I made a discovery recently that bodes well for my fantasy of living in a hot climate for an extended period of time. I made some solar yogurt with some really old powdered milk. The expiration date on it was like four years overdue. It had a little bit of an off flavor. But when I made yogurt out of it the off flavor dissappeared because the live bacteria converted a lot of the old milk into new yogurt, changing the milk physically and chemically. This would be a pleasant surprise for a lot of places in the Third World that do not follow expiration dates. I remember one time in Zaire eating 7 year old oatmeal from South Africa that tasted like it was a 100 years old. The only time I ever use powder milk here in the good ol’ U.S.A. is when I put it in tea or coffee. That was how I knew that this particular powdered milk had an off taste. The taste was not bad enough to prevent me from drinking the tea but it was noticable. The solar yogurt that I made started with a quart of regular store bought milk in a carton then I added two cups of the old powderded milk. Then I sat it on the roof of my shed in the back yard. I had to add a tablespoon of plain Dannon yogurt to get the whole thing started. Then I laid a black t-shirt over top of the casserole bowl to absorb all the sun’s rays better. When I put a thermometer under the sweat shirt it was reading exactly 100 degrees. Perfect for yogurt production. I let it sit up there all day. That night I brought it in and it was pretty thick. If you get a cloudy day you can put the bowl back out in the sun another day to obtain the thickness you want. But this batch was already good. So I poured about a cup and a half into a tall glass. And to this I added about a half a glass of orange Gatorade. Then I added about a quarter cup of my grains and a little honey. Mixing it all together with a spoon. Then I drank it down. It tasted like a liquid orange Popsicle. The next night I did the same thing. Only on top of everything else I added a mashed up bannana. And this tasted like a liquid orange Popsicle with banana flavor. That night I slept like a baby. Bananas have a lot of the amino acid, tryptophan, that helps to induce sleep. Milk also has an ingredient that helps to bring on slumber but I cannot remember what it is. Milk, bananas and oatmeal all have plenty of potassium which helps to prevent the Charlie horses that come on sometimes in the middle of the night. Anyhow knowing that yogurt can convert lousy tasting old powdered milk into something tasty and nutritious is good to know. Especially if I find myself somewhere in a sunny part of the globe. I could probably carry enough powdered milk and grains to last me a couple of years. It would be nice to escape the rat race for a couple of years. I could pick up a foreign language and watch the palm trees grow. Well even if this is not likely to happen anytime soon, I can still fantasize about it.