DIY Dairy

No, not milking cows. The title refers to do-it-yourself dairy products. I've been wanting to try making yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese and more ever since launching this slo-mo, haphazard Unprocessed Project a year ago. Homemade ricotta cheese, our first dairy experiment, turned out to be ridiculously easy.

I'm not ready to tackle yogurt, which requires both cooking and prolonged, temperature-controlled resting. But soon. Making your own yogurt sounds so hippie-ish, doesn't it? Pity that I was born too late to be a hippie.

Today's kitchen lab featured a less ambitious dairy project: sour cream made with a recipe from The Home Creamery--and, credit where it's due, I found this book through one of my favourite blogs, Obscure Canlit Mama.

The process is simple: mix some buttermilk into light cream. Cover and let stand 24 hours in a warm place. Stir, refrigerate another 24 hours to thicken, and then it's ready...we hope! I'll report back if disaster results. Meanwhile, here is the sour-smelling concoction warming in the cupboard over the heat vent, the only cozy spot in our drafty old house.

I was feeling a sense of accomplishment on the unprocessed food file this afternoon, having made not only the sour cream, but also brownies, hummous, and two kinds of scratch pizza, regular and beet-green. And then my son asked if we had any ranch dressing (for the pizza crust). Which of course we did not. And that was simply one dish too many. I invited him into the kitchen ("step away from the computer"), and the rest is edible history.

Joe's creation

Postscript: Anyone trying to feed a family based on Michael Pollan's 5-ingredient food rules will be defeated by the average supermarket dairy aisle. Most commercial dairy products contain long lists of ingredients, including milk protein concentrate (likely imported, made from milk possibly containing the synthetic growth hormone rBGH, which is banned in Canada but not the U.S.) and additives to extend shelf life, thicken, or emulsify, such as guar gum and carrageenan. Why not duck all that?