I was at a friend’s house the other day and went to get something out of her fridge and thought how different our fridges look. I store all our leftovers in canning jars that, that alone makes it look different. When I opened the fridge last night, I saw blueberries that we had picked last year and frozen and then when I open a package, a pour them into a jar for keeping in the fridge. We had four or five jars of fruit vinegar I had made during the summer. I make most of our salad dressings so there are several half pint jars of salad dressing and no containers of storebought dressing. We rarely finish a whole bottle of storebought dressing before the best by date and for those with mayo, I don’t keep them much past that date but when making our own dressing, I usually make about 1 cup and we always use it all.
This morning when I opened the fridge, I had to laugh . . not many people have an entire shelf of milk and milk products. Actually the jar in the middle is sourdough starter. I think there’s also a backup jar of starter in there. The milkman brings six half gallons of milk so that alone fills up 11 quart jars of milk and at least 1 quart of cream. On that shelf is buttermilk, kefir, sour cream, yogurt. Somewhere in there is a jar of whey from making the yogurt. When I make a fresh batch of buttermilk, the first thing I do is pour off a pint to save for next week’s buttermilk so that’s hidden in there somewhere.
Life might be a little more simple if we had one gallon of storebought milk. There wouldn’t be any storebought buttermilk because, at least here, I can’t buy the thick Bulgarian style I like. I don’t know if Vince would make kefir if all we had was storebought milk. I wouldn’t make sour cream. I would still make yogurt. I do have more fun having raw milk in the kitchen.
Donna in KS says
We both grew up with raw milk, husband milked. Mom bought from farmers. When we married, we moved to the “big” city and began to buy our milk, and occasionally, cream, from the grocery store. I barely remember milk being delivered to the house. Also, remember running the milk at Grandfolks’ through the separator. I should say, “watching”. I don’t know how many cows they milked but it was a lot of work sixty years ago. I once asked Grandma for a milk can to use as decor. She said, ‘oh, child, when we were done with that, I got rid of those things!’. Apparently, thankfully!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I can imagine. My grandparents had just one milk cow at a time and I Know it was work. I’ve never seen a cream separator. Heard of them but never saw one.
DebMac says
Your shelf of milk reminds me of the days when we had 6 gallons on a shelf to (hopefully) last a week.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
That’s a lot of milk. I sometimes feel like three gallons a week is too much but you’re talking about twice that amount!
Judy W says
I remember watching the separator at my grandparent’s farm when I was a kid. I was fascinated with how it worked but I didn’t like the smell of warm milk. I think that is why I have never liked to drink milk. I like all other products made from milk or cream. Cheese please!