Sunshine Blogger Award

Lizzie Hexam at Starlight and Saucepans (what a fun blog name, by the way) nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award!

The rules of this award include thanking the nominator, answering his or her questions, and nominating up to 11 others. I've never been very good at following tag rules, and after almost thirteen years of blogging (and barely showing my face here during the previous six), just about all of the bloggers I was actively following in the beginning have moved on with their lives. So I really have no one to tag.

But I can follow rules #1 — thank you, Lizzie! — and #2.

The questions:

1. What’s your second favorite TV show?

Hm, I don't watch TV shows very often (movies are more my thing). But I'd say Wodehouse Playhouse is up there as a not-quite-favorite-but-always-delightful option.

2. If you could only read the works of one author all the rest of your life, who would you choose? (The Bible is exempted from this.)

Jane Austen, no question. Though C. S. Lewis would be a very close second.

3. What’s a fun fact about yourself that you would like people to know, but there’s never a good opportunity to bring up?

I really enjoyed my research on French history during my master's degree and loved any opportunity to share about it, but rarely got the opportunity to talk about my research in detail (and still less now that it's several years in the past). 

4. Tell us a random weird word that you like.

"Lest."

5. You’re going to Mordor with the Ring, and you’re assembling your Fellowship! Which eight fictional characters (from any fictional works, not just LOTR) do you want to come with you, and why? (If you aren’t familiar with The Lord of the Rings, just assemble eight fictional characters you would want to bring along on a dangerous quest.)

I assume this comes with the unspoken limitation that I can't just pick the Fellowship itself. Sooo, in no particular order, the following are a mismatched selection of people who are good to have along in sticky situations:

1. Gandalf (though likely to abandon us at some point, he'll be useful while he's along)
2. Anne Elliot (as Captain Wentworth knows, we can count on her to be calm and sensible in a crisis)
3. Percy Blakeney (when we get in a jam, he's very likely to think of clever solutions that no one else would think of)
4. Bilbo Baggins (we need someone along who values food and cheer and song)
5. Jason Bourne (clearly someone you want in your corner when it comes to a fight)
6. Jill Pole (brave and experienced in dangerous adventures)
7. Gurgi (his wallet of food would come in handy, but most especially Gurgi himself is the only one who can equal Samwise Gamgee for faithfulness)
8. Thorin Oakenshield (we all know he isn't without his faults, but once he committed himself to the cause he wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice his life to bring the quest to completion, and he is a warrior to be feared)

That was fun. :)

6. Do you on the whole prefer movies from before or after 1960? Why?

Well, most of my favorite movies fall between 1990 and 2005, so I would say after 1960, but I do enjoy many pre-1960 films and I have a hot take that there are no truly excellent movies made in the last two decades.

7. Suppose you’re tasked with creating a flag for a new country. What does it look like?

A rich green background with a silver or gold Celtic knot pattern in the center.

8. Is poetry or prose fiction more expressive? Do you think one form is higher than the other?

I prefer prose. Poetry is such a widely varying genre that it's hard to rank how expressive it is. I find most poetry to be the author expressing something that no one else understands, and thus prose to me is generally more expressive. 

9. What are the last three songs you listened to?

I recently discovered The Gray Havens and have been listening to little else for the past two weeks. I love their complex lyrics and literary allusions. My Spotify history says the last three songs were Anywhere, Come Thou Fount, and Train Station.

10. If you had the ability to make it so that it was always your favorite season of the year, would you do it?

No, because I like the variety. Now if I could shorten my least favorite season (summer) so that we could cut down on the days we have to endure above 90º... that's tempting.

11. Dream cast your favorite actor and actress (either can be from any time period; this is dream casting, after all!) in an adaptation of the classic book you think they’re best suited for.

This is a tricky question because I really don't have favorite actors or actresses. I don't follow any celebrities, and it's easier for me to think of actors who I find annoying than ones I really like (I guess it's a good thing I'm not a casting director). My mind is also going blank on classic books that have yet to be made into good film adaptions (except for Mansfield Park, which I've already dream-casted, and The Space Trilogy, which I'm certain would be a horrible movie if someone decided to adapt it).

Thinking about Wodehouse Playhouse has reminded me that there are some more obscure Wodehouse stories that have yet to be portrayed on screen. I think "The Castaways" from Blandings Castle and Elsewhere would make a hilarious addition to the collection. This is a boring answer, but the husband and wife team who star in all the Wodehouse Playhouse episodes would undoubtably do a fine job.

And that's a wrap! If there are any readers who would have liked to answer eleven interesting questions, consider yourself tagged and answer in the comments:

1. Would you ever raise and butcher your own meat?
2. What is the newest book (by date of publication, not read-date) you read and liked?
3. What is your favorite board game?
4. Are there any hobbies you once enjoyed but abandoned?
5. If you could be instantly fluent in another language, what language would you pick?
6. What is the most valuable thing you learned from your mother?
7. Are you a capable plant owner? (and if so, can you tell me how to become like you?)
8. Are there any words or phrases you say too often?
9. What is the most recent meal you ate?
10. What is your favorite thing about your least favorite season?
11. If you've completed a college degree, what would you have studied if you didn't get that degree? (Or if you haven't completed a degree, what would you like to study?)

À la prochaine,

Jurassic Park Series: A Review of Sorts

I recently watched through the Jurassic Park film series, currently numbering six movies: an original trilogy released in 1993–2001, and a follow-up trilogy released in 2015–2022. 

As you've likely noticed, readers, the 2010s and 2020s have seen a spate of sequels and reboots of successful film franchises from the 1970s–early 2000s. The Matrix: Resurrections. The disastrous Star Wars trilogy (episodes 7–9). Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The hobbit trilogy (yes, that's in lowercase on purpose). An unending cascade of new Mission Impossible movies. You get the picture.

Most of these haven't been worth the two hours+ they took to watch, but because we will keep going to them, the producers will keep making them.

As you will see, I was pleasantly surprised by the caliber of the Jurassic World trilogy as sequels. Except, as I continued to ponder the films, I noticed one glaring issue: the makers of the latter movies seemed to have missed the same lesson as the characters. But more on that below.

Jurassic Park Series: Review

Note: In this review of sorts I will mostly not attempt to be spoiler free. In fact, I'm going to tell you exactly what happens in every movie. At the time of writing, the movies were released 32 years, 28 years, 24 years, 10 years, 7 years, and 3 years ago, respectively. So if you haven't seen all of them by now, that's on you. (And if you've only seen one... well, as we will see that's really the same thing as seeing all of them anyway).

Plotlines

The first movie (Jurassic Park) opens with a team of scientists using fossilized mosquitoes to extract dinosaur DNA, which they are able to successfully synthesize into living dinosaurs. (Most with surprisingly normal dinosaur behavior and no genetic defects. Movie magic.) 

Someone has the brilliant idea to create a whole dinosaur community on an isolated South American island, from the tiny but vicious Compsognathus, to the always-there-for-the-wow-its-a-dinosaur-shot Brachiosaurus, to the terrifying Dilophosaurus that spits poison, to the classic, carnivorous, and charismatic Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Wow, it's a dinosaur!

With this menagerie in place (carefully corralled behind electric fences, in the case of the carnivores at any rate), the most logical next step is to add a few food trucks and souvenir shops, and invite the public to tour the island. What could go wrong?

Everything, actually.

You remember the electric fences? Yeah, that won't be nearly enough to keep the dinos in line. The security is never sufficient, the dinosaurs are always smarter than anticipated, and the humans keep making the same mistakes, again and again.

And that's even before reckoning with a double-crossing character, of which every Jurassic movie has one. Whether he's in it for the money, the power, or the military potential of the Velociraptors, there's always one character who isn't leveling with everyone else.

But never fear: if the disasters in Jurassic Park are predictable, so, too, are the key plot points of the ending. First of all, the bad guy(s) gets eaten. This signals to the audience that the human threat has been removed, and the dinosaur threat is only just behind.

Just as one dinosaur is about to devour the good guys, another (bigger) dinosaur shows up in the nick of time to start a duel, and the dinosaurs decide to fight it out first and eat the good guys later. Meanwhile, the good guys escape on a boat/plane/helicopter/truck. 

Everyone lives happily ever after. Except the bad guys, who are dead. And the T-Rex, who missed out on his dessert. And the good guys, who will inevitable appear in another movie and live through the same dinosaur trauma again. And again. (What's that quote about the definition of insanity?)

One continuous story

It may sound like I'm criticizing or belittling this plot structure, but please don't misunderstand me. On the one hand, watching a Jurassic Park movie like watching a horror movie, where you can only watch helplessly as the characters persist in going down to the basement that they've been warned nineteen times not to enter and the consequences for their actions naturally, painfully, and predictably unfold.

On the other hand, there is something kind of comforting in how no Jurassic Park movie tries seriously to deviate from this basic outline. With Jurassic Park, you know what you're getting. The good guys will inevitably end up trapped with the T-Rex, but the bad guys will definitely get eaten. It's like ordering your regular meal at a mediocre restaurant. There are no surprising flavors, but that's not always a bad thing.

This was particularly evident in comparing the three most recent installments to other films in the sequels/prequels/reboots genre. By coming up with new characters and details but sticking to the same basic premise, the new trilogy builds upon the old trilogy better than any other reboot film I could think of.  Most sequels either try too hard to repeat the originals (e.g., The hobbit: An unexpected journey), or they completely disregard the original story and the real effects of its conclusion (ahem, The Matrix: Resurrections), or somehow do both at the same time (*cough cough The Force Awakens cough cough*).

Unlike these other examples, the newest Jurassic Park movies feel like they belong on one continuous timeline with the originals. Yes, the new characters use Millennial slang and humor, but that doesn't ruin the effect since the movie timeline is supposed to roughly follow the "real" timeline, with the original park being created in the early 1990s and the events of the rest of the series taking place over the next twenty to thirty years.

In fact, I will pass over summarizing movies 2–4 because they're really just movie 1 with new clothing.

Questionable messages

The most irritating part of watching any Jurassic Park movie after the first one is that one can't help feeling, every five minutes or so, that the characters are complete dunderheads for not having learned their lesson yet. Didn't they see the last movie? Shouldn't they realize by now that mixing small children and multi-ton carnivores is a bad idea?

Yet as I pondered the last two films, I started wondering if the movie creators themselves somehow missed the message too.

The opening premise of Jurassic Park #5 (Fallen Kingdom) is that a volcano on the abandoned Isla Nublar is about to erupt and kill all remaining dinosaurs on the island. Rational people might say, "Thank goodness, that solves that problem!" But with the exception of the mathematician Ian Malcolm, whom one can always count on to say what everyone else ought to be saying about the insanity of propagating and domesticating dinosaurs, there are no rational people in Jurassic Park. Therefore, some people start advocacy groups to lobby various world governments to... move the man-eating creatures off the island. 

I mean, what could go wrong?

One could say this is just the latest installment in a series following People Who Do Not Learn Their Lessons and that we're meant to shake our heads at this newest exhibit of idiocy, except that the corporate-executive-turned-Julia-Butterfly-Hill—who is one of the two the main characters of the second trilogy—is on their side. At least to some extent, consigning multiple human lives to certain death in order to rescue highly dangerous animals who should never have been cloned in the first place is portrayed as a noble endeavor.

SPOILER ALERT! This is really quite a serious spoiler, and thus I'm giving one of the only spoiler warnings in this post. So if you haven't seen Fallen Kingdom, scroll past the velociraptor.

The movie writers try to counter the argument that a volcanic eruption is just fixing what should never have happened in the first place by introducing a disturbing new kind of clone: a human girl. At the end of the movie, after the adults decide to let a group of dinosaurs die of poisonous gas because the alternative is setting them free into civilization, the girl opens the cage doors because "They already exist, just like me." 

END SPOILER

This is a powerful argument, but it does have one flaw: animals are not just like humans. In Genesis 9:3 God tells mankind that he gives them "everything that lives and moves about" (i.e., animals, including dinosaurs) as food. Two verses later, God contrasts killing animals with killing people: 

"And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an account from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being." (Genesis 9:5, emphasis added)

So not only is killing animals licit while killing other humans is not, even the T-Rex will be held to account for killing people made in God's image.

I don't mean to say that this gives license to wantonly kill or cause harm to members of the animal kingdom, even dangerous ones, but it does mean that putting human lives at risk (let's face it, there's a certainty of death for at least some of the people in every Jurassic adventure, particularly interns, assistants, and passersby) in order to possibly save some dinosaurs from re-extinction is not a morally admirable choice, but I think we're supposed to think it is, or at least to see it as a real dilemma.

The sixth movie seems so show even more clearly that the writers of the series (or the most recent films at least) didn't grasp the lessons from the films: that just because we can doesn't mean we should, and when people continue to meddle in things that should be God's alone, problems always get worse, not better.

Jurassic World: Dominion opens with a new level of disaster: dinosaurs now roam at large upon every continent in the world (as well as in the ocean, we should add—snorkeling in Hawaii is no longer a safe proposition). Even worse, a new dinosaur-locust species (picture a grasshopper the size of a toy poodle with impenetrable armor and fangs) is decimating crops across the world.

Of course, *spoiler but not really* we learn that the locust-zilla are no normal species but were designed in a lab (in order to provide profits to a biotech company, to no one's surprise).

The solution they provide, however, is not to cut one's losses, pray for God's mercy, and regret that such a thing had been designed. Instead, a scientist proposes designing a virus that will spread to all the locust and kill them. 

Hm, what could go wrong with creating and spreading a worldwide virus?

*Also a spoiler, scroll past the mosasaurus if you prefer to avoid it* Having opened Pandora's box and spread dinosaurs across the world, the movie creators were apparently unable to come up with a way to put them back on an island somewhere. Instead, they end the film with the sentimental, idealistic picture of a parasaurolophus herd mixed in with horses and a group of triceratops slowly plodding along next to elephants, all to suggest that peaceful coexistence is not only desirable but possible... somehow forgetting the bloody carnage of the past six movies. 

Not to mention the terrifying mosasaurus that is now posing an ineradicable risk to surfers, cruise ships, and sharks.

A Conclusion with a Bow on Top... almost

Remember the formula for a JP film? Scientists engineer a new terrifying species. People once again think it will be just fine. And one character is particularly out of touch with reality: the bad guy, i.e., the person who is most clueless about the real danger of large wild animals and most arrogant about his (it's always a his) own superiority to and/or capabilities in dealing with the prehistoric species.

But the second part of the formula is that — after a lot interns and small children nearly or actually lose their lives — 1) the bad guy will always get eaten by a dinosaur, and 2) right when a dinosaur is about to eat the good guys (moving noticeably slower than when there's a villain on set), another dinosaur will always show up in the nick of time to start a fight so the good guys don't end up as someone's dinner.

Until this guy.

Dr. Wu, who makes his first appearance in the original Jurassic Park way back in 1993 and then returns for the last three films, is among those who is living in an alternate reality. The kind of person who never asks the question of "Should we do this" but rather considers the fact that they are doing these things as self-justifying, as though to do original or creative work is itself an inherent moral good, regardless of the thing being created or what boundaries are crossed in the process.

In short, he is a clear candidate for becoming the petit déjeuner of a pterodactyl.

At the very climax of the last film, when the main villain has just been dispatched and we know the rescue of the good guys can't be far off, Dr. Wu shows up. He is regretful. But not about the whole enterprise, just about one particular experiment that — shockingly — went sideways. And he is already scheming about more experiments, not having learned his lesson in humility sufficiently to recognize that he ought to promptly hand in his resignation and accept that perhaps he can be a lab assistant somewhere in five or six years if he continues on a path of contrition.

Not only this, but the other characters decide to give him a chance. Instead of leaving him alone in a facility quickly being overrun by dinosaurs, they decide to take him with them and promise him the chance of conducting his (potentially human-rights violating) experiments.

Now, I'm glad the writers decided that the characters should extend forgiveness, grace, and mercy and not leave him to meet a sticky end.

However, in this story justice is executed by dinosaurs. The characters showed mercy, as they should have. But the writers should have carried out justice by having Wu carried off by a pteranodon or trampled by a triceratops as soon as he exited the building. By breaking one of the fundamental rules of the Jurassic Park universe — the antagonists always get eaten — it feels like they were excusing, not condemning and forgiving, his offenses.

Despite the movie writers seeming to miss the point of their own movies (and having unrealistic expectations about the possibility of dinosaur-human cohabitation), the series finale really does end things nicely. To my surprise and delight, the original three main characters came back for the last movie: the archeologist guy, the scientist with whom he is just friends, and the mathemagician (in addition to one of the original villains). And because the new trilogy builds upon the original one, their presence in the movie feels natural rather than engineered, like coming full circle in one coherent story. 

Outside of these few objections, the series wrapped up quite well with no loose ends holding out the chance of future movies. One would hope they wouldn't spoil a good thing by attempting to make more, but then... Life finds a way.

Lessons learned after a year of marriage

One year of marriage! 

One year ago last week, I said "I do" to my husband before God, our families, and many friends. In one year of marriage, I have certainly not learned all there is to know. But perhaps sharing some reflections on this past year may be helpful to others who are just starting out on this journey. 

I have seen my own self-centeredness in new ways; learned the love of God in new ways; and learned how my heart does not default into being a loving, Christ-honoring wife. Even when I am ostensibly serving my husband and my home, how often I have realized that really I am serving a false image of being the perfect homemaker! Oh readers, the action may look the same but the heart is very different. And the fruit is different too: when I am cleaning my kitchen and baking bread in order to be the ideal housewife rather than out of love for God and for my husband and a desire to be the servant of all, I am more likely to grow frustrated with my husband for making messes or feel insecure if dinner isn't ready on time.

If you are about to become a wife, you'll have to learn for yourself where your vulnerabilities are and how to depend on the Lord in them. But from one beginner wife to another, here is some advice I would give after one year of marriage.

• Let go of your idealized version of marriage as soon as possible. This may not be possible before marriage, because most likely you feel that you have no idea what marriage will be like, and your expectations are unconscious rather than acknowledged. But once you are married, work to identify where frustrations may be arising due to the gap between the marriage you have really got and the one you imagined you would have. For me, I realized that I had thought marriage would look like sitting in bed at 9:00 peacefully reading our books side by side. When my husband preferred to stay up till 10:30 working on programming problems in the living room, I felt unreasonably frustrated. He wasn't doing something wrong, but this didn't fit my pre-marriage fantasy. Readers, swapping out fantasy for reality is always a change for the better, because it is real.

• Lose the idea that communication is "unromantic," that there are some things that your husband should just "know." He loves you, but he is not inside of your brain, and it's not fair to expect him to be a mind reader.

• Learn to not keep score. Even if you feel your accounting is quite fair and accurate and therefore you have good reason to feel like your marriage is "unequal" (you put in more hours at work, or make more of an effort to keep in touch with extended family, etc.), the scoring is flawed from the outset, because marriage is not about equality! We are called to outdo one another in showing honor, not to show up only as much as our spouse does. What if God was like this? What if he kept track of how much we were doing "our part" and whether it was truly 50-50 in our relationship with Him, and promptly stopped contributing if the scales tipped too far in His direction? Thank the Lord that He does not treat us as we deserve! 

• Let your husband be his own person, but don't give up entering into his world. What do I mean by this? Sometimes I want to connect with my husband only on my terms — I want to mold him to fit into my image and enjoy my preferred activities, on my timeline and in my way. When I recognize that I'm becoming controlling, the easiest solution is to disconnect entirely: you do you and I'll do me. We can peacefully live separate lives in the same house. But the goal of marriage is not to be good roommates who have no conflict. Instead, enter the tension of compromise and self-sacrifice. It is better for my marriage when I don't try to make my husband's decisions for him — choosing his hobbies, schedule, etc. — but rather seek ways to join in with what he has decided or to make choices together.

• Relatedly, don't forget that all relationships need intentionality, even when — perhaps especially when — you live in the same house and share life together on a daily basis. Again, it is much easier to be roommates than teammates. Keep seeking ways to connect and prioritize time just to be together, because it won't happen by accident. 

• Recognize the difference between sharing marital challenges with other people in order to confess your own sin, and sharing marital challenges in order to complain about your husband (whether in seriousness or in jest). This can be tough, because women slip very easily into the latter, both intentionally and unintentionally, and it is so easy to just chime in with your own frustrations. But it is never worthwhile to tear down your spouse to other people.

I am thankful for our first year of marriage, the many sweet moments and the hard ones. I am still in awe of the Lord's plan in bringing us together. The best is yet to come, my dearest.

Guide to yogurt making: all the tips and tricks

I have been making homemade yogurt for five or six years. What began as a quirky hobby and means to save money has become so natural to me that I don't even think about the process, the advantages, or the unusualness of this activity anymore. It's really quite a simple and forgiving process, but there are many ways in which to damage (or think you've damaged) the finished product.

You see, because yogurt-making is a somewhat long but mostly hands-off process, the easiest thing that can go "wrong" is forgetting that you're making yogurt at all during one or another of the steps. Then comes the frantic Google search as you try to find out if you've ruined it all (spoiler: you probably haven't). In some cases I found ready answers, and in others I had to experiment and learn from the results.

So, with half a decade of experience in over-culturing, over-cooling, boiling, and forgetting my yogurt, I have decided to create the guide that I needed when I began my yogurt adventure (you know, be the change you want to see in the world and all that).

Guide to Yogurt Making: All the Tips and Tricks

The Supplies

You do not need a yogurt maker to make yogurt! Most likely you already have everything you need in your own home.

• A yogurt starter (more on this below)
• Milk
• A stove and pot to heat the milk
• A kitchen thermometer
• Glass jars with lids to hold the yogurt
• Some means to keep the yogurt at a consistent temperature for culturing. You can use a yogurt maker if you have one, but I've heard of using the pilot light in your oven, hot towels, a cooler filled with just-boiled water... You can get creative. My personal method is a heating pad on medium heat, inside a small cooler with a towel draped over the top. This works quite well for me, but I've also tried the boiling water and pilot light methods and had moderate (though less consistent) success with those as well. You may have to play around with it to find what works for you; make sure to test the temperature of your yogurt the first few times to get a feel for how it's working.

On Yogurt Starters

There are websites that sell so-called "heritage" yogurt cultures. They claim that commercial yogurt starters (i.e. the starter used for any yogurt that you'd buy in your grocery store) are not as viable as heritage cultures. The idea is that once you start a batch of yogurt, you can use a spoonful from that batch as the "starter" for the next batch, and thus have a self-perpetuating system so that you never have to buy yogurt again. According to these companies, commercial starters are not capable of indefinitely self-perpetuation and "wear out" after 3–4 batches.

In my early days of anxious yogurt production, I bought these heritage cultures multiple times and tried to build a lasting yogurt starter from them. Some people may be able to perpetuate their yogurt indefinitely from these heritage starters, but my experience was that after some number of batches (5, 8, 12, whatever), my yogurt stopped reliably producing more yogurt, and I'd have to buy more cultures and restart.

After spending more money than I should have trying to make the heritage cultures work, I tried the not-recommended method of using a spoonful of yogurt from the store (my rationale was, a quart of store yogurt costs about the same as a single heritage starter, but you can eat the rest of the container of yogurt, so if it doesn't work, at least you get something out of it). The result? I have still had to restart my yogurt cultures from time to time, but less frequently than with the heritage cultures! (In fact, sometimes I restart on purpose — when going out of town, for instance, it's easier to let the cultures die and just spend the few extra dollars buying a quart of yogurt when I get back, than trying to time my yogurt production exactly around travel).

Note that brand does make a difference; I have had more success with "nicer" brands like Nancy's than the cheapest store brand.

Lastly, make sure to make new yogurt every 5–7 days; yogurt is perfectly safe to eat after seven days, but after that the cultures may not be sufficiently active to produce more yogurt (though I've had success up to Day 9 or so).

The Process

Making yogurt is really quite a simple, forgiving process, but there are some key steps:

1. Heat milk on low heat till it reaches 180ºF. EDIT: I used to heat on the lowest heat possible, which would take more than an hour. However, heating milk for that long can result in grainy yogurt. Heating too fast can cause curdling, though. So now I set the temperature at one or two notches up from the lowest setting.
2. Remove milk from stove and cool to 105–110ºF. (Estimate an hour + for the heating/cooling process!) 
3. Put your yogurt starter in your glass jar (~1 Tbl yogurt per quart of milk), pour in a little of the cooled milk, and whisk. Once smooth, pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into the pot and whisk gently.
4. Pour milk mixture into jar (s) and culture at a steady temperature of ~105ºF for 3–24 hours.
5. Remove yogurt from culturing environment and chill.

That's the simple part — but what happens if something goes wrong at one of these steps? Is your yogurt a lost cause? That's what the section below is all about (organized in chronological order for steps 1–5).

What can go wrong

What if I forget my milk on the stove and the temperature goes above 180º?

Your milk is still usable! Just remove from heat and proceed to step 2. (I actually think yogurt sometimes turns out a bit thicker this way, though I still try to avoid heating beyond 180º because higher temperatures destroy more of the milk proteins.)

What if the milk is taking forever to heat and it reaches 167º and doesn't want to go higher?

Be patient! You can turn the heat up a little, but not much. There is something special about 180º; if you stop before you reach that temperature, your yogurt will not be as successful.

What if I forget my milk while it's cooling and it drops below 105º?

Your milk is still useable! Return to stove and heat on the lowest heat until it reaches 105-110º and then proceed to step 3.

What if took too long to heat/cool the milk and now I have to leave my house while it's still cooling down?

If the temperature has made it to 180º but you don't have time to wait for it to cool to 105º, put a lid on the pot so it will cool more slowly. If you're not away too long, it might not have dropped below 105º when you return, and you can just proceed to step 3. If it drops below 105º, just return to stove and reheat to 105º. I've even had good results putting the heated milk in the refrigerator overnight and reheating to 105-110º the next day and making yogurt at that point.

What if I forget I had yogurt culturing and it stays in its culturing environment for hours longer than planned?

Note there is a wide range for culturing times (3–24 hours), so if it goes a little longer than planned, don't sweat it. The longer yogurt cultures, the more sour it will taste (because the yogurt cultures are eating the sugars in the milk), but it's still edible and viable. The sweet spot for me is 5 hours, but I have no problem pulling it out after 4 or leaving it for 8 if that's what works best for my schedule. Make it work for you and don't stress it.

What if I test the temperature during/after culturing and it's fallen below 105 or gone above 110?

Figuring out how to culture yogurt in your environment may require some experimentation, but you'll likely figure it out after a few batches (for example, I found that I could make significant changes to the temperature by adjusting my heating pad between the low, medium, or hot settings, or adjusting how many towels I put on top). See below for the various effects on yogurt texture from culturing too cool or too hot.

What if my yogurt looks kind of thin and wobbly when I pull it out of the culturing environment?

Put it in the fridge before you despair — the chilling time really does help firm up the texture.

What if my yogurt turns out thin and runny?

There are various reasons why yogurt can have a thinner texture than expected. This is more common with raw milk, for example (see below). The temperatures really do matter — stopping the milk before it reaches 180º will result in thinner yogurt, and a culturing environment that falls below 100º will also result in thin, runny yogurt.

If you've followed all the steps correctly and it's still thinner than you'd like, you can strain it: line a strainer with a clean tea towel and place over a bowl. Pour the yogurt into the strainer and place in the fridge for 1–5 hours, until the desired amount of whey has dripped out of the yogurt (leaving you with thicker, "Greek" yogurt in the strainer). You can then toss the whey or use it in a variety of ways (protein in smoothies, hair wash, add to dried beans when soaking, etc.).

What if my yogurt's texture is grainy, lumpy, or otherwise inconsistent?

Heating your milk too fast in step 1 or culturing your yogurt too hot in step 4 is the most likely culprit for curdled texture or separation. Heating milk for too long (i.e., too slow) can also cause grainy textures, too, though — there's a happy medium on a low (but not the very lowest) temperature that allows the milk to heat evenly.

Of course, some inconsistency in texture is normal (especially if you use milk that's not homogenized — expect to have a "cream" layer of yogurt at the top). After the yogurt has chilled and before eating, you'll want to stir it.

What if my yogurt totally fails to culture and all I have is warm, weird-smelling milk?

Let it go and try again. You'll get this.

Miscellaneous Tips

How long does homemade yogurt last?

Quite a while for eating purposes (I've kept it for a month, though that's probably not recommended). After about a week, yogurt cultures are no longer sufficiently viable to make more yogurt, though.

What kind of cultures do you need to make Greek yogurt?

This is a trick question! There are no cultures specific to Greek yogurt — Greek style just means that the yogurt has bee strained. See the question above about fixing thin yogurt to learn how to go about this.

How do you make your yogurt more or less sour?

The sourness of your yogurt is mainly dependent on how long it's cultured. The longer you culture = the more sour the yogurt. Fiddle around with it to figure out how you like it.

Can you make yogurt from raw milk?

Yes, this is what I always do! However, heating it to 180º means that it's technically not raw anymore; you've essentially home-pasteurized the milk. Early on in my yogurt days I attempted recipes that only heat the milk to very low temperatures, thus keeping it raw. The issue is that the healthy bacteria present in raw milk are then competing with the yogurt bacteria. The result is that the yogurt never gets very thick (it's more like kefir at this point). Since I eat yogurt for the benefit of the fermented cultures anyway (not the raw milk bacteria), I've made peace with the slow, low pasteurization process that allows those bacteria to take over the milk and produce a thicker yogurt (though commercially-pasteurized milk probably still makes an even thicker yogurt). And, by heating the milk very slowly and capping it at 180º, you can still maintain the integrity of the milk proteins, which are destroyed by ultra-high temperature (UHT) pasteurization, the method used to treat most commercially-sold milks.

That's it for this guide to yogurt making! I hope my experiences are helpful to someone else trying to get started in this world. 

Happy spring,