The flash drive contains all blog articles through early January 2026. I didn’t edit the blog articles, and unfortunately, the program adds in extra returns. Blogger has also done a good job of corrupting some of the tables and recipes, which makes me feel bad. It seems to have especially affected the first couple of years. So to compensate we’ve included the full manuscripts for Bring Your Own Bandages and Food Storage Made Fabulous. Everything is in PDF and Word files, with the exception of FSMF, which is only in PDF. That Word file went AWOL.
The flash drive is the same as last year’s-- this one--water resistant, crush resistant, and temperature proof (though I bet I could find a way...). The flash drives themselves are $30. Shipping within the US only is $6, regardless of the number purchased. For more info, see the post on January 27.
The vast majority of the time when I share a failed recipe, it’s from somebody else who’s promoting it as the best thing since sliced bread. You remember the banana peel fakin bacon, the split pea guacamole, the homemade Fritos, and the DIY Rice Krispies. Maybe you don’t, but I do. I made those horrible recipes so that you didn’t have to, or to at least warn you of the danger such a recipe poses.
Once in a while, I share epic fails of my own making in the hopes that you won’t waste your resources duplicating my mistake. This is one of those days when I wish I’d started this blog with a pseudonym and some AI-generated photograph so that no one would know me in real life. But here we are.
As the title suggests, this involves homemade yogurt.
I’ve made it at least a hundred times, maybe two hundred by now. I know the recipe by heart. I was in a bit of a rush that morning. So instead of crawling into the space under the stairs where we store the milk to pull out the last case of #10 cans of powdered milk, I grabbed a mylar bag of powdered milk that I’d recently purchased from the Home Storage Center. (If you’re not buying your powdered milk there, you really should consider it. It’s got the most nutrition and lowest price per serving of all the major brands out there. And shipping is only $3, no matter how much you order.)
I checked the info on the package. Each bag contains 5 1/3 cups of powdered milk, so I only needed to add 2/3 of a cup from another package to get the 6 cups needed to make a gallon of yogurt. Per the usual, I put about a cup of water in the Vitamix before adding the powdered milk. And with the speed set at about the midway point (I usually start it on low), I flipped the power switch. There was a little catch or hiccup, the kind that make you think the blender might die soon. And then I saw a gray streak from the bottom, the kind that makes me (probably not you) think something else just died inside the blender. But then it kept blending perfectly.
The milk did have a grayish tinge when I poured it into the Instapot to raise the temperature to 195°F. I told myself it was my imagination, and even if it was gray, it was just due to a little oil or something from a dying blender. Nothing to worry about.
After 10 minutes, I opened the Instapot to move the hot milk to an ice bath. There were black specks on the surface. And the milk had started to coagulate, almost like yogurt, but it wasn’t time for that!
What had I done wrong? Had I gotten negligent in my cleaning? Had there been some cleanser in the steel wool scrubber I’d used when cleaning up a mess some unnamed person left in the pot? Did that cause some chemical reaction that coagulated the milk? Well, it didn’t really matter. No way I was making yogurt with that. Down the drain it went.
I still needed to make yogurt, so I started over. I was still in a rush. (I remember now. I was preparing to present some classes at the library.) I thoroughly washed and rinsed the blender and the Instapot and then rinsed some more for good measure. I grabbed the same milk. Repeated the same process as above. Got the same hiccup and gray streak that made me think the blender might die soon. Got the same gray tinge in the milk. But this time, I acknowledged that it wasn’t my imagination. Of course, there could be another explanation. Was the milk contaminated with something? Naturally, I had to pour this batch down the sink as well. I was going to try one more time. After all, if it was contaminated, I had a responsibility to report the issue.
So I opened a third bag. You know, this milk isn’t cheap! And then, I spied it. The little corner of an oxygen absorber packet. Why, yes. Yes, I was blending up those packets.
And, of course, I am totally embarrassed to share this bit of foolishness. But if it spares even one of you from repeating my costly mistake, …. Well, no it’s really not worth the embarrassment. I’d rather you made your own mistakes than expose my foolishness. But here we are. And yes, I’d like to say I won’t repeat this mistake, but sad experience suggests that I probably will. However, I will not repeat it twice.
And I know many of you knew right away what I'd done wrong. So did at least one of my children. The rest probably did too, but I haven't shared the story with them yet.
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Bless you for your willingness to share the epic fails as well as the triumphs. We have ALL done things that make us feel like complete fools, but we learn from them. I for one appreciate your willingness to do this. I actually say fairly often that, by the time one’s age begins with a 6, we’ve had a lot of experience feeling like fools and it’s comfortable territory!
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