My did it!

So as you know we have 2 goats that we milk every morning.  Who am I kidding, I MILK EVERY MORNING.  I’m like the little red hen.  “Who will help me milk this goat?”  Needless to say I get a lot of “Not I’s”  And then we actually drink the milk!  Without pasteurizing it!  Shocking, I know.  Every day I get a half gallon of milk.  Doesn’t seem like a lot, but it sure adds up!   We probably only drink about a quart a day so we end up with a lot of extra milk.  So begins my adventure on the many uses of milk….

YOGURT:  To make yogurt you first have to heat it to 180 degrees.  Not to really pasteurize it, but to break down the protein molecules so it can be changed into yogurt.  Then you put a teeny tiny amount of culture(here’s where I buy my culture), which is a powdered form of Lactobacillus delbrueckii, Streptococcus salivarius, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Lactobacillus casei in a quart of milk and then you let it sit for 8 hours at 110 degrees.  Some people put it in a crockpot in a cooler to keep it insulated at that temperature, but I bought a Yogotherm.  It takes a lot of courage to let milk sit on your counter like that, much less EAT IT!  But it does taste like yogurt, really good yogurt in fact.  Like McDonald’s parfait yogurt. But BETTER.  We eat it in a bowl with fruit or granola or honey.  Then I bought a this popsicle mold and we make frozen yogurt bars.  I use it in my homemade ranch dressing too, recipe here.  The coolest thing about making yogurt is keeps on giving.  I buy a culture that has enough for about 8 batches of yogurt, but the thing is, when you want to make yogurt again, just use a couple tablespoons of your old yogurt which already has the live bacteria in it.  So I still have the rest of the powdered culture in my freezer.  So, if your up to making your own yogurt, grab some milk (yes it can be cow’s milk I won’t hate you) and try it!

SOAP:

Soap ended up being WAY easier than I thought it would be.  If you try to search online, you’ll find millions of different recipes for soaps.  The benefit of using goat’s milk is that it is so moisturizing.  So I had my milk, but then I realized I needed Lye.  Where the heck do you find lye?  Well it took me     F O R E V E R but I eventually found that Ace Hardware is the only place that caries 100% lye.  I was so freaked out of my mind to use it, since if it gets on your skin it burns the bageezes out of it.  Eventually, my desire to clean my body with homemade soap overcame my fear and I actually made soap.  I used this recipe here.  Gotta love Martha Stewart.  When you make soap, you have to first freeze the milk because the lye is so hot it’ll burn it if you don’t.  Pretty crazy.  I also added some other oils like olive oil and coconut oil then poured it into the molds.  Then you have to leave it alone for 3 weeks for saponification.  That is when the lye interacts with the air and decides not to burn your skin anymore.  I finally got to use it just yesterday my face is already looking so clear!  I may be on to something here!   

CHEESE:
Cheese is freakin’ difficult to make!  It takes practice and EXACT measuring and SPECIFIC ingredients and EXACT recipe following skills.  I learned through all my research that if I wanted to make cheese my only real option was mozzerella.  With any other cheese it has to be aged at 55 degrees for 3 months and I don’t know how in the heck I would do that in Arizona, so I decided-a to try-a mozzerella!!!  There’s a bunch of ingredients you have to buy like rennet, lipase and a mesothermophiliac culture.  But after a lot of work, it turns into smooth, shiny and stretchy mozzerella.  It makes the BEST grilled cheese sandwiches, but I still love my cheddar cheese so I guess I’ll have to give in and buy COW’S milk cheddar cheese every once in a while!  *gasp*

ICE CREAM:
When we make ice cream, it’s really not ice cream, it’s ice milk.  Goat’s milk is naturally homogenized which means, the cream doesn’t separate.  So we can’t make straight ice CREAM persay, but it sure tastes like it!  We use this little handcrank ice cream maker. We’re having fun making all kinds of ice cream.  The kid’s call it goat ice cream, mmmm sounds appetizing!!

So there it is.  It’s fun to learn how to make things homemade and I like doing something that our ancestors used to do all the time.  It makes me really appreciate that they used to it everyday!