Learned something new today!

As most of you know, our home in France is on a hilltop, in the middle of nowhere really, right in the heart of Charolais cow country. The region is famous for their Charolais beef, and our property is surrounded by fields usually full of those gorgeous white Charolais cows which belong to our closest neighbour, farmer Thierry. But a little while ago, a brown and white cow appeared amongst one of the herds, and I was pretty sure it was a milch cow. 

This afternoon, Thierry and his son Corentin came to the gate with a lidded bucket for me. My first thought was, omg, they have been collecting big juicy snails after the rains and are going to offer some to me.......... You can imagine my relief when they told me that it was milk fresh from their new milch cow! I had to chuckle, he was practically supplying the whole neighbourhood because his cow was giving sooo much milk ( thats the fabulous fresh grass she nibbles on all day long :-) ). OK....... raw milk.......... what do I do? I knew it had to be pasteurised, but how? Thank goodness for the internet! I read a large number of articles and it turns out that making milk safe by pasteurising is not at all difficult. I didn't have a double boiler, so a smaller saucepan inside a larger one did the trick, and apart from that I just needed a thermometer, and the wine and beer making thermometer was fine for that. 

I wanted to take pictures doing it, but didn't have enough hands, lolol, had to keep stirring with one hand and keeping the thermometer in the milk with the other hand, but somehow managed to take one with my phone, lol -

Bottled it after rapid cooling in icecold water in the sink, and just had some. OMG, it is so deliciously rich and creamy and shoobydoobydoo!

I love living in the countryside.

Toodlepip xxx