YESTERDAY’S MILK

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3830, 6 November 1936, Page 8

YESTERDAY’S MILK

DON’T THROW IT AWAY. In hot and sultry weather most housewives find it difficult to keep milk fresh and in good condition for any length of time. Milk turned sour by thundery conditions is often poured down the sink, proving a considerable deficit in the weekly budget. Turned milk may look and taste ob jectionable, yet it can be put to good use by careful housewives. Milk “gone sour” makes as good puddings as fresh milk if properly boiled. A good plan to save milk is to set the jug or bowl in a receptacle full of cold water. However, if hot water is poured on milk which has become “broken” or sour, and the mixture allowed to cool for a few hours, a really refreshing drink is obtained. In some parts of the country people use nothing else when a cheap, thirstslaking beverage is required. Sometimes sour milk forms into lumps. These are often used by coun-try-folk as a substitute for butter. Spread over bread the milk lumps are tasty and nourishing. The curds of buttermilk are also used by country people as a substitute for cheese. The northern islanders call these curds “churn-milk,” and give them to their children in bowls full of fresh milk. Sharp milk is also kept as a drink or is used in the baking of home-made meal or flour cakes. Sour milk with bits of broken bread is a favourite dish with some people, often taking the place of tea. Old crofting people say milk is never fit to be tasted until it has stood in the pail or chum for three or four days, and the smellier it is the better! DRINKS AND DISHES. Such “old, run milk” is with most people unpopular on account of its strong odour, but it makes a satisfying drink all the same. With oatmeal

added such “old milk” can be relished as a quickly made and nutritive dish. A drink for an invalid is made by diluting meal with boiling sour milk, with sugar, salt, pepper, or other seasoning added according to taste. Milk gone bad with the heat can be used instead of water for making porridge. “Beast,” or the milk of a newlycalved cow is considered a delicacy by some milk-lovers. When the cows are yielding plenty of milk the crofting people are sometimes hard put to it to make use of all the milk. They very seldom destroy any of the milk, however, even in the hottest weather. What is left of the daily yield after selling or, at times, giving away to neighbouring people, they use in one form or another, keeping it for drinking purposes, or in its solid form as a wholesome part of each meal from breakfast to supper. Sometimes potatoes are eaten, either boiled or roasted, with sour milk, and again, dried salt fish are eaten with meal cakes or flour scones, washed down with sharp-tasting “broken” milk. A strong-tasting but health-giving dish is a mixture of oatmeal dried in a.kettle over the fire, mixed with fish liver which has been melted in a pan, with “old milk” added. In this, and similar ways, the country people economise on butter, bread, and other foods.