Raw Milk: Fun with the Forbidden

Written on October 4, 2010 at 11:29 am, by admin in Blog

I promised more info on raw milk in my last post and helping me to deliver is the one and only Sally Fallon. You may know her as the iconoclast author of Nourishing Traditions in which she takes on the “diet dictocrats,” or from her work with the Weston A. Price foundation (www.westonaprice.org)  Her work on the Real Milk campaign has been equally as tireless and important for the contribution to real health. Check out their site for more information on the campaign, how you can get involved in your community, and the wonders of raw milk.

Raw milk should always be from a sustainable, grass fed dairy where the animals treated with love and respect. Not only will this make you feel good, but the treatment of the animals and sanitation is imperative to the health of the milk. Raw milk is full of enzymes, antibodies, and many people who are allergic to dairy find they can enjoy raw milk and other fermented milk products!

Read more about the benefits of raw milk here.

Another great article called 15 Things Pasteurization Kills.

Now to the fun part: cheese making!

1. Start with raw milk, for this I used 1.5 gallons goat milk with 1 cup homemade cow buttermilk culture. Allow both to come to room temperature (55-70 degrees F) to active culture.

2. Place 5 drops rennet in a shot glass with some water. Stir in rennet water to the combined milk and buttermilk culture in a large pot or bowl. Allow to sit overnight.

3. By now you’ve awoken, like little Miss Muffet, to your curds and whey. Take a knife and gently cut the curd into strips one direction leaving 3/4″ between rows, turn the pot 45 degrees and repeat, effectively cutting small squared of the curd to increase surface area.

curds and whey

4. Using and slotted spoon transfer the curds to a strained lined with cheese cloth in the sink. You can weight down your straining cheese with a plate and jar on top to make it go faster. After a couple hours your cheese should be adequately dried and you are ready to flavor it.

Save your whey for adding to smoothies as it is very high in protein, use to lacto-ferment veggies and grains, dehydrate into powder for cooking, etc. Soak grain for animals in it; they love it!

5. Remove curd from cheese cloth and mix in 1 tablespoon good sea salt. Now you can mix whatever herbs and spices you like into the curd. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination and the ingredients on hand.

raw cheese

I made Dill/Chive, Tarragon/Parsely, Garlic/Basil and one giant mixed herb and flower log for a party.

This cheese freezes well. I got about 1.5 pounds of cheese from the 1.5 gallons of milk.

finished product: herbed and flowered raw goat cheese

Raw Milk: Medicinal Ally

Written on August 7, 2010 at 2:41 pm, by admin in Blog

We came home from vacation last month to find our dog, Creasy, suffering from an eye infection. While we were unable to determine the root cause, the dry summer causes so much dust to be stirred up it’s not much wonder those with eyes close to the ground suffer more. I thought it looked better the second day, less swollen, and she seemed to have it open more. There was a lot of discharge, mucous and such, but as we settled back into life at home I neglected to pay much attention to her eye for a couple days.

Two days later, however, we realized it was time for action. The eye was swollen again, the mucosa pink and the mucous had returned. She needed help and she needed it now. My mind spun; I couldn’t wait to brew a fennel, rose and plantain tea and let is cool before I could wash her eye. I chided myself for waiting so long. I consulted Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s book The Complete Handbook for the Dog and Cat a wonderful resource from a vitalist and herbal tradition. Levy recommends raw milk for eye afflictions and as luck would have it I had picked up some raw goat milk from a neighbor earlier that day! I poured some chilled milk into a shot glass and took Creasy outside. Tilting her head back I gentle dropped some of the RAW milk into each of her eyes, letting her blink profusely and repeating several times.The key here is that the milk be raw. No, your Organic, co-op bought milk will not work. No, your Wal-mart skim milk will definitely not work. Sorry. And I’m even sorrier to tell you how difficult it is to find raw milk, but that is for another post.

With eye afflictions, as with ear afflictions, you want to treat both sides even if only one is bothering you. The results were almost instantaneous. The chilled milk soothed the irritation within about 20 minutes. Her eye was open and obviously feeling better. After the first night she looked and felt almost totally normal. As with all tenacious infections you want to continue treatment past the point of obvious recovery; we used the milk treatment about 3 times a day for 3 days total.

creasy doggie

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