April 26, 2026

Some Weekend Entertaining

Lots of people coming over this weekend between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, so I thought it’d be a good chance to try out a few more recipes from season six.

On Friday evening I made some Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip to serve to the family coming over to celebrate Vivian’s birthday. Reading through the comments on the Food Network site, lots of folks pointed out that it was a bit too mayonnaise-y, so I halved the mayo, only using 2Tb instead of the 4 that recipe called for.

I think that was a good call, since the dip came out wonderfully. Even folks that don’t normally like that dip really like it. Great reviews all around, I will definitely be making this one again.

Now let’s back up to Friday afternoon, when I started to prep some Fresh Yogurt. I collected all the ingredients, including some Fage Total 2% plain yogurt to use for its live cultures.

Many of the comments, and most sites found by Googling for yogurt making, say that 120 degrees is not enough for the initial heating of the milk. Most commenters and other recipes say 180 is correct, so that’s what I did.

After heating to 180, I took everything off the heat, moved a half cup into another container, and then waited maybe 30m for things to come down to about 115 before mixing the starter into the cooled half cup. When the larger portion was cool, I mixed it all together and put together my fermentation contraption.

I had to keep my heating pad on high for this, and it was still only able to get the milk to about 110 degrees tops. Plus, the safety controls kept turning it off so I’d come back and the yogurt would be like 95-100 when I turned it back on. This went on for about 12 hours, but over that time it got noticeably thicker and around 1am I put the container in the fridge.

On Saturday morning I opened it up and lo and behold we had a quart+ of fresh plain yogurt. Now, plain yogurt is very… plain. We don’t prefer the taste of it by itself, but of course we tried it and as far as plain yogurt goes it was pretty good.

The first thing I decided to do with the my new yogurt windfall was to make some Herb Spread. I started by roasting a head of garlic, picking some thyme leaves, and mixing them into some of the plain yogurt.

Two interesting things about this one, first he never actually makes it in the show, just shows the end result. Second, the recipe in the show is completely different from the online recipe, which I didn’t catch until after I had made it – in the show he gives the cumin/parsley recipe, which online is listed as an alternative to try. Oh well, so then I mixed everything together and let it drain overnight in the fridge.

On Sunday, I took it out of the fridge and moved to a container to try.

I thought it was alright, but like one of the commenters said, I probably could have doubled the garlic and made it a really good garlic spread. As it was, it was just kind of… plain. My guests didn’t really eat it either. So I’d call this one a bust, which is too bad because I had high hopes for a flavorful, lower calorie spread/dip.

Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used a jar and a half of Pastene baby artichokes in water (not marinated)
• Only used 2Tb mayo instead of the 4 that the recipe calls for

Fresh Yogurt

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Did first heat up to 180 degrees instead of the 120 in the recipe
• Used Fage Total 2% for the starter culture
• Couldn't get fermentation to 115, it hovered around 100 bur still came out fine

Herb Spread

• Crowd: 2/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Could have used twice the amount of garlic