Got Milk - Now What?
Last night I attended a wonderful class presented by Mary Ann Wilcox on using the milk in our food storage. I have powdered milk in my food storage, 7 #10 cans of instant milk and 6 #10 cans of non-instant milk. However, the only thing I regularly use the powdered milk is for cornbread. My cornbread recipe calls for 1 cup of milk and I use 1/3 cup of powdered milk and 1 cup of water. At one time I tried using powdered milk and figured out that a 1/3 of a cup was the right amount to equal 1 cup, but that is all that I remember from the previous attempts at using my milk.
Now, I've regularly attended other food storage classes, and come home thinking, wow, that was a good cheesecake they made with powdered milk, I've got the recipe, someday I'll use it if I ever need to, but it always seems that it is easier to run out to the grocery store to buy cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk than it is to dig up the recipes, and make it myself.
I'm so inspired again though, and I hope this is longer lasting. I feel like I came away with a lot more tools to use this time. Mary Ann's class was presented in her basement, in a kitchen environment. She actually made samples right before our eyes. When I heard about that class I was told to show up hungry, because Mary Ann will feed you, and feed us she did.
We started off the meal with macaroni and cheese followed by Nachos both made with a cheese sauce mix. We then quickly moved on to appetizers such as bread spread with flavored cream cheese or caraway cheese. If you've never seen cottage cheese made in minutes it is an amazing sight. The addition of a catalyst to the milk quickly turns it into curds and whey. It reminds me of Little Miss Muffit. The frozen yogurt was fabulous mixed with frozen berries and although the rootbeer ice cream wasn't my favorite (I don't like rootbeer unless it is homemade or served with Pizza) the other flavors of ice cream were not only wonderful, but fat free and sugar free. I'm sure that my sister will be emailing me for the recipes soon, she already has an ice cream maker.
Now, all of these kitchen creativity will take a little bit of learning, experimenting, and practicing, but even the failures will be worth it because the price will be right. Mary Ann calculated the cost to make each item compared to the cost to purchase it. Take yogurt for example (my kids love yogurt), A quart of yogurt from the store costs anywhere from a dollar fifty up, but making it from nonfat milk and water costs only about 60(sixty) cents. Wow! Think of all the money I can save by making my own yogurt and frozen yogurt. It will be healthier as well!
Once you have the yogurt figured out you can easily make sour cream, buttermilk, ranch dressing and cream cheese. The will contain far less chemicals and be so much cheaper. I am so excited about the possibilities that I had to run to the store to buy yogurt today just so I could make start making my own.
Look out family, here I come with my powdered milk, and this is just the beginning. Mary Ann teaches seven classes a year, on a wide variety of food storage areas. I'm looking forward to next months class on Camping with Food Storage.