Homemade dairy

You've heard me shout from the rooftops about our local milk.  I won't bore you with the details of it again.  However, I will try to entice you by showing you all of the things I can do with this awesome milk.  It's not homogenized (we get 8oz of cream on every gallon) and it's low vat-pasteurized.  That means it kills the bad bacteria but keeps all the good stuff including vitamins and minerals.  Conventional $1.99/gallon milk is often made of powdered milk, is ultra-pasteurized (kills every.thing.), they add the vitamins back in, and the cows never see the sunshine or are treated properly.  Whoops, I bored you again didn't I?  Sorry ;)

Homemade butter with a food processor or blender & with a stand mixer
Homemade yogurt in a yogurt maker (the crockpot recipe was a bust :(
Homemade sour cream & homemade cream cheese

I've got my eye on a few used yogurt makers on eBay and may stop by the thrift stores tomorrow to see if I can find one.

We go through a 1/2 gallon of yogurt, 16oz of sour cream, 1lb of butter, and 8oz of cream cheese a week.  That's on top of the 4-5 gallons of milk we drink.  The milk costs $5/gallon (my 10th gallon is FREE and I've already recieved 2 free gallons).  The 1/2 gallon of yogurt is $4.89, the sour cream is $2.89, the butter is $2.50 and the cream cheese is $3.00.  None of these are organic or all-natural because we can't afford it.  It bothers me when we can't buy organic for something we eat so frequently.  So, the above recipes and the yogurt maker will ease my mind and certainly taste better :)