Yogurt

Dear Polly: I've been making my own yogurt. When I use whole milk or 2 percent milk, it comes out fine, but when I use skim milk, the yogurt comes out watery. I'd like to make the kind of non-fat yogurt I can buy in the store. Is this possible? - Gail Dear Gail: You can make yogurt out of skim milk, but you need to fortify it with non-fat dry milk powder to produce a thick, non-watery yogurt. Try 1/4 cup instant non-fat dry milk powder dissolved in a quart of skim milk before heating the milk.

The scene is a supermarket where a distraught store manager is being interviewed on-camera by a woman holding a microphone. She is identified as Ann Dysan, "frozen yogurt reporter. " The manager tells her that someone has stolen every container of Yoplait frozen yogurt in the store. A police detective tells her he is about to dust for "tongue prints. " This is a new TV commercial for Yoplait, one of a series of comic commercials that parodies reports on evening news shows.

The parents of a Haddonfield teen-ager who went into a coma and later died after eating cyanide-laced yogurt last January blasted the Camden County medical examiner's finding yesterday that the boy committed suicide. The parents of Thomas Lee, 17, argued that their son died of "accidental homicide" after putting what he thought was an "energy supplement," but which was actually potassium cyanide, on black cherry yogurt. Dr. Hsin-yi Lee, a chemistry professor at Rutgers University-Camden, and his wife, Frances, said their son, a wrestler at Haddonfield Memorial High School, had been given energy supplements in the past by a person who had access to Dr. Lee's restricted laboratory.

A lot goes into a package of yogurt, apparently. And I don't mean the yogurt. I mean the package. Last week, New Hampshire organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm unveiled new cups, ones that industry experts say put them at the top of the packaging game. The cups, used for their multipacks, are plant-based, not petroleum-based. The specific plant is corn. But before anyone gets too huffy, let Nancy Hirshberg explain, which she was only too happy to do for a full half-hour teleconference.

Just what is frozen yogurt? You may think you know, but major frozen yogurt makers complain that there are no national standards for their product - and the dozen states that have standards of their own don't have the same ones. This means that what is labeled frozen yogurt can be a different product in Pennsylvania and New Jersey - and that in most other states it is possible to sell a "frozen yogurt" that doesn't even contain yogurt. "We have no hard evidence that (the latter)

Violet is producing about eight and a half gallons of milk a day. Peach gave birth to a heifer calf, named Plum, in September. Klementine scored an "excellent" rating from the Jersey Cattle Club. Such is the moos from Stonyfield Farm, cow-municated through the yogurt company's moosletter. It is one of the lighter means that Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm's president and CEO, uses to blend education and social consciousness with the making of natural and organic yogurts.

It itches, it stings, it burns. It makes sitting uncomfortable and sex excruciating. Most women can expect to get it at least once; many women get it monthly. Vaginal yeast infections have bedeviled women around the world for centuries. While not dangerous, the infections are maddeningly difficult to treat. Women have tried vaginal creams and oral fungicides; they have tried douching with vinegar, cutting back on sugar. Some have microwaved their underpants. A unique study, published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, is causing a stir by suggesting that one of the homiest remedies - eating yogurt - may work the best.

Although many people start cooking with yogurt and buttermilk for their health, it's their palates that keep them coming back for more, for few other ingredients are able to straddle the culinary chasm between nutrition and taste with greater grace and flexibility. Buttermilk and yogurt are the acerbic spark in a cucumber soup and the punch in a peach parfait. They puff up pancakes, slim down milkshakes and create effortless sauces with hardly a trace of fat. Their natural tang substitutes salt-free flavor for all or part of the salt in a recipe, and their subtle acidity makes baked goods more tender.

Got culture? Then more and more consumers are with you as a centuries-old staple, newly packaged in inventive forms, becomes live and active at the top of the shopping list. Today's fans can drink their yogurt, squeeze it out of a tube, indulge in key lime or white chocolate varieties, or even choose nonfat or whole-milk yogurt. And in these weight-conscious times, yogurt has replaced cottage cheese as a diet staple - filling, yet rich in protein and calcium. As physiology researcher Miriam E. Nelson notes in her book Strong Women Stay Slim, whole-milk products, including yogurt, are high in saturated fat. But Nelson, whose program is based on allotted portions of food categories with limited amounts of decadent "extras," allows dieters a full cup of nonfat yogurt, even sweetened brands.

TOM CREHAN of Feroli Brokers, which distributes Breyers yogurt in the area, loads cartons of yogurt that were recalled last week after a 17-year-old Haddonfield boy was poisoned by eating cyanide-laced yogurt. The yogurt was to be checked for contamination.