Yoghurt... success

[igenlode]

I did it! Having acquired a 6-pint bottle of milk from the supermarket (being sold off for 40p; I foresee pork in milk, spiced chicken in milk, and liver soaked in milk being prepared and frozen in my immediate future), I used two pints of it to undertake a fresh batch of yoghurt seeded from a fresh pot of expensive Yeo Valley, warmed very slowly to the boil, and cooled overnight in my haybox arrangement. And this time it just worked, the way it did last summer; perfect creamy unseparated and slightly set yoghurt.

I'm still not sure what the different factor was; I suspect it was using a better-quality starter, as opposed to not using powdered milk. In any case I've frozen down some more cubes of the Yeo Valley to serve as potential future starter material although as I now know they don't survive many months even in the freezer :-(
(And now, of course, I have almost three pints of yoghurt to store! Luckily it does keep; it doesn't seem to go seriously off for a long time.)

---

I got some more shampoo at Lush, since I finally finished the bright yellow bar I got the Easter before last(!) and the anti-dandruff bar doesn't cope on its own with greasy hair; it got to the stage where I was needing to wash my hair every other day, which, since I don't wash it that often, meant that it was feeling pretty awful pretty much all of the time :-p
I've had the Jumping Juniper bar before, so I know it works. But I wanted some more bath soap, as I've also almost used up my bonus bar of Sultana of Soap -- and was told that we are no longer allowed to 'sniff before you buy' (presumably in case people breathe dangerously on the products). So since my choice was limited to having bars held up for me behind a screen with the sales assistant attempting to describe what they might smell like if I were closer, I had to play safe and buy the lemon-scented one, as the exotic flavours might have turned out to smell like nothing on earth (in the past, I've definitely sniffed things in Lush I wouldn't want to buy).

I can't help feeling that this policy is likely to impact severely on their custom -- in a shop whose appeal largely centres around their scents, it's a bit like trying to sell paintings based on a textual summary of their contents... (Still, apparently they have had a thriving online business for years, and I really can't imagine how that works!)

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

Well done!

[igenlode]

I'd be more reassured if I knew exactly how I'd done it!

[watervole]

Well done on the yogurt.


Have you tried just leaving your hair? After a couple of weeks it gets pretty greasy, but by the time two months have passed, the grease all goes and your hair is absolutely fine. I haven't washed mine in decades.

[igenlode]

Have you tried just leaving your hair? After a couple of weeks it gets pretty greasy, but by the time two months have passed, the grease all goes and your hair is absolutely fine.

So I've been assured :-(

Possibly it works with 'normal' hair. Unfortunately my hair is both very fine and very greasy (like my skin -- if I wipe my hand across my nose and forehead right now, they're as detectably oily as any teenager's).

I left my hair once for a good eighteen months in an attempt to make the experiment, which involved leaving it uncut as well, since I couldn't very well ask any shop to trim it in that state. It got pretty greasy within a week, and... stayed that way.

I ended up with a lank stub of inadequate ponytail, which still cracked and broke off at the point where I tried to tie it back; the hair wasn't strong and glossy and self-maintaining as promised, but just a perpetually dirty mess. (It doesn't seem to work for the average tramp, either.) The only difference was that when I finally gave up and did wash it, I was then able to drop the frequency to once a week instead of once every three days as formerly, and that didn't last long before gradually creeping back to its former condition.

One theory I've subsquetnly seen -- apparently demonstrated in action by Ruth Goodman in her "Tudor Monastery Farm" programme -- is that the important factor is actually combing, and that the fabled routine of women putting in their hundred strokes before bedtime simply amounted to squeezing out the grease between the teeth of the proverbial 'fine-tooth comb'. It may help if you have long hair and redistribute the oils from scalp to tip, as well; as I said, mine physically cannot grow long. I had a later attempt at growing out my fringe, and never achieved more than a jaw-length curtain before the fine strands naturally broke off and split. My brother can get away with not shaving for months without attaining more than random sparse tufts on his cheeks and chin, so it's probably genetic.

[watervole]

That's a shame. I guess everyone's hair is different, certainly could be genetic if your brother also has a problem with breaking hair.

My hair is short and I just give it a quick comb every morning.