Milk is not white

Crazy day today. As a kick off to my raw milk conversion (well, it starts as raw, anyway) I decided to pick up the raw milk for my share group today.

At 9 a.m. I drove my little green car out to the Double J Farm expecting to pick up seven gallons of milk (for the 5 sharemembers + 1 for me). Well, SURPRISE! Since this is the second week of the month, Janet had two gallons of milk waiting for me T.T

OMGSOMUCHMILK.

Anyway, I brought the shares back to the pick-up point and dropped it off into a back shed fridge. :) (I felt all 007 and stuff.. hehe) and brought my two gallons of milk home. Interestingly enough, the milk looks pretty swell. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't a regular one gallon plastic jug.

So boring. I guess I was hoping for some kind of clay stoneware or a growler with crude cavemen/hippy designs or something. Such a disappointment.

Well, I've decided, as I mentioned before, to not really drink raw milk.

I keep thinking that it can't be any worse than eating sushi or steak tartare or ceviche or steak cooked rare.. or something, i.e. if you know you got a good product, the danger of you dying from contamination is pretty slim. It's probably harmless....t. Well, since I'm going to be drinking milk all the time though, I don't think I really want to take that one in a million chance. Meh.

OK, here's what I did. I put the milk in a pot, brought it up to 145degreesF, and kept it there for 30 minutes. While I did that, I washed two half-gallon canning jars and stuck them in the oven at 212degrees to disinfect them. Once the milk was pasteurized, I brought the jars out and filled them with the milk. Then in a cold water bath it went, to bring the temp down. Then, to the fridge!!! Done :)



While I was at the farm, I could see a yummy line of cream on the top but I think the car ride shook the jug up really well. The milk was pretty homogenous when I started to pasteurize it. I'm hoping that in the fridge, the cream might settle a little and I can spoon it off tomorrow morning to make some butter or use it in some creamy dish.

I WAS a bit of a bad girl though. I was really curious about what raw milk would taste like so I f scooped a little before the pot got warm. Seriously, I was expecting the milk to be tangy or grassy or onion-y... Something! So disappointed. It just tasted like milk.... albeit, very delicious whole milk. MmmmMMmmmm.

Also, milk is not white. It's more of an ivory. It the color of vanilla ice cream? Creamy, almost. Heh, pun totally intended.

OK, so one gallon down, one to go. Paul has been on antibiotics lately for an infection. It must be killing all of the good tummy bacteria because his bowel movements have been horrible. He started gorging himself on vast quantities of yogurt yesterday, and he swears that it is helping. So, since we had a big tub of yogurt in the fridge, hey, why not make some of my own yogurt? I had another glass jar left so I took half a gallon of milk, brought it up to 185degrees (I'm guessing this kills all the bacteria, but why would you need to do that if you were using pasteurized milk?), cooled it to 110, dumped in about a quarter cup of yogurt.

Voila. EXCEPT I don't have a yogurt maker. So I did the ghettoest thing I've ever done.

I stuck it in my car with the windows cracked. T.T It's 95 out today so I think the car should come up to about 110 (hopefully not much hotter than that because it will kill the yogurt bacteria) in the sun... I'm counting on you, MyDogIsCool.com Recipes I found say that it needs to set for 7 hours or so in 110 heat so I won't know if it worked until tonight.

People, if I'm dead by the end of the week, you know why.

I think I'm going to make some more cheese sometime today, too. Kind of tired of curry though, so maybe not paneer or ricotta.... maybe it's time that I made mozzarella. Got some rennet in the fridge still so maybe it's time for pizza night. Heh. Heh. I guess I'll have to make ricotta too from the whey... T.T

So. Much. Milk.