Hi Witch,

That sounds really cool.

I'm going to look up some recipes to do the same sort of thing.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Very cool Witch! What got you started on this?

My wife Angela has been making yoghurt for years, and my occasional bout with lactose intolerance makes drinking the dead milk you get from the store less than satisfying.

We also both love to experiment with traditional and historical food preparation and preserving methods. Fermentation is one of the oldest methods of preserving food without refrigeration.

My ancestors, the Irish Celts, were cattle people, and milk was a very large part of their diet. Without refrigeration, though, the milk never get cold for most of the year, and the natural bacteria (lactobacillus et al) would go to work almost immediately. It is said that the Irish never drank fresh milk, prefering it soured first. The pay for a craftsman in Brehon Law included a quart of soured milk a day.

Of course when they say soured milk, it's not like we would say. Our milk is dead when we get it from the store, so when it turns it's not soured, it's spoiled. In those days milk was "clabbered" by putting it in a warm place where the natural bacteria would go to work fermenting it. The cream would seperate out, and go for butter etc, and the skimmed, fermented milk left in the pail was the buttermilk.

These days you can make your own buttermilk by purchasing some starter, which can be a pint of store buttermilk, so long as it has active bacterial culture, and adding it one part to three parts 1% milk, and leaving it to ferment for 12-24 hours in a warm place. After that you scoop out the first bit into a jar and put it in the freezer as starter for the next time you want to make more, and then enjoy the rest.

Hi Witch - sounds wonderful, and a much more healthy approach than some of the stuff in our stores these days.

My mother made homemade butter for years, and I was usually conscripted to do some of the churning.

That butter tasted sooooo much better.

Although I never acquired a taste for buttermilk, whenever my father or mother experienced digestive upsets, or one of us kids did, mom would make a fresh batch of buttermilk.  It seems to have healing properties.

Have you tried Almond milk?  I was using Soy milk, but switched to the Almond milk and like it much better.

The newest alternative on the market for lactose intolerance is Coconut milk.  I haven't tried it yet.

My wife makes it quite a bit for our son, who is quite lactose intolerant. He can eat most fermented milk products but needs something on his cereal.

I was shocked at how much cheaper it is to make than to buy. You can make gallons of the stuff for the price of a 2litre bottle from the store. Plus you have the lefftover almond pulp for cooking

I'd never thought of making my own almond milk.  I love raw almonds - buy large bags of organic almonds and snack on them.

Going to look up how to make my own milk.  Thanks for the tip!

If you've got a blender you're 2/3 of the way there

That's so neat Witch. I love hearing stories like this.

Well I make Creme Fresh... which is kind of like sour cream for snooty french people.

To tell you the truth I'm not really sure what the difference is...

Update:

Turns out the difference isn't all that great. Crème fraîche (the correct spelling) is 28% fat, while sour cream is about 14% fat.

Hi Witch,

Isn't that great!  It has twice the fat!

That's like having two lumps of fat instead of just one.

That's pretty great.

 If you are into lumps of fat.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Well....... yeah.

;-)

 Well played sir.

As-salaamu alaikum

-Omni

So, Witch, is 'creme fraiche' about the same as clotted cream? We had that in Scotland and it was glorious--sort of the texture of sour cream and with the flavour more like cream cheese. Yummy on muffins, biscuits.

I used to milk, and make my own yogurt, ice cream, cottage cheese etc. Cheap and good!   Lots of buttermilk, churning about 4 lbs. butter a week. I remember the first time I felt that fresh butter in my hands--wow, what a beautiful thing.  And if you've never been to heaven yet, eating fresh maple walnut icecream just out of the freezer is about as close as you can get and still be on earth.

If I was you I'd be trying to find someone with a cow--but I realize the gov't regulations have made it impossible for us to have such things, as if the threat from it could somehow be greater than the loss we share by eating only mass-produced stuff. what a shame that is.  Good luck and continued enjoyment and success on your culinary adventures!

weeze, one of my favorite memories as a kid was going to my Uncle's farm. They made ice cream the old fashioned way, ice from the icehouse and custard going round and round with fresh strawberries or raspberries (just Picked) for flavor, A real treat.

Yes, real food, made fresh from real honest ingredients, is so wonderful--and I'm so happy to see movements like the 100-mile diet, because they increase awareness and encourage folks to buy and cook and eat real food.  Some of the regulations have been unnecessarily stringent, I think--like suggesting we shouldn't be allowed to buy farm eggs directly--now, really?!? In the meantime, the gov't continues to profit from tobacco, alcohol and gambling addictions. But can we buy raw milk, OH, NO!!  Horrors! Did you see that letter some of the Health Regions sent out a couple of years ago? They suggested that church dinners were causing food poisoning, and came up with the most ridiculous rules, it was regressive and oppressive and ill-considered...

I find myself recently wanting to experiment more with cooking, starting with all raw fresh ingredients, and everything tastes so good.  No prepared, pre-packaged stuff can match it. Make your own mayonnaise, hollandaise and so on--easy, and delicious.  Enjoy.

We made our own ice cream when I was a kid and even into teen and adult years.  I remember breaking up the chunks of ice from the icehouse, and taking turns cranking the ice cream maker (I'm younger that CH, I think).  Mom always had a new flavour to try and the ice cream was delicious.  I can't eat the ice cream found in stores today because of all the additives.  We always had a huge garden with every vegetable, a strawberry patch, raspberry patch, fields of potatoes.   Guess we were organic farmers and didn't have a label then.  I admire people who persist with growing and preparing foods as naturally as possible.  It is so much healthier.

Fortunately there is a huge market near where I live, and a Coop where I can buy fresh produce to supplement what I grow in my small garden.  Unfortunately today, people don't have the space for gardens.  We build houses so close together with postage stamp backyards.

I do think people are becoming more and more aware of the health hazards associated with food additives in packaged foods and are trying to eat healthier.  So many more food sensitivities are showing up....must be something causing that.

Even Walmart has a very good fresh vegetable and fruit section....wonder where they import some of their food from though....

What's not any healthier?  Eating fresh produce rather than salt-filled processed stuff?  Or are we talking about home made ice-cream and the like vs store bought?  Calorie wise you are proabaly right but again the home made stuff would be free of a lot of the additives you get in mass manufactured foods.  Plus the home made stuff tends to taste a heck of a lot better.

I'm sensative to msg so don't try to tell me additives don't/can't make you sick.

OK - so tell us what does make us unwell.

Aw, you're killing me, witch!  I love buttermilk with fresh cracked pepper as my finn gramma made for me.  Dairy has started giving me major issues so I'm staying away for now.

I'd love to make sauerkraut and have read a few recipes on the net...do you think you can make it with purple cabbage?

I don't mean to kill you.... maybe you should cut out the additives in your food. Additives aren't good for you. They'll make you sick. 

Seriously though, have you tried eating naturally cultured or fermented dairy? A lot of "yoghurt" and "Cheese" that is mass produiced these days has never seen a bacterium. Most people who have problems with dairy are actually having problems with the lactose in the dairy. Dairy that is natuarlly fermented has had the lactose eaten up by the bacterial culture, and so isn't a problem.

 Yes you can use red/purple  cabbage. There's a traditional pickle whose name escapes me, that uses both red cabbage and beets, and is made the same as saurekraut.

People who need to be contrary, for contrariness' sake. 

Besh seems to like sucking the joy out of things.

I used to get up at 2 am and drink buttermilk and eat goader cheese.   I no longer have a taste for either of those things.  However, at 2 am lots of things taste good.