How to make your own yoghurt

One of the ways I paid my way through university was working as a farmhand over the summer and other holidays. This included milking cows. During this time and later, I learned things about milk, a few of which are relevant to the way we consume milk, which I will share with you:

• Fresh milk was traditionally a spring and summer-time food when excess milk was taken and continued after calving. Until recent times, it was not a winter food.

• While the cream was skimmed off the top of the vat, it, along with the remaining cream, was still consumed. There was no such thing as low-fat, or homogenised milk (low in the critical fat-soluble vitamins and many essential fatty acids).

• As cream is removed from milk, a person ends up proportionally drinking more milk sugar (lactose) per cup. Lactose is the perfect food for yeast infections.

• Before refrigeration, milk taken in the morning would begin fermenting by midday, in the heat of summer. Milk was therefore quickly converted into more durable products, namely yoghurt, kefir, butter, and cheese.

• Yoghurt, when consumed, is milk predigested by healthy yeast, therefore depriving any unhealthy yeast in a person's body of their food, so they go dormant, and do not thrive.

So, historically, fresh milk (it was always full-cream milk) was not consumed all year-round. Instead, it was consumed seasonally. Much of it was made into cheese, which was stored for the winter, along with butter to some extent. Fermented milk always made up a good proportion of the milk consumed during the summer months.

The pyramids of Giza were constructed by labourers and slaves, fuelled by a diet of dates, olives, and fermented goat milk. It must have been pretty good stuff back then.

When I was a child at primary school during the late 1950s and the early 1960s, I was a milk monitor. My task each morning was to collect and distribute a half-pint of fresh milk to each child in my class. This was a good responsibility to have back then, because I got to drink any left-over milk. The point is, there were no allergies that anyone knew of, and it they existed, they were rare. The milk we drank was fresh from the local dairy farms, minimally processed, and with plenty of cream on the top. We were the healthiest child population ever.

So with these ideas in mind, I have the following recommendations for the consumption of milk:

• Use only, or mostly full cream (silvertop), non-homogenised milk, preferably A-2 protein.

• Consume unsweetened yoghurt, and not just milk out of a bottle.

• Break up your milk consumption with cheese and butter, and enjoy all kinds of exotic cheeses - inlcuding from sheep and goat.

How to make your own yoghurt

• Purchase a yoghurt maker like an Easiyo (less than $30), plus several sachets of the yoghurt-maker's powder.

• Follow the instructions for making a pot of yoghurt, but:

• Make it with full-cream milk and not water, as per the yoghurt-maker's guidelines for using a whole sachet. When using milk, you only need a little of the powder to activate the fermentation process.

• Add a couple of dessertspoons of the yoghurt maker powder as activators for making the yoghurt. Give it a good shake.

The result, overnight, is the most delicious full-cream yoghurt. You can consume it on its own, and in your daily Super Smoothies.

Delicious and Nutritious Tips:

I like to give our yoghurt some variety by making it with a mix of milk and coconut cream, or adding a few heaped spoons of dessicated coconut. I have just made a pot with a couple of spoons of blackcurrant powder added. These are low-sugar options that are delicious and incredibly nutritious.

Now that this article is finished, I am going to make myself a Super Smoothie — I am feeling famished and plan for a long run later today, so it is time to energise!