We are Going to Eat You

Why hello loyal readers.

I do believe I made a promise about Zombie Vegetables. I believe I also made a declaration of sorts that this blog is for testing Pinteresty things, and also somewhat for DIY.

Behold. I have kept my promises. Zombie Vegetables. 

"They're baa-aaack."

So you know those links with the 12 or 18 or whatever Vegetables You Can Regrow from Table Scraps?

Yes, they actually work! I know, I'm surprised too. At least for two of the vegetables that I tested - green onions and leeks.

It's pretty darned simple, costs next to nothing (basically the price of the dirt, which you can either buy for not very much money, or just, you know, get some OFF THE GROUND), and is really a life-saver on days like today when it's cold, potentially (or maybe by the time I finish writing this blog post, actually) stormy, and you really can't be bothered to go out to the store to buy token green things so you can say you ate your vegetables. Plus, as far as I can tell, they are immortal. (By which I mean you cut off the tip and they just keep growing back.) Obviously. You can't kill Zombie Vegetables.

Instructions

"Are you eating it ...or is it eating you?"

1. Buy, steal, or otherwise get tips of leeks or green onions. 
2. If you bought them or stole them whole, when you use up most of your green onion, leave enough at the root end so that you will be able to replant - about an inch or two. (You can see in the picture where the original death...um, cut...line is on those leeks.)
3. Stick into dirt. Root-side down. Bury it vertically so that the root gets, well, planted, and the tip is just barely above the earth.
4. Water periodically or hope that it rains. 

Thazzit.

Enjoy, and be sure to tell me if you successfully grew one of the other types of....Zombie Vegetables. (One day when I become a B-rated movie producer, you know that's gonna be a title.) 

Pasta with a side of philosophy

As may be evidenced by the previous few posts, I've been thinking a lot about the connection between food and money.

You see, I had this conversation tonight with people who told me they spend about 4000 NIS on food a month, for two people. We got down to the nitty gritty, and discovered that that's probably because they enjoy the finer things in life - fresh salmon, a good steak - and those things don't come cheaply.

I had another conversation a few weeks ago, about that food challenge that all the cool kids are doing these days of living on $150 for food per person for the month. (Ok, it wasn't really a conversation, it was a facebook comment and another comment.) Bottom line is - I said I could do that, easily, and other person said, 'Teach me your ways, Oh Wise One, I spend a gazillion times more than that.' (I may be paraphrasing. A tad.)

Point is, and I may have mentioned this before, I make CRAZY things from scratch. Like, truly crazy. Not just granola and cookies and cakes and bread, but, like, croissants and mayonnaise and yogurt and (most recently) pasta.

So yeah, usually those things save me money by making them from scratch. But the [white privilege] thing that happens here is - I FRICKIN HAVE THE TIME TO DO THIS. I am mostly unemployed. I can afford to spend the time making yogurt. Some people are partially employed or just amazing at managing their time, so they can "only" make bread from scratch. Someone I know, who is even crazier than I and only eats fair trade locally grown cow patties or something, purposely has a flexible hours type job so he can grind his own buckwheat flour and make it into coq-au-vin with home fermented wine, or something like that.

Not everyone can do this.

I am even realistic enough to believe that most of the people reading this blog (anyone out there other than my mom?) may just have day jobs and come home and not want to frickin make bread from scratch.

So what's a blogger to do?

Well, one could subscribe to the whole 'Make Amazing Meals in just 13 minutes a Day!' cookbooks, which frankly I think are full of bullshit.

One could become a stay-at-home-mom/dad/furry green alien, and spend all their time following oh so perfect blogs about how to perfectly make a perfect 10 course meal complete with truffle oil, and then take gorgeous photos and blog it and pinterest it or snapchat or instagram or whatever the kids are doing these days. Anyway that's how the Patriarchy keeps women down and out of the workforce, so I'm not sure I support this method.

One could be absolutely batshit crazy and scavenge for food and make bread out of thistles and leftover cat fur. There are bloggers like that out there. I ain't one of them.

Or....one could just say screw it and spend 4000 nis a month and eat good food.

Middle ground? Yes, I suppose there is. There are, like, freezers and crockpot meals and gazillions of websites promising 10 Amazing Meals that Cook in your Crockpot Overnight. I suppose some people are organized enough to do that.

What about you, readers? What is your middle ground? Can we  all be humble, admit we're not perfect, and maybe spend more than we want? Or buy more instant food than we want? Is that even allowed??

Obligatory Recipe: Pasta with Melty Cheese

Ingredients: 

• pasta
• cheese which you can totally keep in your freezer and it's fine
• salt
• make it fancy - top with green thing

1.  Cook pasta in salted cooking water.  
2. Strain, but keep a tiny bit of the cooking water (super cool Great Depression type cooking trick for making everything better.)
3. Put pasta back in the pot with that cooking water. Grate cheese. Stir. Melt. Add more cheese. 
4. Top with some sort of green thing. I'm thinking basil or parsley or green onion which you can totally grow like a zombie. More on that later. 
5. Serve with a large glass of red wine. 

The fine life - we has it. 

Tofu and Shiitake Mushrooms and Rice in a Korean-ish sort of way (or, This Blog is not Froofie)

Dontcha hate it when food blogs keep going on and on and on with stupid words words words  blabla nobody actually reads this and you're all like, omagerd just get to the flippin recipe already, and you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page cuz you're really just here for the recipe?

Yeah, I hate that too.

So here's a recipe for food. It's good food. It contains protein, vegetable, and carb, which was how we were taught to make meals when I was in kindergarten and holy crap I don't even want to think about how long ago that was. It is vegan and can probably be made gluten-free, and I hate myself a little for even writing that.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or to my spouse's elbow

Tofu and Shiitake Mushrooms and Rice in a Korean-ish sort of way

This recipe was based off of these guys because I had tofu and I had mushroom and I wanted to make a meal out of it. So I started following directions and holy crap, found I couldn't make the recipe without the spice mix that, conveniently, they were selling. That's evil and brilliant and I didn't want to wait that long to order it over the internet and also that's insane, so I made my own spice mix, based off of this. It sounds intimidating, but I promise it's not, and the whole recipe took maybe 30 min to complete. Really, it looks more complicated than it is, but I swear it's simple. Trust me. You trust me, don't you??

Step one - make steamed rice
Do this in advance. Keep it in the fridge, and serve as needed or microwave. Boom. Instant food.

Step two - spice rub - mix ingredients together

• about a tbs kosher salt, maybe a little less, that seems excessive
• 1 tbs brown sugar (you make me feel so good)
• recipe calls for 1 tbs korean red pepper powder. I don't have that, plus hubbie and I are wusses when it comes to pepper. I substituted with a pinch of cayenne pepper, and about 1 tbs paprika for the redness. You can do more chili pepper and no paprika if you are not squeamish about spice. 
• 1 garlic clove, smashed
• a pinch-1 tsp ground ginger (I increased to make up for lost spiciness)
• a pinch-1/2 tsp ground black pepper (ditto)

Now, I have a new kitchen toy, a spice grinder, so I ground everything together and had a lot of fun. However, I fully recognize that not everybody has such a thing, so just mix together.

Step three - now turn spice mix into marinade.

• spice mix (What you just done did.)
• 3 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tbs rice vinegar 
• 1 tbs mirin or white wine if you don't have mirin, like I didn't
• 1 1/2 tbs honey or sugar
• 1 tsp sesame oil 

Mix all together in a bowl that will be big enough to contain tofu, which we're about to get to. 

Step four - now make the rest of the $#@ food so you can frickin eat already

Actual Ingredients

• Tofu - chopped
• Shiitake mushroom  (doesn't that make you giggle? shit-takee. Tee hee. I have the maturity level of a 5 year old.) 3 or 4 mushrooms, but more if there are more people eating or less if they are huge mushrooms.
• 1-2 carrots or sweet potato. Or something else. Or nothing.
• Avocado
• Green onions or basil or something green on top
• Sesame seeds if you have them

1. Chop tofu and put it into the marinade. The original recipe says 30 minutes. I say poppycock. It marinaded maybe 5 minutes, and it was fine. Just let it marinate while you chop all the other things. 
2. Chop all the other things. For the sweet potato/carrot - if you're froofie, julienne them. If you're not (hint: I'm not.) use a vegetable peeler and peel them. 
3. If you are so inclined, burn, ahem, toast some sesame seeds now.
4. Take pot. Big pot. Probably non-stick, cuz tofu sticks like a mofo. Heat oil. Take tofu out of the marinade (but don't be too OCD about it, some marinade is fine) and fry it up until it's fried. Should smell spicy and yummy. Remove from pot onto plate. 
5. Recipe says use more oil. I don't really think it's necessary, but if you want, go ahead. Now fry mushrooms, apparently 3-4 minutes, but I only did 1-2 minutes because I think the sweet potatoes needed cooking more than mushrooms needed cooking. Now add carrots/sweet potatoes and fry them too. Add tofu. If you want it more goopy, add marinade. If you want it less goopy, add less marinade. 
6. Put rice in bowls. Top with tofu mushroom thing on one side, avocado slices on the other side (they are a nice counterpart to the spice), then green things, and if you're really fancy, toasted sesame seeds.
7. Nom. 

On Food, Sociology, and Green Beans in Olive Oil

This blogger just got back from a vacation in America land, and, maybe for the first time, I get it. A little. Not entirely, but I get it now.

See, we were sojourning in the South, and there were three really noticeable things:

1) it was HOT!

2) it was poor;

And this one is probably not unique to the South, but to North America as a whole

3) food is convenient!

So, I get it a little bit more now. I get it how only crazy people would make their own crackers. Am I nuts? Why on earth would one make crackers when getting crackers from the store is so darned cheap, convenient, and easy? Let's not forget tasty. All the fast foods and all the instant foods and all the store bought foods are so good at adding taste enhancers beginning in e- and ending in 103. How can homemade food compete with that?

So I get it. I get how making your own blah from scratch is totally a White Privilege thing. I get how it fits in with the whole kale-munching, Whole-Foods-shopping, home-schooling, organics-eating, fermenting-thing. I'm not going to get into the factors behind that demographic because a) that's not me, and b) I'm not a sociologist.

But I get it.

However, I live in Israel, where convenient food isn't so convenient or cheap, whereas fresh fruits and vegetables are. So I don't bake my own bread because I want it gluten free, I bake it because it's cheaper that way. I make my own jam and ferment vegetables because otherwise the food will go bad and my ancestors died in the Holocaust therefore I can never throw food out. (Just...don't ask me about actually eating the fermented foods. They keep forever, right?) I get a box of organic veggies because I'm lazy and we don't have a car and this just shows up on our door like magic.

I'm not a hipster! I swear! (Oh, and also I don't have 5 kids and/or a full time job, and that also helps me have time to, you know, make yogurt from scratch and all.)

So after these realizations, and after this vacation, I've finally learned to take it easy on myself. A bit. Both because convenience is so darned convenient, and because it's seriously too hot to cook these days. It's so hot it's all we can do to eat Popsicles for dinner. If we cut up a tomato we have made an Herculean effort. 

But this isn't just a 'listen to me philosophize about food and sociology' blog, it's also a food blog, so  I'm going to give you a recipe that I did actually manage to cook this week (plus it gets cooked in a closed pot so it doesn't heat up your kitchen.) It finishes up ingredients that one gets in a CSA got that I find hard to finish otherwise; it's delicious in this blogger's humble opinion; and it's even seasonal if you are Jewish and starting to wrack your brain about simanim-type foods to make for Rosh Hashana.

Fasoliyyeh Bi Z-Zayt (Syrian Green Beans with Olive Oil)

(From allrecipes.com)

• 1 (16 ounce) package frozen cut Frozen?? Feh. Get a bunch of green beans. How much? A bunch. As much as you want to eat, basically. Long beans also work wonderfully. Chop up short or long. 
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil or so
• salt to taste
• 1 clove garlic, minced- due to garlic sensitivities, I usually cut this out and it's just fine.
  
• 1/4 cup (Again with the measurements? What gives.) Just chop up a bunch of fresh cilantro. However much you want to/need to finish up.

1. Put green beans or long beans into a fairly big pot. You want it big enough that you will be able to stir them, even though they shrink a bunch. Drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt to taste (about a pinch) and clamp the lid on. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until beans are cooked to your desired doneness. According to allrecipes, Syrians like it cooked until the green beans are turning brownish in color. "The idea is not to saute them, but to let them steam in the moisture released by the ice crystals." (I can't speak for Syrians, but Jerusalem based non-hipster bloggers like them until they are wilted and a little browned.
2. Add cilantro and garlic (if using) to the beans, and continue to cook just until the cilantro has started to wilt. Eat. Or cool and reheat on plata.

To make it a meal: buy pita. Buy hummus. (Or maybe pbj if you're in America? I dunno. What goes with pita in America that isn't hard cheese?) Slice a tomato or if you're feeling REALLY ambitious, make an Israeli salad. Make this dish. Dinner. Done.

P.S. This was like the only thing I cooked this week. Otherwise dinner was store-bought bread and butter and jam. Cuz it's hot. And cuz, like I said, I get it now.

Viva Le Revolution

This blogpost has been a looooong time coming.

It's been so long coming, I basically don't really want to stop cooking the recipe in order to write the post, which is unfortunate, because the recipe says 'stir constantly' which I can't actually do right now cuz I'm busy typing.

[takes a break to go stir]

The reason this recipe has taken so long to get up on the blog is that it is basically the topic of a whole (albeit tiny) revolution. It represents my entire cooking philosophy. [takes a break to go stir]. It is something that I am REALLY REALLY investing in convincing you to do, too. [stir.] It is fascinating if you stop to google it (which I did, and delayed this blogpost by several weeks cuz by then I had lost momentum.)

...it is something you can probably really screw up if you don't follow the directions and actually constantly stir. I'll be right back....

....
...
...


Ok. I'm with you now.

Finally, the reason I have delayed so much with this blogpost is because I want to give you a cost break-down of making it at home. I'll be honest, I'm not actually sure it will be cheaper to make at home. Despite the revolution (or maybe because of it) it doesn't actually cost that much to buy in the store. But it might be. So don't touch that dial, we'll figure it out. Together. (Actually, come to think of it, I'll figure it out here, alone, by myself, with no help, and will just give you the answer.)

And finally...the long-awaited, suspenseful build-up is a recipe for...

Milky.

I'll betcha you had no idea you could make it yourself, right? Neither did I. Twenty-flipping years in Israel, and it never occurred to me that it didn't just grow on the supermarket shelf. 

Turns out, Milky is simply...pudding. Topped with whipped cream.

I know, right?!???

Here' the recipe, and then we'll get to the cost.

I-can't-believe-I-Made-it-Myself-Milky

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbs cocoa
• 1/4 cup (which is 4 tbs, FYI) cornstarch. Which I think is same as cornflour in this country.
• 1/8 tsp salt (basically a pinch) 

• 2 and 3/4 cup milk
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 tsp vanilla

• whipped cream

1. Take all dry ingredients, mix in pot (See what I did dere, above? Separate them for you? You're welcome.) 
2. Mix in milk. Stir. Constantly (or so.) Bring to a boil and cook, still with that constantly thing, until it "thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon." That's what she said. 
3. Remove from heat, and stir in butter (or oil) and vanilla.
4. Let cool briefly and spoon into cups. Top with whipped cream. Chill and serve cold. 

That's fricking it. Can you believe it? 

Now, for cost breakdown. (All costs will be based on Rami Levi. Nope, I did not get discounts for saying that.)

•  A kilo of sugar at Rami levi = 3.7 nis = 5 cups of sugar. So 1/2 cup sugar = 0.37 ag. 
• Cocoa. Oy. Math is tough. Ok, so 500 grams =26.3 nis, and 3 tbs cocoa is 22.13 grams, so that comes out to approximately 1.052 nis of cocoa. 
• Cornflour can be found for 3.9 nis for 500 grams. According to some random blog I found, 1/4 cup is 30 grams, so that's about 26 agorot of cornflour.
• Salt. No. I am not going to figure out how much a pinch of salt costs. Don't be ridiculous. 

I hope you appreciate what I do for you guys. 

• Milk - so 2.75 cups is 0.65 liters according to this wonderful website which is particularly amazing if you don't have a scale or were silly and didn't do this while cooking - http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_volume_cooking.htm. Milk is a set price of 6.3, So that brings the cost of milk to 4.095 nis.
• Butter - Can be substituted by oil, but just for the heck of it = 2 tbs is about 30 grams, and butter is also a set price of 8 nis for 200 grams, so 30 grams = 1.2 nis. Huh. That's way more than I expected. Butter is expensive.
• Vanilla - I make my own vanilla (very VERY simple to do), and the recipe is probably fine if you cut it out, so I'm just going to skip this. 
• Cream - probably the most expensive item here, comes in at 6.3 nis.

 And now for the calculator. Ready?

0.37 + 1.05 + .26 + 4.09 + 1.2 + 6.3 = 13.27 nis

Milky costs 2.7 nis for 133 grams per cup. And now we see how much this recipe makes....

Six! It makes six milkies!  2.7 X 6 = 16.2. 16.2 >13.27

We win!!!

It's Peanut-Butter Bragging Time! Or, 13 Things You Can Make From Scratch if you Have Time and Inclination

Nothing for 42 days then 2 after 2 days, eh? Bet you weren't expecting that, eh? I guess my old friend Calliope (or would it be Thalia? Oddly enough the Greeks didn't have a specific Muse for food blogs) has come to visit again.

Today is going to be a short one, because, ironically, I actually have some cooking to do instead of just blogging about it. For today's list I present to you, "Things You Can, Actually Cook at Home and Don't Have to Buy in the Supermarket With Lots of Preservatives Like E-212 and E-221 Which are Probably Going to Kill You and Murder Your Loved Ones in their Sleep."

Or, in a less stylized, more click-baiting way of putting it, "10 Things that You Should be Making From Scratch!" Ack. Ugh. Gross click-baiting.

The thing about 'should be making yourself from scratch'ing - and this is a huuuuuuge caveat - it costs you time. I'm not going to lie to you - it does. Any of those dumb websites who are all like, 'Oh, You Can Make Your Own Pizza in Five Minutes or Less, Click Here on our Ads to Find Out How and Also to Lose Tummy Fat' are full of bullshit. Seriously. There's this weird triangle that not enough food blogs pay attention to, and it goes something like this:

You'd think with a degree in graphic design it would have taken less than 1/2 an hour to create this stupid triangle...

This is one of those triangles where you get to choose 2 out of 3 of the prongs, yet not all three. So, for example, I tend to make healthy food that is inexpensive, at the cost of my time. So my chart looks like this:

Get it? Others get healthy food that doesn't take them long to make, but costs a lot. Or (probably not the readers of this blog) buy cheap food that is quick, and crappy for you. I think you all get my point.

Now that we've established that, yes, making cheese and jam and stuff from scratch isn't going to happen in 5 seconds a day, and that if you have 11 kids and a full-time job, you probably have other things to do with you time, let's get to the bragging part of the blog.

Things I always make from scratch because it's worth the time

• Tomato sauce - so easy. Just chuck tomatoes and an onion in a pot and let them cook to death.
• Bread - cheaper to make than to buy. Plus I have a recipe that requires no kneading. 
• Soup broth - really what's the point of buying. Just chuck bits and bobs of veggies into a pot and boil while you are cooking soup. No big whoop. 
• Pizza - see "tomato sauce" and "bread."
• Granola - take rolled oats. Mix with nuts and sweet stuff. Bake. Congrats, you've made granola. Why would you spend 20-30 nis on that?
• Hummus and Tehinni - buy raw ingredients. Stick in food processor. Done.
• Orange Marmalade and candied orange peels.

Things that can be made from scratch, but aren't always worth the time:

• Mayonnaise - very cheap and good to make, but when you only want a tsp every week, the homemade stuff goes bad.
• Pickles - easy to make, but sometimes I don't think about wanting a pickle 3 days in advance.
• Jam - yes, I make homemade jam, yes, it's easy, and yes, I do it often. But sometimes, just sometimes, you just want blueberry jam.
• Cheese - when I remember, I make ricotta and labneh from scratch. Otherwise, expensive cheese-shop it is.
• Yogurt - ack! I admit it! Sometimes I buy it. I am so ashamed. 
• Croissants - Sometimes I can't wait three days for buttery goodness. (Goes well with homemade orange marmalade.) 

Things I recently learned you can make from scratch: 

• Apple cider vinegar - is basically fermented apple cores. How cool is that?
• Ketchup - Turns out it's easy to make! And no icky E-102 etc. (see, Murdering Your Family in Their Sleep, above.)

Things I would love to make from scratch one day, but haven't yet dared: 

• Tofu
• Pickled lemons
• Olives 
• Hard cheeses (shout-out to Annanas)

Others? Questions, comments, complaints? Ideas for things I should be making and aren't? Complimentary cheese plate? You know how to find me.

Non-snooty Homemade Yogurt

Forgive me, blogging world, for I have sinned. It has been 42 days (!!!) since my last post, and I haven't even fulfilled my promises made for Pesach recipes. (OTOH, I haven't seen any posts claiming that people are starving for lack of Kosher for Pesach vegetarian recipes, so I don't feel too too guilty. Just a little guilty.) Also, I have been privy to some amazing resources for Pesachy food recipes that friends and friends of friends have written, so I don't feel like I necessarily need to reinvent the wheel there.

Frankly, I have been feeling a little disheartened with the blogging thing lately. There are soooooo maaaaaaaany good food blogs out there these days, and I don't know how much I'm going to contribute. Lil 'ol me. Just now, for example, I was scrolling over to Smitten Kitchen looking for sidedishes, and that made me feel bad about myself, and want to kick myself for not putting up my own recipes on the internet since before blogging was big, and how stupid it was that I hadn't gone out and gotten an amazing camera, because isn't she about my age and now she's big and famous and the queen of cooking things at home from scratch and isn't she just doing things that I could have done myself had I thought of it, dammit?

And then I imagine a heavenly voice calling out that reminds me that nobody expected me to be Rav Zusha, just to be me. Which makes me feel a little better, but also a little cynical because I don't believe fairy tales anymore, and I don't have a fancy camera anyway.

Also, blogging has become a lot of work these days. The last few posts I've posted have taken HOURS to write. Cuz, you know, there's the writing part, and that's fairly easy. But then there's the making the recipe, so I can have nice photos to post (I don't know about you all, but when I read food blogs, I don't really read them. I just go for the photos.), and then my crappy camera is really my crappy phone, so I have to instagram or canva the photos to make them somewhat less crappy. And then I have to play with graphics and fidget and stuff and that makes writing blog entries a pain in the butt less fun. Less fun makes me less inclined to blog.

So there you are. It's not that I haven't been cooking. I have been. Most of it has been edible. I just haven't been able to bring myself to invest an entire day in food blogging. Also, I have a thing about inspiration and writing when the mood strikes, which lately it hasn't been. But I do want to be writing more, and for that I think there needs to be fewer pictures so that blogging becomes more fun for me again, less of a hassle. You all okay with that? Okay? Okay.

So I've been making yogurt from scratch, did you know you can do that? You can. It's not difficult. Worst comes to worse you get it wrong and then you just use spoiled milk to make muffins and they come out fine and nobody dies. So I'm going to tell you about yogurt, but there will be no photos. Just imagine something white and milky.

 I has no photos. Here, have a video.

 

Here. Homemade yogurt recipe. Harrumph. 

Hypothetically you do need some specialized equipment for this one, namely a thermometer and a thermos. You might be able to do without the thermometer, just play it by finger; and in place of thermos I've read that you can use a heating blanket or oven. Basically just some way of keeping yogurt at an even temperature for a few hours. Feel free to experiment and let me know what works or didn't. If you want to go to a snooty source which will tell you to buy yogurt cultures and to use a yogurt maker, you can go here. Just take them with grain of salt.

Ingredients

• milk
• old yogurt - very important that it has active bacteria in it. I think, though I'm not certain, that that's any plain yogurt marked 'bio.'

1. Pour milk into thermos. This isn't necessary for recipe, it's mainly just to measure out how much yogurt your container can handle
2. Pour milk into small pot. Heat until it reaches 185 degrees F. This, like, kills bacteria or something. I've read that if you don't have a thermometer, you can stick your finger into the hot milk, and when it's hot enough that you immediately want to take your finger out (ouch!) it's hot enough. Sounds like fun, eh? Or you could invest in a thermometer.
3. Let it sit until it cools to 110, or "just warm to the touch" in snooty blogger speak. Whisk periodically so it doesn't get that icky foam at top. At this time start your kettle going, to heat some water.
4. Stir yogurt into the milk. How much? Some. I usually use about 2 tbs. Or more. Whatever. Some. 
5. Now, I like to first heat my thermos a little. Dunno how strictly necessary this is. I just pour in some heated water, swoosh it around, and then pour it out. I think it helps the thermos stay hot.
6. Pour runny milk thing into thermos. Close thermos. Let sit somewhere between 4-8 hours. The last time I left it overnight, and it was fine. Delicious, even. 
7.  Cool yogurt in fridge. 
8. Eat yogurt.

 The cons of this yogurt is that it doesn't stay good quite as long as commercial yogurt (duh) and sometimes it's a little piecey or chunky. But the pros are that it's SO MUCH WAY CHEAPER than the store-bought stuff! This is coming from someone who just blew 50 nis on about 3 yogurts the other week. Sheesh. So make this. Then make homemade jam. Then combine the two to make flavored yogurt, and STICK IT TO THE MAN CUZ YOU JUST MADE YOUR OWN HOMEMADE YOGURT.

Oh, and then reserve some yogurt, cuz once you've made it once, you can use the old yogurt to make new yogurt, ad infinitum. It's the gift that keeps on giving, like herpes.