FP - Cheese

I've always been fond of cheese.  I mean who's not?  Cheese on pizza, on crackers, grilled cheese
sandwiches, there are just so many possibilities.  It's become especially important for me over the past couple of months.  When you become a casual vegetarian like myself cheese is a wonderful source of protein.  Problem is that it can also be expensive.  Not as expensive as meat perhaps, but still it can eat up a fair bit of cash when you throw it in your cart.  So I started wondering about making it cheaper myself.

The process of making cheese is quite interesting and I've taken the time with looking it up in books and on the web.  Traditional cheese making is a lengthy process, requiring precision, and a fair bit of start up cash.  While traditional cheese making looks interesting it looks to me to be more of a hobby than a way to save money on your grocery bill, not precisely what I'm looking for at the moment.

Then I stumbled across an interesting recipe for making Yogurt Cheese.  The process is quite simple.  Get some plain yogurt with no additives just milk and live bacteria cultures.  Line a sieve with a damp cheese cloth and place the sieve in a bowl.  Pour in the yogurt and let it sit overnight.

Voila!  You have some tangy cheese, that I personally enjoy quite a bit.  You can add herbs to it if you want to.  I've enjoyed it thus far on crackers and in salads.  I would comfortable replace any type of cream cheese or goats cheese with Yogurt Cheese.  I've even mixed it with tuna in place of mayonnaise.  The only place where it has failed to replace traditional solid cheese is on nachos, it simply doesn't melt the same way.  But as far as imperfections go that's pretty minor.

How does the cost add up?

One tube of yogurt - $1.90 (I got mine on sale but this is the normal price)
Cheese cloth - $0.10 (This is a bit harder to cost out since the cloth that I bought can be cleaned and reused many times, but this is a high guestimate)
Total cost $2.00

Cost of traditional cheese $5.00 (for the same amount)

Savings = 60% or $3.00 per go.  At the rate I eat it I'll probably save $72 a year.  This is certainly a keeper.

Have a question?  I'd love to hear it!