How to skim cream + recipes for using the skim milk! (video)

When we were living in town and I was dreaming of having our own homestead, complete with a doe-eyed Jersey cow, I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. In Little Town on the Prairie, she talks about milking cows in the springtime -

“When Laura had stripped the last creamy drops of milk, she lugged the pail to the shanty. Ma poured some of the warm new milk into the calf’s pail. The rest she strained through a clean white cloth into tin milk pans, and Laura carefully carried them down cellar while Ma skimmed thick cream from last night’s milk.”

Over a year later, we moved to a homestead and brought home Bessie, a doe-eyed Jersey. I got my first taste of what it was like to milk a cow by hand and strip those creamy drops of milk from her udder. I strained and refrigerated the milk, and the next day it had separated and I was finally going to be able to skim cream from our homestead milk for the first time.

In this video, I show you how to skim cream the most simple way - using a ladle to reach inside a wide mouth jar. I also show you how to make 2 of the most common things I use skimmed milk for - cottage cheese and “cream of” soup substitute (white gravy). Next week, I’ll start sharing a series of recipes for using white gravy.