Vanilla Bean Yogurt

If you are following me on Facebook, you know that Petunia had her calf a week ago today. It was a little bull calf and we named him Red.

We started milking her for our home consumption Monday morning and I am so pleased with her :) We are getting about 3 gallons a day as of right now minus what Little Mister is drinking (which really isn't all that much). We're milking twice a day and bottle feeding him and everyone is seriously happy with the situation.

Well, except Petunia. When we turned her out onto pasture we found out that her other calf isn't weaned yet and he went right for my liquid gold. She is currently penned up while we wait for a calf weaning ring to arrive. Hopefully that will take care of the problem so she can get out and eat some more of the good stuff.

So now that I'm getting all this fantastic milk, I'm enjoying finding ways to use it. I have never made much pudding or custard because it uses so much milk. But no more! Now I can make whatever I want. I don't know if you can see it in the picture very well, but this milk still has the cream on the top, I haven't skimmed it yet. I'm saving it up to make some butter and some buttermilk biscuits for our breakfast Sunday morning :) So good!

Today I decided to take one of my fabulous gallons of milk and make up some yogurt with it. I have only made homemade yogurt with store-bought milk so I am curious to see if there is a difference at all.

I made my usual yogurt recipe, but this time I added a vanilla bean to it:

I will also add a teaspoon or two of my homemade vanilla extract when I stir in the yogurt culture and begin the incubation. Look at all those little vanilla seed floating around in there. I can hardly wait to taste this. I'll give you an update when it's done, but I can't hardly believe that it won't be good!