Who'll drink the milk?

The worst part about having no kids left at home? We're going to have to start buying milk in fractions of gallons and that's what old people do. The milkman delivered quarts of milk to my grandparents. Quarts! I remember bringing the quaint little cartons into the house and wondering why they even bothered with such small quantities. Christopher drinks a quart in one sitting. We used to buy two gallons at a time, then finally realized that we needed only one at at time. I have a feeling I'll be dumping partially consumed gallons of milk that have gone sour until I can ease myself into buying half gallons. But quarts? Old people buy quarts because there's no one left at home to drink it all up before it spoils. No one left at home.

Comments

[Kim]

Found your blog through the CE-L list. My hubby and I have been in the same boat because I'm not a big milk drinker, so if hubby doesn't drink most of the gallon of milk, it gets thrown away. Did you know that you can also freeze milk? You can freeze it for up to a month (some sites says up to three months, if you freeze it well before the sell-by date). We used to buy a gallon of whole milk, mix half of it with nonfat dry milk and freeze the other half. When you thaw the milk, it can be a little grainy, but it's still good to drink. Frozen milk is also good for baking, you could conceivably freeze it in smaller 1-cup containers for this. Google up "freeze milk" and you'll find several sites with tips and info.

[Therese]

Hi Donna!

We regularly dump the quarter or so of a half-gallon of milk, or else give it to the kitties and dog before it has a chance to go bad. I have a horror of sour milk -- I never liked milk much in the first place & milk gone bad is evil.

We didn't have to downsize to half-gallons, though, because we never used so much milk that we needed a whole gallon in the first place. Unless several kids were coming for a sleepover.

You might try keeping pudding mixes on hand for using up that milk before it's chunky.

Good luck with the empty nest transition. We found the 'honeymoon' aspects a nice surprise!