because it molds so fast!) and also to mix with pureed fruit for Maddie when she was first starting on foods.  The baby yogurts are so expensive!   Right now milk is $1.79 for a gallon at my Aldi's which means making my own yogurt with some plain store bought yogurt as starter is vastly cheaper than buying premixed and sweetened.   I have made some up with sugar and blueberries and also mixed with jelly.  My favorite way is to eat it with homemade granola!  My most recent favorite new granola recipes are Buttered Pecan and Gingerbread Granola. Another tasty treat I've done is to slice up some bananas, mix in chocolate chips and toasted pecans.  What is your favorite way to eat yogurt?

Some easy ways to earn money pt 1 -- surveys, grocery cash back

Okay guys, I've been working really hard to find little ways to earn money here and there and I have to share some of the top things that are really working well for me.  Because every little bit adds up right??  I had hoped to be able to take advantage of some of these earnings in time for Christmas but it didn't work out.  Right now we can definitely use all of the little $5 here and there, if nothing else but to earn date night money.

So first one that I've been doing the longest is Swagbucks.  The great thing about Swagbucks is that there are several ways to earn bucks and a million ways to redeem what you earn.  My top favorite ways to earn them are by filling out surveys, using their search engine, and watching for special swag codes that are redeemable for typically around 2-6 swagbucks each.  The best part of this is you can almost do nothing at all, and if you simply change your default search engine to Swagbucks you can slowly but surely earn a few here and there.  Between that and entering swag codes I was earning about $5 worth of Amazon gift cards every 2-3 months.  Since I've stepped up my game and started doing a lot of surveys for them I'm at about $25 in the last 2 months.  I'll probably just redeem this to PayPal this time around which costs about 250 swagbucks more than an Amazon card but it's a lot more universal.  You can also earn bonuses for various seasonal activities and for referring friends.  If a friend starts using Swagbucks from your referral link you'll also earn a few swagbucks based on how much they're earning!  Another great way to earn swagbucks is by using their link to shop online.  You can earn a certain number of swagbucks per dollar you spend at select retailers this way. I earned about 300 swagbucks on a Shutterfly purchase before the holidays when I bought our Christmas cards and some gifts!  There is another site that you can earn actual cash back deposited to your PayPal called eBates which I cover later on.

The second place I've been doing surveys for lately is iPoll.  I only recently discovered this one but I have almost $40 now waiting to transfer to PayPal and I think I joined at the end of October.  Really the same is true for Swagbucks surveys also but the great part about these is sometimes a short survey can open up a bigger opportunity.  One time I was asked to keep a TV diary for a week and got $4.  That's not a ton but it requires nearly no brainwork!  And a couple of other surveys asked me if I would be willing to participate in more research studies in the future.  iPoll pays more for surveys than Swagbucks does.  I usually earn 60-100 Swagbucks for each survey (probably fairly close to $0.60-$1.00) and at iPoll I mostly earn $1-2 each.

One of my newest finds has been an app called Smart Panel that you install on your phone that sends anonymous data usage to a research company and they will pay you $5 a month for being active.  You can also earn an extra $5 bonus for installing on other devices such as a computer but you will still only get the $5 a month.

Now we switch gears a little to how to earn money back on things you are already buying!  First up is Nielsen Consumer Panel.  When I go to the grocery store I bring all my groceries into the kitchen with my receipt, and using a little scanner they provide me I scan all the items I purchased.  It asks me things like if I used a coupon or a sale price, who did I go shopping with and such.  Then I earn points for actively submitting receipts.  I have not yet redeemed any of my points but you can use them for items in their catalog as well as gift cards.

Okay, eBates!  I love eBates and I try to remember to always check there before I buy anything online (and check Swagbucks second if eBates doesn't have them!).  They have a large number of retailers and I find very few places that I can't earn back with eBates, and even fewer that don't do eBates or Swagbucks!  They too have a referral program so you can earn money for referring friends.  They will give you $25 for each referral!  They will automatically transfer any money you have to your Paypal every few months providing you've earned over the minimum limit which was $10 last I checked.  We don't often make big purchases but using it regularly with all of our online shopping will add up.

Shopkick is kind of a cool little app because you can earn kicks for simply walking into some stores like Walmart.  You can also earn them for scanning items in the store and answering questions but I don't often do that.  I just open the app when I walk into the store and I earn my kicks.  Every couple of months or so I earn enough to redeem a $5 gift card.  This is also a place you can earn for referring, you get 2000 kicks for every 3 friends.

Finally there are three different apps I've used to submit receipts.  The biggest one is iBotta.  You have to scroll through their current product listings to see if any are things you want to buy this week.  It's a little bit like a digital coupon but sometimes they are for whatever brand of item you wish to buy, even store brands.  I frequently get cash back for bread, milk, condiments, frozen veggies, shredded cheese and more.  Just scan the barcode of the item to be sure it qualifies, then submit your receipt containing those items.  You can connect to your Facebook and team up with all your other friends on iBotta to get bonuses too and also referrals.  Checkout51 is similar but they don't offer nearly as large a number of items.  There is only one pick your own item each week and the rest are specific products.  I haven't really used this one much at all so I have yet to redeem any money because the minimum to transfer is $20 and I only currently have $6 earned.  I also recently started using ReceiptHog which only requires you to send pictures of your receipts and you earn coins based on how much you spent. If you use my referral code brat5754 you can earn a few spins for a chance to win your grocery trip back.

Edit 3/14/16 -- New survey company I've been with since this post!  Harris Poll Online has proved to be fairly lucrative.  What I like about them is if you don't qualify for the survey they still give you 15 points for trying.  There's nothing more annoying then spending 5-10 minutes just to find out you don't qualify for the survey and you get nothing for your time.  It costs 625 points for a $5 Amazon card and I've already earned more than enough points for $10 in cards doing very quick surveys here and there (or even not qualifying for one!). They have a number of redemption options for your reward points so be sure to check them out.

These are all the things I've been using lately to earn.  In a future post I'll share some of the mystery shopping apps I've been using!

homemade baby food -- carrots & peaches

I had intended to continue to update this blog regularly throughout my pregnancy with Madelyn and since she was born but I basically slept and took care of Isaiah until she came and then it has been a lot of survival mode since then.  Having two sweeties only 13 months a part is definitely not a picnic! I was a little surprised at just how hard it was to go to two from one but a lot of my mommy friends who have similar age differences in their kiddos have encouraged me it gets easier as they get bigger.  I can definitely already see that and I always do better when Maddie sleeps at night.  Unfortunately she has still not been consistent with this and I have exhausted all the things I can come up with to try to remedy it so guess we will just stick it out for now.

So for my first post "back" I have to share with you one of my new DIY discoveries, make your own baby food!  I dabbled with this a little bit with Isaiah but I was so overwhelmed physically and mentally with being pregnant and caring for him that I definitely didn't do as much and I kept jars around for when we were going out or sometimes for when we traveled to San Antonio with Jonathan.  This time with Maddie I was determined to save even more money on baby food and see if I could get away without buying any at all.  Well a friend gave me a bunch of baby food she wasn't going to use that was soon to expire so I have been using that here and there to test out new flavors on Maddie before I make a big batch and also for taking places but I have also successfully traveled with homemade baby food.  I knew in my head that this couldn't be so bad but I feel really silly now that I'm doing it that I didn't do it with Isaiah.  It's just too easy to be paying 50 cents a jar for baby food (and that's for store brands/non organic if you're into that sort of thing).

We started out with some of my favorite fall backs with Isaiah like bananas and unsweetened applesauce in a jar.  That is one thing that to me is worth buying already done because it's fairly cheap already.  I also tried avocados since I discovered the amazing world of Aldi's (39 cents an avocado??).  Initially these were all successes but since then she has refused bananas and avocados both!!  Isaiah LOVED bananas and ate at least one a day until only very recently when he has occasionally turned it down.  This is crazy right??  But she has made up for it by being very receptive to most everything else I've tried so far.  We are just starting to get into the fun combinations but carrots and peaches are two of our favorite single foods so let me show you just how easy it is to make your own.

Carrots

Start by peeling your carrots and chopping the ends off.  

Then dice into smaller rounds for quick steaming.

I put mine in the steamer basket and checked them after about 10-12 minutes.

When nice and soft dump into your blender or food processor (I have a Ninja) and puree!  I like to add a little butter to my veggies and if you want the consistency to be thinner and smoother you can add a little of the water you steamed them in until it looks good.

I left my carrots a little thicker because she is 7 months now and I want to start moving towards the softer pieces soon.

I like to freeze mine in ice cube trays, and since I just had a bag with leftover carrots in it I don't know how much they weighed but these five carrots made about nine 1-oz cubes.  Maddie usually eats two cubes of food at meals.

Peaches

Some people like to peel theirs but I scrubbed mine good and just threw the whole peach in the steamer basket.

Depending on how ripe your peaches are will change how long it takes to steam so just check on them.  Mine were already pretty soft so they were ready at 10 minutes.

I cut them in sort of sections off the pit and threw them in my Ninja and pureed.  Because of the high water content in peaches they are super runny if you puree them completely but I'm okay with this.

A lot of times for breakfast I mix a cube of fruit with an equal amount of plain yogurt (I'm currently making my own of this too and it's super inexpensive!  tutorial to come soon!).  Then I thicken a little with some peach-apple oatmeal cereal I picked up marked down at the grocery store.  I've heard you can take regular old fashioned oats and grind them up a bit instead of using store bought oatmeal cereal but I haven't tried this yet because I had my marked down box that we haven't finished up.  I don't imagine we will need it because by the time we get to the end of this box she will be ready for pieces of food rather than purees.  I had two very large peaches and they made a full ice cube tray so this will last us awhile.

For a price comparison, a 2 lb bag of carrots at Aldi's is $1.29 and the peaches were from Sam's 4 lbs for $7.98.  Remember a 4 oz jar of baby food is 72 cents at HEB for the store brand!!  This is HUGE savings.  If you're an organic kind of person you will have to run your own numbers but I imagine it's still far cheaper to make your own than to buy it. This week I saw pears are 99 cents for a 28 oz package at Aldi's so we are going to grab some of those and do pears and green beans next time.  I will also post how to make your own yogurt because that is another huge money saver.  My kids love yogurt and you know those little baby yogurts are uber expensive.  Isaiah eats fruit yogurt in the big container but even those are almost $3.  My goal right now is to spend $300/month on groceries, toiletries, and diapers so I'm working very hard to find anything we can do cheaper as long as it doesn't require an exorbitant amount of extra work.

I store my baby food either in 4 oz leftover dishes or glass mason jars when in the fridge, and the cubes in ziploc bags in the freezer. What first foods did your kiddo like the best?