"Where do you buy bacteria?"

I recently bought a yogurt maker. We eat a lot of the stuff around the house, and when you do the math even including the cost of the machine over time, packaged yogurt is really expensive compared to what you can make at home! Plus fresh, homemade yogurt tastes SO much better than the cheap stuff you can buy at the store. So I have been experimenting with different starters for different tastes. I made a batch with my favorite prepackaged yogurt, Fage, last night. It's goooooood. I think if I drain off some of the whey in a cheesecloth, I can make a nearly exact duplicate to the Total 2%.

So Tim asks me how I make yogurt. I told him you scald the milk to kill the bad bacteria, let it cool a little, then you add in the good bacteria in the form of a starter, then put it in the machine and press the button. He says "Where do you buy bacteria?" which cracked me up. I'm imagining going into a store a buying a jar of tiny worms or something. I explained that you buy either powdered yogurt starter, or you can use a spoonful of store bought plain yogurt as a starter. He holds up a carton of yogurt. "So there's bacteria in this???" he says with a scowl of disgust. Yes, dear. I feed you a dishful of bacteria milk every day. And it's delicious.

Silly boy!