Raw Milk Ohio: Part 2

For Part 1, go here.

When we last saw our intrepid heroes, Mr. and Mrs. Scrimp were on their way to the market to meet the mysterious "Joshua," a raw milk distributor who was to weigh them in the balance and see if they were worthy of receiving his goods. 

In all seriousness, though, we weren't really expecting things to be that crazy. Maybe a five minute chat about the summary of the contract, a few minutes reading it over, a signature, and we'd be on our merry way.

Well, not quite.

Recipe: Butter

Yep... butter. We mostly cook with oil, but sometimes you just gotta have butter, and there's nothing like really fresh butter. It's incredibly easy to make.

For best results, I recommend using low-heat pasteurized, non-homogenized cream, if you can get it in your area. The flavor is excellent.

Butter (makes about 1 cup)

Ingredients

• 1/2 quart cream
• Salt, to taste

Let cream warm to about 60 degrees. Pour into a mixer or food processor. (If using a mixer, I start with the whisk attachment and once the cream has whipped, I switch to the paddle).

Mix or process, stopping occasionally to scrape down sides of the bowl. After about 12-15 minutes, cream will grow yellowish and then separate (fairly quickly) into large clumps of butter and thin buttermilk. Watch for this so you don't end up splashing your whole kitchen with buttermilk.

Pour buttermilk off into a storage container to drink or use for baking. It's not cultured, so it won't be that thick, lumpy stuff you get at the store, but it definitely has a bit of sourness to it. Some people really like to drink it--Mr. Scrimp thinks it's disgusting.

Rinse butter in cold water until it's chilled and buttermilk is washed away. Turn onto a cutting board or countertop and knead/squeeze it to remove as much buttermilk and water as possible. Knead in salt, if desired. Pack into a glass container and store, covered, in the fridge.

PSA

So, this message is really only relevant to those of you in the Ohio area, but the spirit of it extends beyond that.

Husband and I were at Whole Foods doing a grocery run this afternoon. We're big milk drinkers, so we'd put a gallon of the Whole Foods brand into our cart and were leaving the dairy aisle when we were stopped by a guy at a display table with samples of organic milk. I was thirsty, and I am always up for organic milk, so we chatted with him and got a sample of the 2% milk.

That was about half an hour ago and I can still taste the delicious milky aftertaste in my mouth. I kid you not, this stuff was the best non-raw milk I've ever tasted. It comes from a place called Snowville Creamery, which is down by Columbus. They don't ultra-pasteurize; they only heat it to the minimum allowed temperature, which retains a much better flavor in the milk, although it keeps the shelf life at only (only!) 14 days or so. I was sort of shocked to learn that the milk we were buying, because it was ultra-pasteurized, had an expected shelf life of up to 60 days! That just seems.. wrong.

The milk is also non-homogenized, which means that when it's been sitting in your fridge, you need to take it out and shake it before you drink it, because the cream separates out. I used to spend my summer vacations on a working dairy farm, so that brings back happy memories for me.

We put our gallon of 1% milk back and picked up a half-gallon of Snowville Creamery 2% instead. It's $2.99 for a half-gallon, so it's almost double what we usually pay for milk, which is a problem, because we drink milk everyday in fairly copious amounts. We're in the process of deciding whether this is a special-occasion milk, or if we're willing to cut spending somewhere else in order to be able to afford to drink this stuff all the time.

If you live in the Cleveland or Columbus area, you've got to try this stuff out. I haven't even told you everything about their rad sustainability practices or natural milk philosophy yet.