Solar yogurt and sunflower seeds

Using the sun for food is easy where the sun shines a plenty. In the 80's when I was in the Congo there were plenty of vendors everywhere selling powdered milk. Had I known back then how easy it is to make yogurt I would have made it all of the time. All you need is some water and powdered milk and the yogurt starter organism. Once the process is started you use a tiny amount of yogurt to start the whole process over again. And since yogurt never really goes bad you have a food preservative as well. The yogurt organism itself is a bacterium so it wards off other harmful bacteria. After my Peace Corps stint, I traveled in many African countries and saw a lot of stores in the cities, even the poorest countries, carried yogurt. One store bought cup of (plain) yogurt could start the whole process out in the bush. I have even made yogurt with flavored yogurt in the summer on my shed in the backyard on a sunny day in Pittsburgh. All that you have to do is follow the instructions on the milk can for making a quart of milk and then add an extra cup and one third of powdered milk to get the thick texture of homemade yogurt. Then inoculate the milk with a half of a teaspoon of the store bought yogurt. Pour this into any kind of container cover it and put in the sun for anywhere from 6 to 12 hours. The optimum temperature for yogurt making is 100 degrees F. This is easily attained in any country in Africa, South America, Central America or the Caribbean. A dark cloth cover over the container speeds up the absorption of heat. Once the first batch is made you can keep the whole process going with just a little yogurt from the previous batch. In fact I have learned that you don't even need to clean the bowl when you are finished with the yogurt. You can simply use what is left of the previous batch to make your next batch. Since the acidophilus and other yogurt organisms are alive they keep reproducing and the old residual yogurt that you start the new batch with will transform the new milk into the new sweet yogurt that will taste fine for about two weeks. I have added every fruit to homemade yogurt and they all taste great! You do not need to make a quart you can make only a cup at a time but you have to downsize the portions of the ingredients. If you wanted to start an industry you could do so by just multiplying the portions from the quart recipe. I have made up to five gallons at a time in the sun and given it away at work.

Sunflower seeds grow easily in most soils. These could be added to the yogurt to make a real protein blast. They taste good too by themselves or in the yogurt. A cup of homemade yogurt with mango and sunflower seeds is a really nutritious and tasty food. The yogurt goes with other foods. It goes great with a corn or millet gruel or add it to rice. The important thing about homemade solar yogurt is that there is no cooking is required. This would be a plus where fire wood and cooking fuel is in short supply. Also, since you can use the yogurt container for your next batch without cleaning it, no clean up is involved. Another positive about yogurt, is, it is a good treatment for diarrhea and other illnesses that sap the body of its beneficial bacteria in the digestive track. Yogurt replenishes the digestive system....