Thank you all so much. I already see some of my issues. bumblebeez, you answered my question on volume. I see the cost savings when you get equal amounts of yogurt from the milk used. My problem was I used a quart of milk and got only about a cup and half of yogurt. And not very good yogurt at that! I used about 2 tablespoons of dry milk to the quart of fat free milk. The taste may have been because of "incorrect" incubating. Or something else I did wrong. Grainlady, thank you for the tips. I have not checked the temperature in the oven with the light so that could have been the problem. I use the oven for rising yeast bread and it works wonderfully, so....I thought.... will check the temp with a thermometer. Made several other mistakes, I stirred my yogurt as soon as I thought it was done. Did not refrigerate first, just stirred and drained. And lost most of it. Will retain the whey next time. I thought it was good stuff but not sure so I let it go down the drain. Never again! Thanks for the info on using the whey. Annie, I read the "yogurt tread" and that is what got me going in the first place. I did use a fresh organic storebought yogurt for the starter, Stoneyfield, so my starter was good. I also used organic fat free milk. I am going to try using canning jars next time instead of a bowl. Armed with this new info, I will try again. In the meantime, I did discover Greek yogurt and just love it. Seems it is everywhere in the grocery stores now. Publix is even carrying the Fage brand, which I have not seen in this area before. Or just missed it somehow. If I don't have any success, maybe Grainlady will post and tell us how to make kefir?? You said it was easier than yogurt. :) or I maybe I can talk bumblebeez into making for me, I think we are sort of neighbors....upstate SC LOL Will post my results. Again thank you for the responses. Murphy

I've tried all of the substitutes and I don't like any of them. The ones combined with water make toast too soggy, so there's a texture thing combined with the flavor. I don't butter vegetables anyway, I like them without, but I have not learned to eat bread or toast plain. So, I've switched to jam on toast most of the time, I make my own low sugar spreads and so can control the sugar and calories that way. Broccoli I like drizzled with a bit of sesame oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds, better than butter. Baked potatoes get topped with homemade yogurt, made with low fat milk. I've learned to just top pancakes with maple or fruit syrup and skip the butter. My family buttered muffins, biscuits, corn on the cob, bread, pancakes, fried mush, oatmeal. Yup, oatmeal. You name it, it got buttered. No wonder Dad had all those heart problems. I still bake with butter, but I've even learned to bake bread without it. If my bread recipe calls for milk, I use skim and it works fine. Canola oil instead of butter, or depending on the bread, olive oil, and the bread still tastes the same. Cream soups get milk, not cream, as do scones. Ganache, though, that needs cream. Good luck, mago, it's definitely a change but you'll get used to it and your taste may even change. You'll pick up an ear of fresh corn and wonder why in the world you covered the wonderful taste with all that butter. Maybe. There are also good recipes at Cooking Light.com, Eating Well.com, EatBetterAmerica .com, HeartHealthyLiving. com. There are more, but these seem to have the recipes that work best for me. I've also started using Clean Living, they are on line but have more recipes in their printed magazine. They are a bit extreme in some of their recipes, but many are good. Annie

Have you considered ordering your groceries from Amazon through their Amazon Fresh service? It is not available everywhere, but it is quite excellent. I believe there is a charge on top of having Prime to have Fresh- but it is totally worth it. Check and see if it's available in your ZIP code. If they deliver anything that is not up to snuff, you contact them online within a few hours and poof the item is removed from your charge (happened once to me with apples.)

I suspect the no receipt scam operates something like this -- they ask if you would like a receipt when you hand them the card. You say yes, they run it as they should and hand you the receipt for your purchase. If you say no thanks, they run the card or get the info, probably using their phone or a device set next to the card reading terminal. When they take a break or get a slow spot, they use that scanned card to pay for their purchase on their phone. The card was never used for the proper purchase, so I wonder if they cover by paying for the meals or if the restaurant gets stiffed on those. Pretty gutsy, but in a drive through, you usually can't see the card reader so you wouldn't know until you see the charge. Have a nice day..... Geez. We got a fraud alert on my husband's card. Someone ordered $10k of custom blinds to be shipped overseas. We told them it was not us and the bank declined it -- but the shop in Louisiana making the blinds had not been notified by the bank. DH said he just had a feeling and called them -- they were about to fill the order and would have been out $10k if he had not. A short time later, something similar happened with my card but it was $200 in T-shirts ordered from someplace in North Carolina. A long time ago, there was a small one from a smoke shop somewhere. Anyone who knows me would know that would not have been me. They always seem to follow those news stories about some big company getting hacked.