Made a two-quart batch of yogurt yesterday. I find my homemade yogurt deeply satisfying, and highly recommend it to frugal yogurt lovers.
I used to go through two to four quarts of store-bought yogurt each week. These cost $2.50 each for the store-brand to $4.50 for fancy Stonyfield organic. I always felt guilty about all the plastic it generated, and worried about not knowing how the cows were treated who produced the milk.
I buy all my milk from a local dairy (Smyth's Trinity Farm in Enfield, CT -- if I can give them a plug here), where I know the cows are treated well and not given any weird growth hormones or other things. The milk is pasturized, and the grass they eat is not treated with any chemicals. It comes in glass bottles, and this milk (and butter and cream) is out of this world, it's so good. After drinking fresh milk from the dairy, the store bought kind seems like a totally different substance.
So I finally invested in a brand-new yogurt maker, after months of looking for one on craigslist, ebay, and at tag sales and second-hand stores. I hate it when I can't find what I want used... I bought a "Yogurmet" two-quart model on amazon. It cost $50.00 (!!!), and was supposed to come with two boxes of starter, but it didn't so I got a $11.00 refund, so it really cost $39.00
The cost of one half-gallon of delicious dairy-fresh milk for two quarts of delicious homemade yogurt is $3.00. Three packs of starter cost $5.50, so the cost of the raw materials for my two quarts is about $4.85. Time -- well, it takes about half an hour to heat, then cool the milk, then you just set it and don't forget it in the incubator for about 4 - 5 hours. And there's electricity for the incubator (I assume very low usage) for those 4-5 hours. Eventually, I will try to phase out the starter and use a dollop of the last batch of yogurt for the live cultures, saving the $1.85 per batch.
All in all, there is some savings over the store-bought kind, and it's a great way to reduce plastic, support the local economy (by buying local milk), and know where your food comes from. Plus, it's delicious!
