Trial and Error

This whole raw milk thing has been an adventure with many ups and downs (and it's only been two weeks so far!). It has definitely been worth it though. There is something rewarding about taking your own home-made yogurt into work. It is also a lot of fun deciphering what recipes are actually trying to tell you. So how has it gone so far?



Week 1:

For starters, I have to admit my poor husband has been sucked into a world he wanted no part of. Mostly because it is his kitchen and he is afraid I am going to mess it up, and secondly because he is an amazing cook and I need help!

I started by attempting to make yogurt. Sounded pretty easy, and it proved itself to be! All week I brought my home-made yogurt into work, and it tasted much better than the stuff I had to use for the initial yogurt cultures. Pasteurization proved pretty easy, although the impatient part of me (that hates being in one spot for too long) is looking for a way to speed up the 15 minute process. And then I attempted to make butter. I did everything the directions said to do, and after shaking a jar of cream for 45 minutes, I still had cream - no butter. I gave up!



Week 2:

I went into this week psyched and ready to go. I was going to do it all perfectly and there was no stopping me. Pasteurization, fine! Yogurt, I thought was fine. When I woke up in the morning and had sour milk instead of yogurt, I realized that yogurt can be a little bit touchy. I am not sure what I did wrong yet, but am bummed out about the lack of yogurt this week. Making cheese turned out to be a pretty cool science experiment. Warm the milk and start slowly adding vinegar to the pot. The directions said the curds and whey would separate nicely. We didn't realize how nicely until we had the right combination of vinegar and milk in the pot and they immediately separated into a nice ball of cheese (that we needed to squeeze the remaining liquid out of) and clear whey. It was so neat to see the process that we immediately made more cheese to see it happen again. As for the butter, I am still shaking the stupid jar. I may have to hold out for the wonderful butter churn that we are going to inherit in a few weeks.



On go the adventures of milk. Stay tuned for next week when we try different types of cheeses.