SEE FISH EXPERIMENT

by Stefanie—fish #2

So I've been experimenting a little making whey. Whey is a mineral rich liquid that comes from milk and is used as a starter culture for lacto-fermented vegetables and fruits, for soaking grains, and as a digestive aid. You can make it from raw milk, piima milk, buttermilk, yogurt, etc. The first time I tried making it I used raw milk--and a whole gallon at that. It was rough. Yesterday I tried making it from yogurt, and it went a bit smoother. You can google "how to make whey" and find all sorts of methods. I originally used Sally Fallon's instructions in her book Nourishing Traditions. However you do it, you need to start with a high quality, preferably raw, non-pasteurized, non-homogenized product. I couldn't find yogurt that was not pasteurized (without making it myself) but found some that was high quality and full of live cultures--so I went with it.

Basically I just put a strainer over a bowl, lined it with cheese cloth (you can use a tea towel), and plopped the yogurt in. After about an hour or so I tied up the cheese cloth, hung it from a knob on my cupboard, and let it drip into the bowl. I let it drip overnight. Once it had quit dripping, I untied the cheese cloth to reveal some delicious cream cheese. It has a little tartness to it like yogurt, but turned out much better than the cream cheese from the raw milk. (I do need to give the raw milk another chance. Things that I make the first time rarely turn out). And, of course, I had a bowl full of whey. According to Sally (Fallon, that is) the cream cheese by-product of this process is far superior to commercial cream cheese. She says, refrigerated, the cheese will last up to 1 month and the whey for 6 months.

So now I'm going to take the whey and try to make some lacto-fermented vegetables. Hmmmm...Maybe the cream cheese will end up on the the top of one more zucchini cake.

I'll post on my progress...

To your health!