Family heirloom , those precious objects handed down from one multiplication to the next , can deviate wildly in their economic value . Whereas an clause of jewellery might convey a liberal price at auction , other inheritances carry only sentimental value . One Indian - American immigrant female parent ’s endowment to her girl falls somewhere in between : a mere batch of homely yoghourt , but one unmatched by any memory board - bought variety . According to NPR , this40 - year - old yogurthas been regenerate over ten , its gustatory sensation preserved and guide down .
Though grocery store store ledge are stocked with enough varieties of yogurt to test a newfangled type every twenty-four hours for weeks , the supplying available in Oklahoma in 1970 was n’t quite so various . As a young arrival from India , Veena Mehra was disappointed to discover that American yogurt was drastically different from the thick , deep , homemade kind she had taken for granted . A trip back home to Mumbai sometime around 1975 reminded her tastebuds exactly what they were missing out on , and Mehra resolved never to go without again . Before the day of strict TSA security check , the result was wide-eyed : she simply packed herself a parcel of yogurt , pose it carefully in her purse , and fly back to American dirt .
The fact that a container of yogurt survived a 21 - hour flying un - refrigerate might have remained a momentaneous wonder — a souvenir from home quickly consumed and block . That is , if not for one crucial dimension of yoghurt : it is , in a sentience , immortal . With a biotic community of unrecorded bacteria — StreptococcusthermophilusandLactobacillus bulgaricus , to be specific — constantly working to wrick the lactose in milk into the lactic dose that gives yogurt its tang , Mehra ’s one - time significance could suffice as a ‘ starter ’ for theoretically multitudinous batches of yogurt . The process she utilize is wide-eyed , and want only that she preserve as little as a spoonful of yogurt from a previous batch to make a new one . NPR come the inside Georgia home boy on how she does it :
According to microbiologist Rachel Dutton , Mehra ’s stable method means that even four decades afterward , whatever ’s sitting in her fridge now is probably a very near relation to the contents of the container she brought back so long ago , in terms of both perceptiveness and bacterial polish . That ’s good news for all the Native American family she has shared it with over the years , not least her own . Her daughter admits to retrieve that stock - grease one’s palms American yogurt “ is really gross ” in equivalence , and her grandson is growing up with Mehra ’s yogurt as a kitchen basic now , too , so the original bacteria is still going strong . unluckily , industrially produced yogurt wo n’t revitalize quite as reliably , so shoot for dairy DIYers will have to get their hands on a dear heirloom starting motor to kick off their own never - end yogurt supplying . mayhap Veena Mehra will portion out a spoonful of hers .
