Milk

This gallon of milk cost me $3.58. It goes fast in my house.We usually all have a glass at dinner plus some on the oatmeal in the morning. The baby is too little to have it - but still, the other five of us drink it. I'd say we go through 3 gallons a week, sometimes more if I'm doing a lot of baking. Want to know how to stretch it?

In an effort to decrease our food expenses I'm trying to be more disciplined about using my food storage. I used to do this but had gotten away from it. We have non-fat dry milk. It's not quite the same as instant milk. This tastes better but you have to blend it a little more. (If I remember correctly, instant milk looks like little dry pearls and melts instantly in water. It also has a very distinct odor). The non-fat dry milk especially tastes good if you mix it with your regular milk!

So, here's what I do. When my store-bought milk is down to half a gallon, I mix up some of my non-fat dry milk. The dry milk I have mixes 3/4 cup of dry milk with 4 cups of warm water. I mix mine in the blender but I'm sure you could mix it by hand or give it a good shake if you had a pitcher with a tight fitting lid. Then I place my mixed milk in the fridge until it's good and cold and I pour it into the store-bought milk, refilling it up to a full gallon.

Important things to remember:

*Check the expiration date on your half gallon of store-bought milk before adding in dry milk. If you still have enough time to finish all of it before it expires, you're good. If it expires in a day or two, you may want to wait until next time to try this.

*Only refill a jug ONE time. I only refill my jug once, then we use it until it's empty and move on to a new jug of milk. If you keep refilling the same jug you are going to keep mixing new milk and old milk and could end up making yourself sick.

*I add a little vanilla to the blender when I'm making my non-fat dry milk. It helps out the flavor a little. Maybe 1/2 tsp - 1 tsp? Tonight at dinner I served a jug of half store-bought and half non-fat dry milk and everyone had seconds. I could taste a little of the vanilla and the milk tasted slightly different than usual but it was good. Not gross at all.

*When you get your mixed milk out of the fridge, sometimes there will be foam on the top. I just scoop this off with a large spoon and put it down the drain before I pour it into the jug.

Let me know if you try it. This saves us quite a bit of money. And, it's good for us to be circulating our food storage and keeping it fresh. My non-fat dry milk was purchased at a food storage cannery for our church. If you have a Mormon friend and you want to give this a try - ask them, they may be able to hook you up with a sample. :) But, I'm sure you can buy this type of dry milk in the store, just probably not quite as cheap as I get it at the cannery. I promise, sometime I'll blog about food storage.