Goat Milk Yoghurt

One of the things we are trying to minimize is almond milk. We switched to Pacific Foods' Almond milk last year when we were trying out GFCF. We mainly used it to help S take his supplements. Now that we are trying SCD, we're looking at the labels and see Brown Rice Syrup in the list of ingredients. I was never a big fan of almond milk (store-bought) anyway, it didn't seem to contribute much from a nutrition perspective.

This last week I took a deep breath and tried out goat yogurt. I'm familiar with home-made yogurt from cow's milk having grown up eating it. Still, goat yogurt was new, and so I dutifully followed the SCD yogurt recipe from http://www.pecanbread.com/new/yogurt1.html

I thought the amount of starter suggested was too little (1/8th tsp for 1 quart), but I tried it out anyway. I am used to a much more firm yoghurt with cow's milk, but I'm suspecting that the reason this yogurt wasn't the same even after the requisite 24 hrs was either 1) due to the inadequate amount of starter 2)the fact that I added the starter to the milk after it came to room temperature. I have to experiment some more to get it right.

Either way, I used the yogurt to make a couple of things - salad dressing and a smoothie. Both of them got a thumbs up from S.

Update: I'm re-reading this post from June, and want to add that I'm now adding 1 cap culturelle and more like 1/2 tsp of progurt to the milk - this seems to make for a more thicker yogurt, but definitely not firm.
I've also read that potentially another reason for the yogurt being runny may be due to the ultra-pasteurized nature of goat's milk. I'm using the meyenberg goat milk available @ Whole Foods and other supermarkets.

Salad dressing

Whisk together:
1 pinch mustard powder
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp lime or lemon juice
1/4 cup goat yoghurt


Smoothie

Vitamix the following:

Frozen strawberries (or other frozen fruit)
Ice
Goat Yoghurt
Honey (optional)

I put in all of S's vitamin supplements into this smoothie and it works out great. He looks forward to it, especially after coming back from school on a hot day.