Who likes powdered milk?
What, no one’s jumping up and down, yelling “Me! Me! Me!”?
That’s because no matter how much you chill it, powdered milk never quite tastes the same as the cold jugs.
Yet, powdered milk is a necessary evil sometimes. Natural disasters or economic woes can mean that spending $3-$4 on the fresh stuff is out of reach. If one has no refrigeration, powdered milk is a life saver.
It’s a good idea to feed it to the family once in a while, so if there is a pressing need, it’s not entirely foreign. But how do you get it down the hatch of stressed out kids?
Don’t drink it!
Here’s what I do.
- Substitute milk for water in recipes. Works really well for oatmeal or hot cereal!
- Make soup. Creamy soups. Think cream of broccoli, potato, chowders… powdered milk is non-fat, so you’ll be adding protein and calories, not clogging up arteries.
- Doctor it up. I try to keep a can of Ovaltine in our hurricane stock with powdered milk. It has extra vitamins for times when we’re eating everything out of a can, and we rarely have it at home, so it’s a “treat”. It does have artificial food colors in it, though, so I also have chocolate syrup on hand, too. (Well, almost always. We’ve been known to break into our hurricane stash for a chocolate fix!). Or, make some hot cocoa mix. All the calcium of milk, but warm and comforting, too. (I skip the pudding mix that is optional for that recipe, but a few chopped chocolate chips in the mix never hurt anyone!)
- Use convenience foods. Use powdered milk to make instant puddings and drink plain water for thirst. (If you cannot have artificial colors, you’ll have to search out natural versions.) Truthfully, made from scratch pudding isn’t difficult, either, but in an emergency you probably won’t have the time or inclination to cook up a batch.
- Add powdered milk to savory dishes to enhance nutrition. Add the powder to mashed potatoes or any gravy dish with lots of flavor for a calcium boost without noticing the taste.
- Make yogurt. It’s easy, and you can strain it to make a creamy spread or mix in fruit for a tasty snack.
A word about using powdered milk to stretch your budget – do the math. Right now, for example, fresh milk is cheaper than powdered milk. in my area. How do I figure?
The cheapest I can get powdered milk is at WalMart, and it’s $6.34 for enough to make 10 quarts. This works out to $2.53 per gallon (63.4¢ per quart, 4 quarts per gallon).
Locally, a gallon of milk is running $1.99 right now, 54¢ cheaper than the powdered.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, you really have to price out fresh milk before you go buying it because it seems like it would be cheaper.
Strangely, my 2 and 4 year old LOVE drinking powdered milk. It makes me want to gag as a beverage but they actually ask for “milk in a box”.
I was floored when I got milk the other day – $1.89 a gallon!
Powdered milk is always good to have on hand though. I’ve never had a glass of it, but used to always have it on hand for things just like you said – mashed potatoes, cooking, etc.
Believe it or not I actually have kids that prefer it.
I do keep it on hand for cooking and such. If I am out of regular milk it saves me that trip to the store and thereby saving some money.
Thanks for the tips!
I admit that I am not fond of it either, but you are right about it being great to cook with!
3.49 per gallon on sale. We use dry for rice mixes, pudding, and hot cocoa as well. I basically use it with everything but not straight. My family would rebel! I get the bulk size at Costco and freeze it to prevent spoilage but it can loose vitamins if frozen to long though.
For a while, the Costco off I-10 in Houston carried Morning Moo Milk. It was a large bucket of powdered milk substitute. It costs about $1 a gallon and tastes a little better than regular powdered milk.
I’ve heard about Morning Moos (maybe from your site?) but somehow I thought it wasn’t actual milk, but some kind of powdered, blended drink!
I got this from their site:http://www.moosmilk.com/
Nutritious Drink Mix – a delicious, milk alternative fortified with vitamins & minerals
Features
· Blend of Grade A Sweet Dairy Whey, and Dairy Solids, and nondairy solids
+ Whey is a rich source of nutrients including carbohydrates, trace minerals, and protein
+ Nearly all of the calcium caseinate, butterfat, and cholesterol from the milk used to produce the cheese remains in the cheese
· Fortified with Vitamins A & D
· 90 Calories per 8 oz serving – 30 calories lower than 2 % milk
· Little or no preservatives
· 9% Lactose vs. 20% in regular milk
· Low-fat – 2 grams of fat per 8 oz serving
· Good source of calcium
I like this post – I need to buy a couple of boxes of powdered milk someday.
I like your creative ideas for using it. If we were ever in a crisis situation we’d plan to use it for cooking and not straight drinking, I think.
Last comment on powdered milk I promise. I stumbled on this today. She does a good job on describing the diff btw powdered mill and moo milk alternative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlSUc2uk5_8
I applaud your efforts to eliminate unhealthy products from your family’s diet. Milk is laden with hormones, even the organic kind. There is no such thing as hormone-free milk.
Excerpted below is a list of the 60-some hormones in your average glass of milk—even the organic, raw, and bovine growth hormone free milk. The list is taken from Dr. Mark Hyman’s article that appeared on Dr. Frank Lipman’s site (great site if you haven’t already seen it). The article, which is here
http://bit.ly/gb9PqW,
happens to be about dairy and sugar causing acne but it’s well worth reading for anyone interested in an overall healthy diet of Real Food, just for the scientific info on milk and sugar alone.
So here’s what you and your family are ingesting with every glass of milk:
* 20α-dihydropregnenolone
* progesterone (from pregnenolone)
* 5α-pregnanedione
* 5α-pregnan-3β-ol-20-one, 20α- and 20β-dihydroprogesterone (from progesterone)
* 5α-androstene-3β17β-diol
* 5α-androstanedione
* 5α-androstan-3β-ol-17-one
* androstenedione
* testosterone
* dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate acyl ester
* insulin like growth factors 1 and 2 (IGF-1 and IGF-2)
* insulin
Cow’s milk is meant for baby calves, not humans. And the way the dairy industry comes by it causes life-long, round-the-clock suffering for living creatures. Not to mention the chance of acne – and who wants that?
Hope you find this info as interesting as I did. Really happy to see that your blog is raising many of your readers’s consciousness about what is in their food, and who exactly is benefiting from all the additives and sub-par ingredients (hint: they are selling it, not eating it).
Cheers,
RC
@RC, thanks for the information. I’m comfortable giving my family milk free from artificial growth hormones, though. Humans have been drinking milk and using milk products for thousands of years and I consider it a ‘traditional’ food. I do worry about the artificial growth hormones, which is why I seek out hormone free products (understanding, of course, that all animal foods contain natural hormones.)
Hello milehimama,
you say milk is a traditional food..well that is not so true. Only a small percentage of people had milk as food when people tamed animals.
There are a few caucasian and eurasian people and even less africans who kept animals and milked them.
Most african,nearly all asian, the native american people, they all did not have milk for thousand of years.
And the peple who had animals that gave milk, never had much milk.
Firstly most of the milk was needed for the calf/kid and after that there was often only half a cup of milk left.
For thousand of years milk was food for the rich, the ill and the old.
Would you come around with half a cup of milk?
But that is how it was…dairy animals produced much less milk than nowadays and only in the last couple of centuries did we breed them to produce such unnatural ammounts of milk.
Just imagine a horse with a cow udder, seems unnatural?
Then imagine that some hundred years ago most dairy animals had not much bigger udders than horses while laktating.
The big udder would have been in the way, no running with big milk jugs between the hind legs, easy prey, easily hurt while running.
The big udder is unnatural and is hurting the bones, muscles, joints with the weight, they are painfully big and also every dairy animal has an inflammed udder.
Udder infection is the cause why most cows are going to slaughter with 3 or 4 years when in earlier years they were milked for 9 years and longer.
In every milk sample there is pus found because the overstrained udder that is milked two times a day instead of 6 times by a calf,is inflamed.
The milk is sold with pus because it is not possible otherwise…the milk is collected in one tank so the milk with more germs and pus is diluted by milk with less pus.
Then it is sterilised, homogenised and sold…the only requirement is that the milk must not have more pus than allowed. If that is the case the farmer can dilute the milk of an ill cow with the milk of a cow with less inflamation.
It is not even a requirement for the farmer to treat the cow and keep the milk away till the numbers are better, he just has to dillute it enough so it meets the standard.
70% of all produced antibiotics are used for farm animals..and then people wonder why there are super germs resistent against medication.
So if you think milk is a traditional food, then also keep traditional standards.
Milk and dairy products were not common in the thousand of years where some people got to eat and drink it.
Even when you had a cow or a goat you did not have much milk, first the calf, then making butter and cheese, selling the butter,keeping the cheese for the time when the cow did not give milk(which was 4-6 months in the traditional times) and then using the spare whey and milk, fermenting it and rarely drinking it as it was.
I have to disagree with the thought that milk is not a traditional food. It’s pretty much the first food every single human child eats.
Now, farmed animal milk might be a different story. And you are correct- cheese is basically just a way to store milk long term without refrigeration.
Good god i read the ingredients for this morning moo milk alternative
Ingredients: Sweet whey, creamer (coconut oil, corn syrup
solids, sodium caseinate [a milk derivative], dipotassium
phosphate, sugar, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate
80, sodium silicoaluminate, tetrasodium
pyrophosphate, soy lecithin), nonfat milk, sugar,
guar gum, vitamin A, vitamin D.
Ok..corn sirup..why? The caseinate I could understand but why polysorbate, sodium silicon-aluminate and tetrasodium pyrophosphate???
Polysorbate are in hair conditioner, maybe so it does not foam too much and has a silky mouth feel? And the silicon aluminate and tetrasodium pyrophasphate..I am not sure but I think these are in fireworks and varnish for cars.
Polysorbate are known to be an allergy risk, disturbing the skin barriers and making it easy for irritating and toxic substances to pass the skin barrier. This is not different for internal use..so germs and other stuff has it easy to enter the body..and this is food?
And aluminium poses a risk of beeing a factor in getting alzheimers disease
So milehimama,
you surely mean with traditional milk as humans first food, the milk of a human mother?
Because I have never seen a human newborn suckling on the udder of a cow as its first food.
So if you want to milk human women and package their milk and sell it or make cheese from it, that would be traditional.
But people react as if human milk, the natural milk for humans, is contaginous if it is turned into ice cream.
People scrunch up their faces in disgust with the argument..what..that is baby food..I do not want to drink milk from a stranger.
Cow milk from an unknown source instead..normal.
Camel milk…does not sound so normal
elk milk
whale milk
dog milk..ok it gets disgusting
chimpanzee milk…yuck..even when chimpanzee milk is much closer to humane milk than cow
If we would feed a human infant unprepared bovine milk, or dog milk, or cat milk…the human infant would sooner or later die.
Cow milk has to be processed more or less heavily to be usefull for human infants and even than it is lacking, even with the modern methods we have.
Sure, it is better than 50 years ago and it is a lifesaver when the mother can not nurse, but still not a traditional food.
It is a big problem that non human breastmilk is thought as an needed item in human nutrition.
People act as if they would die if they could not drink breastmilk as adults.
Which other animal is drinking babymilk when it is grown up?
Would we not look a bit strange if a 10 year old horse would still walk up to a mare and suckle? Or an elephant..or maybe a whale?
Even stranger when a horse would walk up to a dog and start nursing.
But we nurse from a cow…holy moly!
So grown ups should drink milk? Then why do we wean babies when they would need breastmilk as an adult?
Really, adults drinking breast milk?
Just because we drink the breast milk of cows, it is not less strange that grown up men and women drink breast milk.
It is only our culture which makes us believe that it is normal, natural or even absolutely needed to drink breast milk as an adult
I think you will find that video funny, it is from a comedy show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc1E7z6rH6k
Breast milk from a different species may have been a life saver in earlier times, but now in the ammount we use it and from cows feed genetically modified foods and forced to produce so much milk that the animal is in constant pain…no longer a life saver, rather a life endangerer
Since you live in Houston do you go to the LDS cannery for bulk purchases? I have been there once. I keep thinking I will have a chance to get back there again soon.
We moved to south Texas in March.
debbieo
You know, I had a nice laugh! When I first started showing an interest in local foods, “real” foods, etc, my husband was very supportive but also added, “Please don’t turn into one of THOSE people.” lol Still giggling…