After a long hiatus that involved a significant chunk of time with no Internet connection, (cross your fingers that it's resolved for good this time,) and a trip out of state, I'm back to report on the yogurt. 

It was good.  Not fantastic, but definitely good.  I'm going to play around a bit with the amounts of vanilla extract and sugar next time I make it, because it was a little sweet for my taste.  But it tasted good, and had the bonus of being made from milk from well-treated cows on a farm just miles from here.  And eating yogurt that I'd made myself was pretty darn satisfying, too.

-Anna

I've been meaning to make yogurt for quite a while now, but it just hasn't happened.  We made plain yogurt last summer and it turned out just fine, but I'm more of a vanilla yogurt kind of girl.  I bought some when we went grocery shopping this weekend, but Jeff missed putting away some of the groceries, and I discovered the yogurt was among them when I pulled it out for breakfast yesterday.  I lamented the loss of my yogurt for most of the day, but today realized this would be the perfect catalyst to make my own.

Supplies:

• Yogotherm-This is basically a big thermos.  If you don't have one, you can also incubate your yogurt in glass or ceramic jars in a 100º oven.  I like the Yogotherm because it doesn't use electricity, doesn't tie up the oven, and doesn't make our house hot, (an important consideration, because it doesn't take much to heat up 600 sq. ft.)
• Milk-Do not use skim milk.  If using 1% or 2%, you will need to add powdered milk to get your yogurt to the proper thickness.
• Double boiler-You can use a thick bottomed pot instead, if you don't have a double boiler, though a double boiler will allow you to pay a little less attention, requiring only frequent stirring, instead of constant stirring.  (Tip: If working on a laptop, like, say if you were writing a blog, move laptop to counter next to stove, so you remember to stir frequently instead of just occasionally.)
• Sugar-I ended up using powdered sugar, but I believe granulated sugar works as well.
• Yogurt starter culture-Next time I will use a few tablespoons of this batch of yogurt.  You can also use store-bought plain yogurt as a starter, as long as it says it has live cultures.
• Pure vanilla extract
• Whisk
• Thermometer
• Baby helper(optional)-Not necessary for the success of your yogurt, but she does come in handy for measuring and spilling things. :) (That's her hand there on my hand/the measuring spoon.  She thought I needed help.)
  

Use boiling water to sterilize whisk and thermometer (and double boiler, if you've been using it as a dog water dish instead of a double boiler for 2 years. Oops.  But don't worry, it got hand washed, dishwasher-ed, and sterilized with boiling water.)  Put water in bottom of double boiler and 4 cups of milk on top. Stirring frequently, heat to 185º

Once temperature reaches 185º, cool milk to 115º, remembering to stir frequently.When milk cools to 115º, transfer to Yogotherm.   Add in 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, 4 tablespoons powdered sugar, yogurt culture. Stir well, but do not whip. 

Seal Yogotherm.  Leave for 6-12 hours; longer incubating results in a more tart (tarter?) yogurt.

Leave dishes for husband.

I'll let you know how it turns out (and if my lazy stirring had an effect) in 6-12 hours. 

-Anna

Why raw milk is good

Raw milk was actually used as a medicine in the late 1800s/early 1900s.  It was called "white blood."  Anecdotal evidence*: Our friends Doug and Kim, owners of Larga Vista, had a rough fall/winter in 2008 milk-wise due to the timing of some calves' births and one or two cows in the herd dying.  In order to meet the obligations to their milk shareholders, they were forgoing their usual milk consumption.  Doug, Kim, and their young son were sick with cold/flu within a matter of days.  They started drinking milk again in earnest and got over the illness very quickly.

If you took 7th grade biology, you probably have at least heard the term "amino acid."  Humans need 8 amino acids (the "essential amino acids") to function, (your body makes the other 12-14 out of the 8 essentials.)  Raw milk contains all eight.

Even most lactose intolerant people can drink raw milk.  Raw milk is full of good, helpful bacteria and enzymes that aid in the breaking down and digestion of lactose.  Anecdotal evidence*: Jeff is/was (?) lactose intolerant.  He can't have store-bought milk or ice cream, but has absolutely no problems with raw milk or any raw milk products.

Raw milk lasts forever.   Okay, well not forever, but it lasts about 4 weeks unopened.  You may be saying, "Wait, doesn't pasteurizing milk make it last longer?  When I buy milk from the grocery store it's not good for four weeks."  And you would be right, on both counts.  But, when pasteurized milk comes from a big dairy, it takes quite a while to get from the dairy to the store, and then it takes a while to make it from the back warehouse part of the store to the store shelves, and then it takes a while to make it from the shelves to your refrigerator.   The raw milk we get is, on average, less than three days old.  By skipping that whole middle part and going straight from the dairy to our fridge, we get a lot more time to use our milk.

*There is more than just anecdotal evidence to support these claims.


Why conventional milk is bad

Cows in conventional dairies are bred to be hyper-productive.  Then they're given hormones (commonly rBGH or Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) to create even more production.  They are fed grain, because it is cheaper than grass, and it allows them to be confined to (often manure-laden) pens rather than in pastures.  Since cows are not designed to eat grain, this makes them ill, or at the very least, not as healthy as they would be if grass-fed, especially since they are stuck in piles of their own excrement.  Then they are pumped full of antibiotics to combat these illnesses.  A combination of the hyperproductivity and antibiotics causes bleeding (from the infections, and pus (from inflamed teats, or mastitis) in and on the udders.  There is blood and pus in bleach (to disguise these) in conventional milk.  If the animal welfare part of it isn't enough to make you stop drinking conventional milk, the blood and pus and bleach ought to do it.  I strongly encourage you to at least switch to organic store-bought milk, if you're not ready to go whole-hog (mixing metaphors?) and switch to raw milk.

A lot of people ask if you can get raw skim milk, or raw low-fat milk.  The "bad" news is no.  But the good news is that the fats in whole, raw milk have a job to do.  Fats boost production and secretion of digestive enzymes, and tell your body your stomach is full.  Without that fat, eating low-fat or fat-free foods often leads to over-eating.  In addition, oxidized cholesterol is added in to pasteurized milk, to give it body (since fat is stripped out of it to make it 2%, 1%, or skim.)  Also, milk won't hold together with the fat stripped out.  It looks like whitish water with whiter blobs and globs floating around in it--not very attractive and probably a hard sell.  The presence of oxidized cholesterol is why raw milk is smooth and creamy and store-bought whole milk is thick and chalky.  Oxidized cholesterol is far worse for you than naturally occurring cholesterol.  In fact, cholesterol gets a bad rap that it doesn't deserve, but that's a post for another day.

-Anna

This is an unopened half-gallon jar of our milk.  See the cream on top?  Since it's unhomogenized, it has to be shaken up really well each time before we pour it, to evenly distribute the cream.  It's really no bug deal though, and we find ourselves shaking pretty much every beverage container that comes out of the fridge. :)

...and anyone else who was curious about these things.  Because I'm sure someone else was.

The 3 quarts of cream will be made into butter soon.  Stay tuned for a post documenting the butter-making process, successful or otherwise, but hopefully successful.  Cheese-making is also on the agenda for later this summer.

The cost (in dollars) of raw milk is higher than grocery store milk, but the cost in other ways is much less.  We know, for a fact, everything we're putting into our bodies with the raw milk; we're supporting local small business and family farming; we're putting our food dollars toward sustainable business practices we believe in; and we're cutting down the distance our milk has traveled by over 1000 miles. (The average food item travels 1500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.)  Having said all that, we paid $40 to purchase our share of the herd (one-time fee, and we can sell it back if we don't need it anymore,) and we pay $44 a month for one gallon per week.  Four dollars of that is what they charge to drive it from Boone to Colorado Springs each week.  It averages out to around $10 a gallon, which is not quite twice as much as organic milk from the grocery costs, but as I said, it's cheaper in a lot of other ways, and it's something we feel strongly enough about to spend the money.  Being a single-income family, we've evaluated a lot of how we spend our money, but food in general and raw milk in particular is something for which we're willing to sacrifice other things (that we probably didn't need anyway.)  And, because it's more filling, since it's not had all its fats and nutrients stripped out, even mega-milk drinkers drink a bit less (as in, instead of drinking 5 glasses a day, they drink two and are similarly satisfied by it.)

Look for a post later today about all the benefits of drinking raw milk.

-Anna

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This is Lily, a grass-fed milk cow on Larga Vista Ranch.

We are the proud owners of one dairy cow.  And some chickens.  Each week, these farm animals yield us one gallon of raw (unpasteurized and unhomogenized) milk, one quart of raw cream, and a dozen eggs with the biggest, orangest yolks you've ever seen. 

The state of Colorado says it's illegal to buy or sell unpasteurized dairy products, but citizens are allowed to buy a share in a herd of dairy cattle.  So, we own a cow (we have a bill of sale and everything,) and pay someone else to board her, feed her, milk her, take care of her, and drive our milk and cream up from the farm, which is perfectly legal. We were charter members of their egg share program when it was rolled out about 6 months after we started our milk share, (there are no legal reasons we own a share of the chicken flock, only economical ones,) and today started a raw cream share. 

Switching to raw milk was one of our first forays into hardcore-hippiedom.  I had read a little about it, and one week when I was at the farmers market without Jeff, I saw someone getting a big jar of milk from the booth where we bought our meat.  I managed to get up the nerve to ask about it, (I'm painfully shy,) and had a nice chat with Kim, (of Larga Vista Ranch--see the links section for their website) about raw milk and milk shares and how there was a wait-list until at least August.

I'm going to pause here, to take a minute to explain the process of how we (people) get milk.  Not the squeezing the udders part, I'm pretty sure everyone knows that much.  That might be it, though.  After all, an animated movie called Barnyard, produced in 2006, had all of its male cows drawn with udders.  It got a bit of press for that, and I remember people saying "It didn't even occur to me to think that boy cows wouldn't have udders."  So let's talk about this.  When you drink what we simply call "milk," you're really drinking breastmilk from a cow.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, it's just that biologically cow's milk is designed to nurture baby cows.  When a cow births a calf, she nurses the calf until it's old enough to move on to eating grass.  In nature, she would then stop lactating, but on a dairy farm, she is milked, and therefore keeps producing milk, until she gets pregnant/gives birth again, and then the milk goes to the new calf.  (While we're at it, only girl-chickens lay eggs.)

Anyhow, when a spot opened up for a Larga Vista milk share, we went down to tour the farm.  It's located about an hour from Colorado Springs, and I think I either got off work late or we got lost, because we got there as the group we were supposed to take the tour with was leaving.  So we got a private tour from Kim, on which we saw the milking room and the equipment, met the oldest/injured cows (they're a rescue, too) who had stuck close to the barn, and saw the rest of the herd who had pretty much been cornered in a pasture by one very eager bull.  We signed the paperwork, including the bill of sale, and then hung around and talked with Kim until long past dark. 

We got our first gallon of milk a few days later, (we didn't have a cooler and didn't want to risk it spoiling on our drive home from the farm,) and we were excited.  It tasted like...milk.  Now, this is "whole" milk, if you want to label it in way that makes sense in a grocery store, because it's full-fat.  It literally goes from the cow through some tubing into a vat with all the milk from the other cows (to ensure a consistent butter fat percentage), to a jar, then to their fridge and then a cooler, and then we pick it up.  It's untouched.  So, since it's "whole milk" we expected it to be thicker than what we were used to, but it wasn't.  It wasn't watery like skim milk, but it wasn't chalky like grocery store whole milk, either.  It was milky and creamy and smooth and wonderful.  We often let people who seem interested try it, and the general consensus is "It tastes like milk."  They all seem surprised;  we were too.  But we were delighted also, and thrilled to be part of something that seemed simultaneously so subversive and so wholesome.  We have been true supporters of the raw-milk movement since, and don't hesitate to plug Larga Vista and raw milk whenever we get a chance.  We even gave a half gallon of the milk to our doula, (our professional labor assistant,) who was there for Charlotte's birth.  She was totally envious of our milk, and thrilled to receive it as a gift.  (We don't routinely hand it out as presents to people or anything. :) )

This post is getting a bit long, so I'll save all the awesome benefits (and there are plenty) of raw milk for another time, hopefully tomorrow.

-Anna

The Internet has been down all day at hippie headquarters, so I didn’t get a chance to make a pre-market post, but today was opening day! I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks, and I was not disappointed.  There was a good turnout, the weather cooperated, (except for being a bit on the hot side,) and there was plenty of fresh produce.  Now, there were no tomatoes or melons or ears of corn at the market, because this is June, and those are August/September crops.  At this time of year, you’ll find greens, like lettuces, kale, and spinach, baby beets, baby carrots, and all kinds of herbs, among other things.  There were lots of new vendors this year, including one farm that is taking pre-orders for Thanksgiving turkeys.  (We’re getting on that list, but then we’ve got to find people to feed it to, because two people can’t eat a whole turkey.  Who’s interested in a hippie Thanksgiving?)  I’m hoping to make it to the Saturday market, too, just to check it out and let you all know what it’s like, but we’ll be sticking to the Wednesday market since it’s in our neighborhood.

Today’s take: 1 gallon raw milk*, 3 quarts raw cream*, 1 dozen eggs from pastured chickens, 1 bunch kale, 1 bunch basil, 1 bunch spring onions, 1 pint honey, peas, the most beautiful head of red leaf lettuce I’ve ever seen, and the Score of the Day: blueberry cider vinegar.  That vinegar is on its way to becoming salad dressing; I’m pretty excited. 

 
*Raw dairy items aren’t for sale at the farmers market, but we do pick them up there each week.  Look for tomorrow’s post about raw dairy and our milk and cream shares, (assuming our internet is working.)  We also own an egg share, but plenty of other farms sell pastured-chicken eggs at the market. 

This recipe comes from a friend of mine's grandmother.  We had it this weekend when it was cool out, and it was amazing!

FILLING:
2 lbs Ricotta
2 cups cottage cheese, drained
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
4 egg yolks
1/2 tsp nutmeg (sugar can be substituted but this is what makes the dish)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbs Parsley
1/2 tsp black pepper

Other ingredients:
1 c. grated/shredded Parmesan cheese
1 jar (or equivalent) tomato sauce
1 box lasagna noodles

Combine:
Cheeses, mix well (will be slightly lumpy because of cottage cheese.)
Add Egg Yolks, mix well. Add spices.

Prepare lasagna noodles according to directions on package.

In a 13x9 baking dish, start with a light layer of your favorite tomato sauce on the bottom to keep noodles from sticking, then layer sauce, noodles, cheese filling. Repeat 2-3 time, ending with noodles & sauce.  Top with 1 c. shredded/grated Parmesan cheese, and a pinch of parsley for garnish.
 
Bake at 400° for 1 hr. 

IMPORTANT: Let set for 15 minutes before cutting. (We didn't wait the full 15 min.--we were hungry!--so we had to mop up the lasagna with bread.  Our second servings were much more set up.)

Enjoy!

It was brought to my attention that I left out an important detail in my last post: the location of the CFAM markets (oops.) 

I was planning on making this post anyway, because both markets start this week!  (That's very exciting at our house!)

CFAM has two markets:
Wednesdays, 3pm-7pm at America the Beautiful Park
Saturdays, 9am-1pm at The Margarita at Pine Creek, in the courtyard

Happy marketing! Hope to see you there!  -Anna

Not all farmers markets are created equal.

The first June we lived in Colorado, we were about 3 weeks into our new mindset of eating locally and living better.  I dutifully checked The Independent, the town's, well, independent newspaper, for its farmers' market recommendation.  We woke up early the first Saturday it was open, and drove excitedly to the park which we now live 10 blocks from, (we lived considerably farther away then.)  It was a gorgeous summer morning, and I can remember walking the few blocks from where we'd parked to the streets that were barricaded for the huge market, with a cliche'd spring in my step.  I was determined to make a difference with my food dollars, even if it was only a few hundred dollars a month.  We arrived at the first booth and bought two jars of honey made by honest-to-goodness Colorado Springs bees.  Thumbs up.  The next booth was probably 3 banquet tables long, and those tables were laden with things like sweet corn and watermelons and tomatoes.  In June.  My heart broke a little bit at that, and we continued walking.  I'm sure I was ranting about the "farmer" who had clearly trucked this produce in from elsewhere; we're lucky to get watermelons and sweet corn in August here in Colorado. In the next booth and in the next, we found more of the same.  We managed to find one other "booth" (really just a card table) that was one lone gentleman selling flour tortillas he told us his wife had made, and herbs from their garden.  We probably bought more than we needed, in an effort to support this underdog in what amounted to nothing more than an open-air grocery store. 

We went home disappointed, but I was determined to do research to find a farmer's market that involved farmers bringing produce they had farmed to consumers like us, consumers willing to pay a little extra if necessary, in order to know their food.  And I found CFAM--Colorado Farm and Art Market (farmandartmarket.com).

CFAM is Colorado Springs' only grower's market, and one of only a few in all of Colorado. A grower's market requires that those selling the goods had a hand in producing it--they grew it, in the case of produce, or created it, in the case of art.  We love CFAM.  Opening day of the market is an exciting day at our house. 

And we've become part of the community there.  We met tons of people--Marian, the woman who sold us fruit as we desperately rushed to her table every Saturday morning at 9:00 on the dot, to ensure she didn't sell out before we could make our huge fruit purchases (it was a long, long winter/spring, with no fruit, since we were committed to eating locally,); Laura who ran the market and talked with us for at least 20 minutes every market day about everything from college to seed-saving farms in India to advice on coming to the Wednesday market if we ran out of fruit before the next Saturday (which always happened.)  There was Shawn, the baker whose bread we bought, and who we once saw out at a pub and spent the next hour or so discussing yeast and flour and the challenges of high-elevation baking; and Doug and Kim, who we consider dear friends.  They live on the land Doug's family farmed, and in an effort to save the land and keep it in the family, they switched to organic farming and converted what had been his father's conventional dairy to a raw milk dairy, (raw milk is unpasteurized and unhomogenized.  It basically goes from the cow to a jar to our fridge.  More on that in another post.)  And there are others, people whose names I don't even know, who'll give advice on cooking garlic scapes or kohlrabi or what-have-you, when you pick it up from their table. I never once felt stupid asking, "Uh...what is this? And what do I do with it?" 

At the risk of sounding uber-corny, CFAM is a genuine community of consumers and producers.  It's nice to be somewhere where everyone is friendly, and even nicer when that place brings you closer to knowing your food. -Anna