We eat a LOT of yogurt.
So much so that I can’t count the number of times that grocery store cashiers and other shoppers have stopped to comment on all the plastic yogurt tubs in my shopping cart.
The baby and I both eat plain, Greek-style yogurt and fresh fruit for breakfast almost every morning. At dinner, we dollop yogurt on top of soups and alongside spicy Indian-inspired entrees. Last night, we spooned some onto our tacos in lieu of sour cream and sometimes I mix it into baked goods instead of buttermilk.
So when I decided earlier this year to start reining in our grocery spending, yogurt was a natural place to look for savings.
We were going through at least three gallons of Greek yogurt each month (plus another gallon or so of the coconut milk yogurt that Paul prefers) and we were spending a lot of money on it.
We try hard to buy dairy dairy from producers that take good care of their cows, which means we inevitably end up paying premium prices. My back of the envelope math shows that we were spending upwards of $100 a month on yogurt, for both the cow milk and coconut milk versions.
I couldn’t find a way to spend less without reducing our consumption or compromising our ethics, neither of which we wanted to do.
Years earlier, I’d made yogurt a few times with lackluster results. I used an electric yogurt maker I’d received as a gift and powdered yogurt starter cultures, but my homemade yogurt was runny and too tart. I quickly went back to the store-bought kind.
But monthly yogurt expenditures in the triple digits compelled me to take another stab at homemade yogurt….
