I'm a Hog for Some Nog

Every year at this time since I was a little boy, I've been looking forward to egg nog.  I remember at the grocery store, the Borden milk man would be adding a spot in the dairy case for those green quart cartons of Egg Nog.  They would fly off the shelves as everyone just had to have some egg nog.  People were always asking the same question, "Why don't they offer egg nog for sale all year long?"  Good question.  One answer I can see is that Egg Nog is RICH.  It's like drinking melted ice cream.  We would weigh 450 pounds if allowed to indulge all year long.

It was a rainy Saturday and Tricia got together the ingredients for her annual homemade egg nog.  Not many ingredients.  It's all stuff we have.  2 cups milk, 1 cup cream, and 6 egg yolks and a half cup of sugar.  She got that heating up.

If you're gonna make egg nog, you gotta break a bunch of eggs.  In November and December, our hens' egg production drops way off due to the short days.  With 42 hens in the flock, we're picking up an average of five eggs a day.  We have no eggs to sell at this time.  We give a dozen a week to Russ and a dozen a week to Benjamin, and Tricia and I eat the rest.  Needless to say, egg nog making puts a dent in our egg inventory, but it's worth it.

One small problem is you are left with the egg whites from 6 eggs.  Tricia simply made scrambled eggs, but had to crack a few more eggs in the skillet WITH yolks to give a yellow color back to it.  I know some fast food restaurant I won't mention sells an "Egg White Delight," but we like whole eggs with yolks.

We allowed the egg nog to cool and then chilled it in the fridge.  By night time, it was ready to drink.  As we watched National Lampoon's, Christmas Vacation and laughed, we enjoyed a glass of egg nog with grated nut meg on top.  Delicious!

The smell of egg nog and nutmeg brings back a lot of good memories.

Homemade Ice Cream Time!

Homemade ice cream is hard to beat!  Growing up we had an ice cream maker in a wooden container and you'd add ice and rock salt and start cranking, and cranking and cranking.  There was also an electric one.  It was a lot easier.  We could not wait until it was ready to eat.  We made vanilla, chocolate, and other flavors and devoured bowl after bowl.  What a great summertime treat! 

With plenty of fresh milk, all the ingredients for making homemade ice cream are right at our fingertips.  Sunday after church, we made a batch to eat.  The ingredients are lined up below: fresh milk, eggs, salt, sugar and vanilla.  It is a very simple recipe.

In a mixing bowl, whisk 3 eggs and add a half a cup of sugar together.  Add a dash of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla.  Notice how rich and yellow the eggs are.  Those hens are roaming all over the pasture, getting a good diet of grass and bugs.  

We skim the cream off the top of the milk and then pour some milk - so it is a mixture of cream and milk.  We fill to the 4 1/2 cup mark (but the egg mixture is already in the bowl).  Stir all together.

Add a good dash of cinnamon to the ice cream mixture. 

The ice cream maker is plugged in and we pour the ice cream mix into the maker while the paddle is turning.  We then put a pot of coffee brewing and wait.

We bought this little ice cream maker many years ago and it has made many gallons of ice cream for us.

In only 20 minutes, the ice cream is ready to eat.  We all line up with bowls and serve.  We can wipe out the whole thing in no time at all!

I was going to get a photo of the ice cream in my bowl, but I got distracted, ha ha!

As We Near Drying Off the Cows - An Experiment

In four days we will be drying off the cows.  In dairy-speak that means we stop milking them.  You'll probably hear us talk about that a lot.  We've been milking for over two years straight without a break, and we are ready.  When we bring the milk inside, we pour it from our stainless steel pails into gallon-sized glass jars.

Those jars are immediately refrigerated and the cream rises to the top.  I remember being young and my teachers would always tell us, "Work hard, prepare yourself, for the cream always rises to the top."  That saying may sound strange to some, but it is a truism.  The cream is the best part of the milk.  It is the thickest, sweetest, best part.  After it rises, we take a big spoon and skim off the cream, putting it into a pint-sized jar.  We use that for our coffee, and for ice cream, and for whipped cream and butter.

But soon, we'll have no more fresh milk for a while.  For how long?  We don't know.  We haven't had the cows palpated yet to see how far along in their pregnancies they are.  We were talking about what we were going to do.  Sometimes, in the past when the cows were dried off, we wouldn't even buy milk.  We would only buy cream. 

Tricia reminded me that my Mom had given us a neat thing that was from Bumby, my grandma.  It was some little glass jars to freeze sweet cream in.  See the photo below?:  Freezer Creamer - Always have cream for unexpected guests.  Thaws while your coffee brews.  Slips into your ice cube tray.

There are six little jars with lids on a tray.  I couldn't find a date on these, but I think it is a neat family heirloom.  We are going to see if we can successfully freeze some cream using Bumby's antique sweet cream jars.  (One is missing because I'm about to fill it.)

I simply filled the jar with sweet cream from Clarabelle's milk from earlier in the morning.  It doesn't get fresher than this!

I placed the little cap on top of the jar...

And I placed it in the freezer.

I pulled the little jar out a bit later to find that the cream had completely frozen. 

I think our experiment was successful, but the proof will be in the pudding.  We'll thaw out and drink in our coffee this weekend.  If it is good, we'll make more, and we'll ration the remaining sweet cream for special coffee time!  I hope it works.  The last time we dried off the cows, we tried to freeze some milk.  I was not impressed.  Once it thawed, it had a different texture and consistency.  I was not a fan.  Perhaps this will be different.

Rolled Out Another Bale

The grass in the pasture is all dead now.  The freeze burnt it to a crisp.  The cows still graze out there, clipping the "freeze-dried" grass down to the ground.  Then they come looking for hay to eat.  The cows finished off the first round bale that I had rolled out last week.  By my estimation it takes about 7 days for them to completely devour the round bale.  On the sixth evening, I go out to the bale with my pocketknife, cut the twine off and pull it out, and then I lift the hay ring off of the bale and roll it out of the way.  The cows are then able to reach the hay in the center, and are able to clean it all up. 

When a new bale is rolled out,  it is a joyous event for the cows... really for every animal in the pasture.  They come running and begin rubbing their heads on it.  In the photo below, you can see the remnants of the bale they just finished in the bottom left.  The new bale is positioned just a little bit over. 

The hay ring protects the bale from much waste.  However, it doesn't keep the goats from getting inside.  They'll climb up on top of the bale.  The chickens like to make nests in the hay, too.  We constantly find eggs in the bale and check it for nests every day.

While we're talking about the cows, I want to report on the milking.  We're still milking two cows a day - Rosie and Clarabelle, but there milk production is starting to fall off a bit. This happens over time and is a reminder that it is time for them to be bred, calve and freshen.  We enjoy fresh milk with every meal.

As I was putting milk in the refrigerator, I saw how rich our Jersey cows' milk is.  You can see a perfect illustration in the photo below of the old saying, "The cream always rises to the top!" 

Sometimes we just shake it up and drink whole milk.  Many times, Tricia skims a lot of the cream off the top for coffee, to make butter or ice cream.  A couple nights ago, she used it to make whipped cream that we ate on top of a slice of warm persimmon cake.  Talk about good!

The Cream Always Rises to the Top!

One of the extra special things about milking cows is the cream.  If you look at the gallon jar below of fresh milk that we put in the fridge, you'll see a line about one third of the way from the top.  Everything above that line is cream that has risen to the top.  You can shake it up and drink it all - whole milk.  Or you can skim it off and drink the 'skim' milk.

We normally shake it up and drink whole milk - so sweet and delicious.  But, we also skim some off for coffee or for making whipped cream to put atop desserts.  I captured the process of the milkmaid, Tricia, making fresh whipped cream for our pumpkin cheesecake on Thanksgiving Day.  After skimming the cream off the top of the milk, Tricia poured it into a bowl.

She put the whisking (or whipping attachment, I assume) on the stick blender and turned it on.

In less than 15 seconds, the cream begins to thicken up.  Tricia has often said the stick blender is one of her favorite gadgets.  In the past we've poured cream into a quart jar and allowed it to come to room temperature.  Then we shake it for 4 or 5 minutes to make cream.  Needless to say, the stick blender speeds up the process.

And in two shakes of a billy-goat's tail, it's done.  The cream is ready to be put on top of the cheesecake.

All that's left is to taste it...

Delish!  The cream rises to the top.  From milk to cream to whipped cream in less than a minute! 

Butterfingers! (How to Make Homemade Buttter Without a Churn)

To go along with our post RIGHT HERE about the butter bell, I figured it would be good to show how we make the butter to go in it.  First, we skim some cream off the top of the milk and put it in a wide mouth quart jar.  We set it out on the counter for a while so it gets to be room temperature.  I think this is the most important thing.  If the cream is room temperature, it 'breaks' into butter very quickly.  If the cream is cold, it takes a lot longer.

Make sure that the lid is on securely or you will have a mess on your hands.  Then simply shake.  You can hear the thick cream sloshing around in the jar.

All of a sudden, you'll feel things change in the jar as the cream 'breaks' and suddenly instead of cream in your jar, you have butter and buttermilk.  It is as simple as that.

I use a long wooden spoon to press the butter to squeeze the buttermilk out.  As the buttermilk is expressed, I pour it into a half pint jar.  This buttermilk will be used to make pancakes, waffles or biscuits.  You can see everything we used to make butter in the photo below.

Here is a close-up of the fresh, creamy, yellow butter that is ready to be spread on some homemade bread.  Homemade butter!  Doesn't get any fresher than this...

While it may make a bit of a mess, it is worth the trouble.

You can always lick the butter off your fingers.

Solving a Pet Peeve at Breakfast

Even though Luna lost her calf, it wasn't a total loss as she's now in milk.  We are milking her one time a day in the evenings when I get home from work.  So now we have an abundance of milk.  That is a good problem to have.  Tonight we had delicious homemade ice cream. 

One thing about having all this milk is that you also have a bunch of cream to skim off the top.  Tricia skimmed a bunch of cream and made some homemade butter.

Fresh milk to drink, butter to eat, and a by-product of butter-making - buttermilk.  We'll likely use this to make pancakes.

In order to store our homemade butter, Tricia pulled out the butter bell.  The butter bell is a contraption that solves and age-old problem for breakfast-eaters everywhere.  Don't you just hate it when you try to spread cold butter that you've just pulled out of the refrigerator onto a piece of toast or a pancake?

The rock-hard butter ends up tearing your toast as you try to spread it with your knife.  There is a better way!  With a butter bell, your butter remains at room temperature and is soft and creamy.

Tricia packed her homemade butter into the top portion of the butter bell.  The top portion is the lid and underneath the lid, inverted, is the bowl that holds all the butter.

Then water is poured into the bottom portion of the butter bell.

The lid/bowl full of butter is then inverted and placed into the bottom portion of the butter bell that holds the water.

The water acts as a seal, keeping out oxygen.  As long as you put fresh water in the butter bell every 3 days, you can keep butter in the butter bell sitting out on the counter at room temperature for 30 days.  And here's the best part - the butter will remain smooth and creamy and your toast will not be brutalized any longer.

Making Homemade Cream Cheese

We hadn't made cream cheese in quite a while.  Azure Standard, a co-op that we order from, just started carrying Cultures for Health and Tricia decided to order a starter kit to try out the cream cheese to see if it would work for making cheesecake. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we normally buy a lot of cream cheese from the store to make cheesecake and radish dip and we normally put big dollups of our pepper jelly over a brick of cream cheese.  No sense in buying all that when you can make it yourself with Daisy and Rosie's rich milk/cream.

So here is the kit, complete with instructions and 4 culture packets.  Each packet is to be used with 1 gallon of milk.  Traditional cream cheese is made with 50% cream and 50% whole milk.  For richer cream cheese, use whole cream.  Tricia just used a gallon of whole milk from Daisy.  Her milk is the richest.  Let's do this!

Slowly heat a gallon of milk to 86 degrees.  Don't heat it fast.

Once at 86 degrees, remove from heat and pour in your starter packet.  Mix it in using an up and down motion versus stirring motion.

Cover it and let sit for 12 hours at room temperature.

After 12 hours, scoop all the curds in a colander in a bowl lined with a cotton rag and lift the rag, tying up the corners, allowing the whey to drip from the curds into a bowl placed below it.  Let drip for 12 hours.

Take it down, opening it up to reveal your cheese.

Knead some kosher salt into it.  Tricia found that in using 1 gallon of whole raw milk, it made:

• 1 3/4 pounds of cream cheese or 28 ounces, and 
• 3/4 gallon of whey

Tricia put 10 ounces of homemade cream cheese aside in a bowl as she was going to make a cream cheese icing for my birthday cake.

Here she is mixing cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar.  Once it is mixed, she stirs in chopped up pecans.

And the result is....  Perfection!

Yeah, we won't be buying cream cheese for Thanksgiving baking this year. Homemade cream cheese was, well... THE ICING ON THE CAKE!