Have you ever wondered if there is any method to my posting madness?
If not, good! If so, here’s the deal. Gracefulfitness is still a baby blog, well maybe a toddler, and we (eh hum, the blog and I?) are still figuring out our groove.
Over the last month or two I have gotten into a schedule of Monday-Friday morningish posts most weeks. Occasionally, like yesterday, the day flies by without a post. When this happens I usually post on Saturday or Sunday.
Yesterday flew by with a mix of business (taxes!) and pleasure.
On the pleasure front I ended up in a private yoga session. I was the only student in a lunchtime power vinyasa class and loved getting extra hands-on assists. There’s nothing like having someone watch you “vinyasa” to enhance your awareness of every inch of your body! It made me hyper-aware of a few bad/lazy habits that I have, which I will attempt to reverse.
Another pleasure was finally getting a homemade flavored yogurt right.
Coffee!
I’ve been making my own yogurt since the fall. Although I prefer the tanginess of plain yogurt most of the time, occasionally it’s fun to have a flavor and one of great things about homemade flavored yogurt is being able to control the sugar.
Sadly, most of my flavor attempts have been fails. Remember chocolate and peanut? Ginger and vanilla are winners but a little boring.
Coffee yogurt turned out just how I imagined. I added a spoonful of instant decaf coffee, a splash of vanilla, and a stevia packet to two of my little yogurt maker jars and let it work it’s magic.
And magic is what it worked. 🙂 Creamy, slightly sweet, and just the right amount of coffee flava.
The real pleasure of the day was a low-key and lovely dinner with great friends. I love a casual dinner “party” mid-week, especially as the days get longer and the temperature warms.
After arriving to Matt and Kath’s by bike we were greeted with tasting notes and score sheets.
Matt is an awesome home-brewer and beer aficionado. The flavor of the evening was Hefeweizen and featured a blind taste between three bottled brews and Matt’s homebrew.
After lots of sniffing, sipping, and noting the beers were revealed.
My favorite? A spicy and sweet brew from the world’s oldest brewery. I am not a hefeweizen fan but matt helped my appreciate the subtler qualities and characteristics of this type of beer and I could actually see enjoying more of it in the future.
One more pleasure to leave you with.
Babies!
No (sorry Mom 😉 ), not that kind.
Now if we can only get rid of the groundhog…
Gracefulfitness 
Making yogurt sounds fun! How on earth do you do that? lol 🙂
My trusty yogurt maker does it for me! It’s really quite simple, it just takes a little time.
I’ve had the same thing in a vinyasa class [I think it was vinyasa; is that the very structured modality?] I LOVED the one-on-one attention. I want to make my own yogurt.
Even though I used other methods for months with decent results I highly recommend getting a yogurt maker. They are surprisingly affordable! And making it yourself is more environmental. 🙂
My thoughts exactly! I have been trying to significantly reduce the amount of waste in our home.
There’s a regional creamery here that sells their milk in glass returnable bottles so now I don’t even have to worry about the waste from the milk!
Have you ever tried making yogurt with a non-dairy milk (like almond)?
No, have you?
I’m not sure about groundhogs, but we had moles. Using a device (it was shaped like a torpedo) that emitted sounds into the ground got rid of them.
I’ll have to look into that. We tried a trap in the fall and it didn’t phase him!
In case you prefer to forego another appliance, put the jars into a picnic cooler with warm (110f) water up to the top of the jars. Leave overnight for easy, low cost yogurt.
Well Since YOU brought it up I had a dream about you and the other kind of babies recently And today hanging out with my one and only grandbaby realizing how ready I am to have a baby in my life and well you know the rest. Wait wait wait until there is not another single thing you can think of more important to the BOTH of you and them make me a grandbaby and I wish the same for all of you would be babymakers out there;)
crap I meant “then” make me a grandbaby sic
I am a little jealous of your yoga session; I would love that.
Too me, it doesn’t really matter when you post, I will always be reading…so don’t you worry.
I know, I totally scored on the yoga session.
Thanks for reading! I love seeing your smiling face gravitar pop up in my comments! 🙂
I make my own yogurt too! Except I’m cheap and just use kefir grains someone gave me and glass jars. I’ve never had luck with soy or almond milk though, but I want to try with goat’s milk!
I use yogurt for my starter. Have you experimented with flavors?
I’ve only ever added flavorings after the yogurt was made, and that way I can just have a big container of plain then use it however I want. Sometimes I do vanilla/almond and sweetner, other times I mix it with hot chocolate mix…or with feta for a dressing. I’m not sure how it work to flavor it with the culture though.