It seems I have a bit of a reputation as a sustainable Ms Fix-It. The person you call when you don’t want to waste something but you don’t know what to do with it.
The other day I took a call from a local cafe to say, “We’ve got 26 litres of milk that’s best before tomorrow and we were about tip it down the sink but wondered if you had a use for it instead?”
By Green Connect general manager Kylie Flament
This was at 3pm on my day off, I had my two young kids with me and it had already been a long week. My energy levels were low but I couldn’t bear the thought of good food going to waste so I said, “Leave it with me.”
“We close at 4pm so just swing by before then,” they said.
Nothing like a short deadline to fuel some creative thinking…
My mind raced with who I could call, how I could get it to one of the community organisations we had been sending food to via Green Connect, whether they could use it before it went off, whether I could get to them before they closed for the day… Unlikely and very unlikely. It didn’t look good. Surely something could be done with the milk though! I posted a quick message on a couple of Facebook groups to ask if anyone could help rescue it.
“Mum, can we go in now?” A tug on my jumper reminded me I had other things I should have been doing. We were outside the Post Office, on a mission to pick up a mystery package. A friend had sent me a message a few days ago to say, “When something unusual arrives, it’s from me. I hope you like it!”
We handed over our “You’ve missed a parcel” note and got our package. It was a small box with a big red note on top saying the items inside needed to be refrigerated as soon as possible. Even more intrigued, I ripped it open, and then burst out laughing. It was a Make Your Own Cheese kit. It came with everything you needed except milk. Lots of milk.
I called up the cafe, still laughing. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” I said. And that was the day that two neighbours and I saved 26 litres of milk by turning it into ricotta and yoghurt.
It’s funny how things just work out so deliciously sometimes.
Make your own ricotta
Ingredients: Milk (full cream or light), white vinegar
Quick method: Heat milk until frothing, add a dash of vinegar, strain through muslin.
Method explained: Heat the milk in a pot until it is frothing on top. Stir gently but often to avoid the milk sticking to the bottom of the pot. Turn the heat off.
Pour in white vinegar (I use about 2 tbsp for every 1 litre of milk). Leave it alone for a minute and then swirl a spoon through it. The curds (milk solids) and whey (watery stuff) should have separated. If it still looks like milk, add a bit more vinegar and leave it for another minute, then swirl a spoon through again.
Once separated, pour it through a muslin cloth (a clean teatowel works fine too – one where you can see holes between the threads if possible, or it will take too long). I put the muslin cloth inside a colander inside a bowl and pour it in.
Once the whey drains out, what’s left in the cloth is ricotta (and delicious on pancakes with honey and fruit, or in spinach and ricotta pasta or pastries!).
The whey can be used to make pancakes, fritters, naan bread and more. Both will keep in the fridge for a few days, even if the milk was about to expire, giving it a longer shelf life. Enjoy!
Editor’s note: Congratulations to Kylie! On November 19, at a black-tie gala event at WIN Entertainment Centre in Wollongong, Kylie was named Outstanding Young Business Leader at the 2021 IMB Bank Illawarra Business Awards.
