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Post by YoungAllotmenteer on Jan 30, 2014 3:59:24 GMT -5
I first tried raw milk in Zimbabwe and loved it. It's hard but not impossible to get hold of in the UK but tends to be unaffordable.
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Post by RpR on Jan 30, 2014 14:03:57 GMT -5
I do it like she does, boil your jam for 20 minutes to get it to setting point-at that stage it must be sterile. Pre heat the jars to sterilize them. Pour the jam in the jar, and put on the airtight screw on lid. As the jam cools, the lid pops down, as the cooling jam contracts. Vacum sealed. Never had an issue with any sort of infection or mould. I thought the whole point was that the osmotic pressure (?) of the high sugar content made it impossible for bugs to survive, meaning all the sterilizing was really a belt and braces approach anyway. Thinks, candied peel, prosciutto, salami, dried fruit, sun dried tomatoes, quince paste, etc etc. T[/quote]
With the exception of bean pickles, which are cold processed, that is the way my grandparents and mother always did it.
I have used items canned that way that are decades old, including meat. (not dill pickles as they get mushy.)
My aunt would use wax on jelly more often than not.
As an aside, today's boxed, not bottled, milk can last a very long time.
I just used a half-gallon opened up at Christmas time last week-end and I have another unopened half-gallon sitting in the fridge at home. I have done this fairly often with boxed milk and cream. (The cream does not usually go sour but gets rather thick if left too long.) I have transferred milk from a plastic jug to a card-board container and had a brand of milk that would not last a month in plastic go considerably longer in card-board.
The bottled stuff, whether glass or plastic has a rather short life span before going sour most of the time.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 30, 2014 15:57:17 GMT -5
Frankly, the fact that "milk" would fail to go sour after being opened for a month is disturbing. Milk is an ideal growth media for an broad spectrum of micro-organisms. I understand that the shelf stable boxed milk is sterile, but the act of opening the box should inoculate something into the milk. If its still good a month later they must be adding some kind of anti-microbial to it.
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Post by flowerweaver on Feb 3, 2014 8:44:24 GMT -5
Perhaps the most disturbing dairy item I've run across is ice cream that doesn't melt. It was served to me at the same time (and on the same plate) as a hot dinner at a fundraiser I attended. Since I'm lactose intolerant it just sat there the entire evening in its glistening, perfectly round icy glob. I can't imagine what chemical was added to achieve this, but it was very, very scary!
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