3763 Chobani

Thursday, September 5, 2013

"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war."

--senior Pentagon official on reasons why United States military censored footage

showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.--

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 Back in early August of 2011, I posted about finding mold in containers of Chobani yogurt, and how some were swelling and fermenting.  I got a comment on one of those posts from a Chobani rep offering an explanation ("no control after it leaves our facilities") and offering me coupons for more of the stuff.  A quick internet search back then showed that the problem wasn't confined to that batch, or that store, or that truck - it was pretty common, and all over. 

My take is that I've never seen mold or smelled and tasted alcohol in any other plain yogurt - and I often don't refrigerate my yogurt.  Properly made and handled, it doesn't need it.  That's why it has been popular in hot countries for thousands of years.

(Note - technically, yogurt is the result of a fermenting process, but the agent is a bacteria, and the process is slowed when the yogurt is chilled, or stops when the bacteria has eaten all the sugar in the milk - sort of like bread yeast works.  There shouldn't be any mold, and there shouldn't be any alcohol produced.)

Well, Chobani is in the news now.  The stuff is still (or again?) sprouting mold and producing gasses and alcohol.  Chobani has been pulling containers off store shelves.  They haven't issued an official recall, haven notified the public, haven't notified the FDA, they're just contacting stores and asking them to pull it.  Not all of it, just a certain batch.

They say it's a "mold common in dairy facilities" and not dangerous.

I call BS.  If it's so common, how come I've never seen or heard of the problem with any other yogurt?  Never had a Dannon or store-brand container swell or grow mold even when taken on weekend and longer trips with no refrigeration?  Yogurt isn't supposed to have mold in it!

They've known they've had a problem for at least two years. 

"A mold common in dairy facilities" doesn't worry me as much as what its presence might indicate about their facility and process.

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In other news, my back is out.  I've felt it coming on for the past two weeks, and now I'm wearing the brace and hobbling around with a walking stick, bent over like a crone.  I can't accomplish anything.
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3437 Greek yogurt

Sunday, January 1, 2012

THE cAPS lOCK IS LIKE pIG lATIN FOR YOUR FINGERS.
-- Scott Meyer, “Basic Instructions” --

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Like the texture of Greek yogurt but don't want to pay the price?

Buy a 32-oz container of regular yogurt; the least expensive house brand is fine as long as the only ingredients are milk and live culture.

Line a strainer, preferably the kind with wire mesh, with one layer of cheesecloth. Dump the yogurt in. suspend it over a large bowl or pot such that there are several inches between the bottom of the mesh and the bottom of the pot. Do not stir the yogurt.

Cover with foil or a dishtowel or the pot lid and put in the refrigerator.

Check it the next morning and pour off the liquid that has collected in the pot. That's the whey. You can drink it. It's good. Keep checking and pouring off evening and morning until there's no more (or very little) whey. Do not stir the yogurt while it's draining.

Dump the yogurt out into a bowl or the original container. You should now have about 2/3 the volume you started with, which is why Greek yogurt is more expensive -- but nobody explained that to us -- but still, at half the cost, this is cheaper. Stir it gently with a whisk until it's smooth, no more lumps. You can now add a tablespoon of honey and stir it in, or a little sugar and vanilla. Or fruit. Or jam. Or nothing.

Voila! Greek yogurt.
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3334 Yogurt and Rice Pudding

Monday, August 15, 2011

"The greater the lie, the more enthusiastically it is believed and greedily swallowed.”
-- William Hazlitt --

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I made yogurt using the recipe from a previous post. It's a bit thin, but good, and it was easy. The instructions said the first batch should "mull" for seven hours, and then you should adjust the time up or down for subsequent batches, so I guess if I want it thicker, I should go for eight hours next time. You have to experiment to find the balance you like between thickness and tartness.

Yesterday I made rice pudding. I used almond milk instead of mammal milk so Daughter could eat it, and I used Splenda instead of sugar (at 1/3 the sugar rate) so I could eat it. It's a bit bland, but good.

I'm surprised at how good the almond milk tastes. It's sweetish. Probably good on cereal.
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3327 Yogurt

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Faith is fear.
The fear of what might happen if you don't have faith.

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I got an interesting comment from a Chobani rep on my earlier post about yogurt, #3325. She explained that Chobani doesn't contain preservatives, and that the company doesn't have control over conditions once the product leaves their hands. Yeah, ok, I understand that, about not having control, BUT my old favorite yogurts didn't have preservatives either (ingredients list: milk, cultures, nothing else) and I've NEVER found mold or alcohol in my yogurt before, even when I had taken containers on three-day unrefrigerated hotel stays. Because I was unhappy, she has offered me coupons.

Thank you, Chobani folks, but I won't be collecting my coupons. Actually, I'd rather just get my money back. Or coupons for Dannon, who has earned my trust. (Or used to have my trust, before they started adding junk to their yogurt. Sigh.)

This morning I looked into making my own yogurt. It's easy, just takes time and attention, and some equipment. First you get a double boiler and thermometer and heat milk over water to 185 F to break down the proteins, then chill it quickly to 110 F. Mix in your starter (a few tablespoons of a purchased live culture yogurt), and keep it warm (a heating pad will do) for seven hours or so while the cultures grow, then stir to smooth it out, and decant into whatever you want to store it in. There are excellent "hold-your-hand" directions at http://www.makeyourownyogurt.com/print/how-to-make-your-own-yogurt.pdf.

Well, I don't have a decent thermometer, or any large pots (not here - they're at the old house), and my attention span is famously absent, so I thought I'd look at yogurt maker appliances.

They're certainly not expensive, BUT! All they do is that last step - keep warm - the easiest and least precise step. You still have to heat the milk and cool it to the specified temperatures before putting it in the "maker". Sheesh. The last step is the only one I'm sure I can do. If I screw that one up, the yogurt just gets thicker and more tart, and I like it thick and tart. Far as I'm concerned, yogurt makers are useless. Why can't they make one that heats the milk, cools it down (maybe a separate cooling unit?), goes "bing" when you have to add the culture, and then sits there warm for a few hours. Is that so difficult?

So. I'm going to make my own yogurt. Without a "maker". As soon as I get a thermometer I trust. And two pots that will fit one inside the other. And a bag of ice. And some purchased yogurt that doesn't have anything in it but milk and culture. Good luck with that last item, getting very hard to find anything that hasn't been competitively fancied up.

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Oh, almost forgot. The Chobani rep found my post through a search for "Chobani mold". Hmmm. Can't help wondering if they're aware they have a problem. One doesn't pick search arguments out of the air.
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3325 Collection, Chobani, Sister

Monday, August 1, 2011

"Who understands does not preach;
Who preaches does not understand."
-- Tao Te Ching --

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Baby Sister, I know you read this. I missed your birthday! I'm so sorry. I say missed instead of forgot, because I didn't forget, but when the time came, I missed it! Blew right on by.

Well, I hope your day was great, and that your offspring were more attentive than I, and that the next year goes well for you. Happy birthday, Baby.

(She's baby sister because she's younger, but I can't call her Little Sister because she got the long legs, and can run faster and beat me up.)

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I'm not buying Chobani Greek low-fat yogurt any more. I'm done. Two containers in the past week went to alcohol, and one of those two absolutely didn't get warm - it went from the store refrigerator to my refrigerator within a half hour - and the container I opened yesterday had a spot of mold in it. The foil lid was tight - no open spots - but there was mold along the edge. I don't trust the crap anymore. And that stuff's expensive!

I used to pay about $.80 for the old 8-ounce Dannon. Then they went to 6-ounce containers, and the price went to like $.68. It's been creeping up since then, of course, but was never over $.89. Well, this stupid Chobani is something like $1.39 for 6 ounces. That's ridiculous!

Dannon has become too sweet-tasting, and the local stores don't seem to stock the fat-free Dannon in the right flavors (I don't want fruit-on-the-bottom). I need to find a new good clean live-culture low-fat or fat-free yogurt. I haven't had a yeast infection in nigh on 30 years, and I don't intend to, and I credit my once a day live yogurt for that.

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In other news, the urine collection has not gone well. I had TOLD them that one 3-litre container par day wasn't going to be enough. They patted me on the head and told me I was silly.

Well, Friday I started collecting in the acid-treated container. By 2 pm, it was already 2/3 full, and I knew the overnight collection would be most important because I take my vitamins and minerals in the evening, so I didn't drink anything from 2 pm until 8 pm. This is NOT my usual pattern. I filled the container to the top with the morning's deposit, and took it to the lab Saturday morning.

Then I started the plain container with the next piddle on Saturday. I curtailed my usual intake so it would all fit.

Don't know if you've ever done this, but they give you what is sometimes called a top hat. It looks like a plastic hat, with a brim around 3/4 of the top, and you set it in the toilet with the hat brim holding it in place in the front of the bowl, under the seat ring.

Well, when I went to bed Saturday night, I put the hat in the toilet upstairs. During the night, maybe about 2 am, I got up and filled the hat. Literally. It slightly passed the 30 ounce mark on the markings in the hat.

Sheesh! How big is my bladder? Anyway, note that that's 2 lbs of urine in the hat. I lifted the toilet seat ring to remove the hat, and the brim of the hat collapsed from the weight, dumping half the urine into the bowl, and splashing water into the hat.

I can't use that.

Now what?

I could dump out what I'd already collected from Saturday and start over on Sunday. Or I could shrug, keep what I've got so far up to 10 pm Saturday, and then start collecting Sunday night at 10 pm.

So that's what I did. Middle-of-the-night again, Sunday night, I exceeded even the previous night's. I not only passed the 30 ounce mark, but I passed the top of the hat and it overflowed into the toilet bowl. Sheesh! (Just for the heck of it, I measured how much it takes to overflow the hat. It was at least 45 ounces, not counting what got lost when it overflowed.) I tried to pour what was in the hat into the collection container, but it wouldn't all fit.

So the first deposit of the morning and the remainder of the night's had to go into a 1-quart Melamine storage container.

This is getting ridiculous. I spent much of Sunday out with Daughter and a friend, and then with Daughter until after 7 pm. They saw how much I drank during the day. From about 11 am until maybe 8 pm I had one large glass of restaurant water, no ice, and one large glass of iced coffee, half of which was ice and discarded. And then in the evening, maybe two or three 10-12 ounce glasses of water.

Where is this stuff coming from?!

Just how big IS my bladder? Actually, I suspect a lot of the overnight stuff was coming from the collection chambers in the kidneys.

Incidentally, I never used to get up in the night to piddle. That crap started in April when I had the stent. I'm not too happy with this new habit, but apparently the kidneys and bladder like it. And the doctors always tell you to piddle after sex, so if I ever have sex again (snork!), it might come in handy. (A little more TMI - I never could do it for two reasons - I get so congested and puffy there that it shuts off piddling, and, as I used to tell the doctors, "I can't piddle that many times in one night.")

So, anyhoo, I took the regular container and my storage container with the excess to the lab this morning. They were a little upset and told me that I should have asked for TWO collection bottles.

Then *I* got upset, and informed them that I DID request additional, and was refused since they were SURE I wouldn't need it. Regardless of the fact that I was sure I did.

I am so pissed.

...pun...

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Oh, hey, something else stupid. They didn't want to give me my storage container back, because it had had urine in it. Duh? It isn't soft plastic. It's 30 years old, and solid, and can be washed on the sani cycle in the dishwasher! Also, it was MY urine! I touch it all the time.
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3310 Boozy yogurt

Monday, July 18, 2011

"Freedom" is the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.
"License" is a freedom that is used with or allows irresponsibility, or disregard for rules of personal conduct.
Too many people confuse the two.
-- Silk --

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I had always bought Dannon fat-free yogurt, either the coffee flavor or plain. I was never concerned about refrigeration. After all, it has live cultures, and think about how you make it, if you make it at home. Lack of refrigeration would simply allow it to get thicker, until the cultures run out of milk sugars and stop multiplying. I prefer the taste and texture at room temperature. And, in fact, I never had any problem leaving them out for days.

Lately I've been getting the Chobani non-fat Greek, live cultures, in plain, honey, or blueberry.

Man, you can't leave that stuff out on the counter, not even for a few hours. The foil cap bulges, and it gets a definite odor of alcohol. I got a little drunk on the honey yogurt this morning. It was like milky mead.

I wonder why the difference from Dannon? Is there yeast contamination in the Chobani?

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This is cool.
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I have two a/c systems, one for upstairs and one for down. I guess this is supposed to make the total more efficient. The compressors are out back, just on the other side of the wall I'm sitting near. There's a definite disadvantge to two. When they're both running, they go in and out of phase. So I hear "AHH-rooommmmm, AHH-rooommmmm, AHH-rooommmmm, AHH-rooommmmm, ...." (When only one is running I hear nothing.)

Very annoying.