Sunday, March 6, 2011

One Cultured Lady

When a woman with a master degree in microbiology stops working at Merck to become a stay-at-home mom you know there is going to be a lot of experimenting in her house. Growing up my mom was always doing something magical in the kitchen. Some things seemed to defy gravity, like fruit suspended in Jell-O and sky high Angel Food Cakes. Some things were just plain magical like Popovers and Baked Alaska. But it was the metamorphosis of milk to yogurt that fascinated me the most. I still remember being filled with pride as I carried little Dixie cups full of homemade yogurt and blackberry jam in to my elementary school for a science project.

My mother believes that if you eat well, there is little need for medicine, yogurt is like her penicillin. She had such respect for the medicinal properties of yogurt that she wrote her master thesis on using lactobacillus acidophilus to cure acne. But you don’t need an advanced degree to know that when you eat well you feel well. When was the last time you got heartburn from a dish of fresh picked raspberries?

I make almost everything we eat from scratch and this week I’ll add yogurt to the list. Since I use it in both sweet and savory dishes we go through a lot each week. Yogurt with fruit and homemade granola is a breakfast staple and I can’t imagine a piece of salmon without Tzatziki. I am going to make Grammie Luba’s yogurt with my boys and I’ll let you know how it turns. If it’s as easy and delicious as I remember I’ll post the directions next week.

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