I was pretty obsessed with Japanese yogurt while living in Japan. Nearly every morning for two years I ate the following: one hard-boiled egg, one slice of super-thick toast with butter and one small bowl of plain yogurt over sliced fruit. I also drank one glass of carrot juice. If any of these elements was missing, I would start the day slightly grumpy. Um, can you tell I like routine?

Back in the U.S., I searched for yogurt like the kind I ate in Japan. It should be creamy but not heavy, tangy but not too tart. It should not, under any circumstances, contain fake sweeteners or be made to taste like any sort of pie. I searched in vain.

But I was hopeful. A few months before leaving the land of delicious yogurt, I read about making your own yogurt on 101 Cookbooks and hatched a plan to one day brew my own perfect yogurt. As plans go, it was fairly simple. All I needed was a yogurt maker, a candy thermometer and a quart of milk. My sister provided the Salton Yogurt Maker as a Christmas gift (thanks, Jo!) and everything else fell quickly into place.

I was a little nervous while cooking up my first batch, visions of uncongealed milk floating through my head. There are a few places where the process can go wrong -- if your utensils are dirty, if your milk is too hot or too cold, if your starter is old -- but on the whole it's pretty straightforward. I brought four cups of organic milk and a bit of powdered milk to almost a boil, let it cool, added half a cup of yogurt as a starter, stirred, put it in the yogurt maker and waited four hours. Then I opened the lid to reveal my very own homemade yogurt, wonderfully congealed, which went into the fridge for cooling and further setting.

And how is it?

SO GOOD. So good I sometimes daydream about it at work. So good I've already polished off half the second batch. It's creamy and perfectly tangy and has a fresh bite that reminds me somehow of green apples. I eat it every day for breakfast -- unadorned, no honey or fruit or anything -- and I know if I were to run out, I would start the day extremely grumpy. So, yeah. If things didn't work out with the duffin, I think I'd marry my yogurt, that's how good it is.