Yogurt-making Part 2 and a visit to Knightshayes.

My second batch of yogurt used UHT skimmed milk, dried milk powder and some of my earlier batch of yogurt as a starter. I don't think it worked as well in the slow cooker, sadly, as it turned out to be rather runny and no amount of straining was going to change that. It did, however, taste more 'yogurty'!

Cost-wise, the UHT and skimmed milk powder is the better recipe, so I decided to look for a yogurt maker, thinking that perhaps the fact that the slow cooker was a bit hit-and-miss regarding temperature maintenance was the problem. An online buddy pointed me in the direction of the Easiyo maker and although Easiyo promotes the use of their own yogurt mixes, my friend uses hers to make UHT method yogurt successfully.

I found one online from Easiyo at a reduced price (because it had no box - WHY would I even want the box?) and it arrived on Tuesday, so before we went out to Knightshayes Court (more of which later), I started a batch of yogurt in my new toy!

Kevin and I became National Trust members last year and we do try to get to a Trust property as often as we can. I had been wanting to visit Knightshayes as a fellow Open University student works there - of course, we had picked her day off!

We left home around 10.15 and after a long but pretty drive cross-country, arrived at Knightshayes a little after mid-day. The house is spectacularly Gothic, the interiors by Crace are typical of the style (and reminded me much of Pugin's and William Morris's work). It was, however, the garden and more specifically, the kitchen garden that inspired me. I wish we had the space for a cutting garden as well as veggies - the flowers that are grown specifically for the house are breathtakingly lovely. The veggies looked gorgeous too - french and runner beans, heirloom peas, onions, spinach, pumpkins, courgettes and squash all in season and oh, the globe artichokes - past their best for eating but so beautiful for cutting for flower arrangements. We must certainly plant artichokes!

Knightshayes

The Cutting Borders in the Walled Kitchen Garden

Artichoke in flower.

Onions - aren't these beauties?

Pumpkin - these take up so much room, though!

Knightshayes even has a vineyard!

This visit will be the first of many - the atmosphere in the house is warm and inviting and I could spend hours in those gardens.

Anyway, back to the yogurt...

We left it until 10pm (it had then had 12 hours) and had a quick taste - the texture was much better and it was nicely yogurty. It tasted a lot better on Wednesday morning, after it had been chilled in the fridge overnight. So, a success then - looks like I'll be making our yogurt from now on and it works out at £0.66p per litre, so a saving as well.