When life hands you sour milk...

Normally we pick up our raw milk from the farmer on Fridays. They make a delivery into the city that day so I meet them and pick ours up. Since we knew we were going to be out of town for a week, I had inquired as to whether the milk would last for a week unopened. The best guess was that it might be okay and that they would try to give us the freshest milk possible. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with the person delivering the milk and the milk we got was not as fresh as intended.

By the time we got back, we were only able to salvage one of three gallons for drinking. Given that we pay a little more for raw milk, I really didn't want to just toss the extra two gallons. Plus raw milk doesn't spoil, it only sours and is still edible.

So today the kids were out of school and we made cottage cheese and sour cream. :) Two gallons of milk made over two 15-oz containers of cottage cheese--and it tasted really good! We used the cottage cheese that night for lasagna. I did dump the whey from the cheese since it was sour and I wasn't sure what else I could use it for, but the cheese did not taste sour which was a little surprising.

I don't know if it's cheaper to make cottage cheese versus buying it, but it's really easy. You just heat the milk slowly to 180 degrees and it starts curdling. Filter and voila--cottage cheese!