I have a little nephew that calls milk at my house “Ice Cream Milk”.  I have a niece that is amazed that I can “make” my own milk without a cow in the back yard!   It is actually very easy… I just use powdered.

Ok, stop the gagging and hear me out.  When I was a kid my mom tried to pull the powdered milk thing on me too.  It didn’t go over very well.  I had to really think long and hard before I tried this experiment on my kids – and I’m very grateful it has worked!  About a year ago I was buying as much as 9 gallons a week (5 boys will do that to you).  And I was paying almost $3 a gallon!  This was a HUGE chunk of my grocery bill and I started searching for a way to trim it.  Then one day a friend of mine directed me to EveryDayFoodStorage.net – a great blog about food storage that has some wonderful recipes.  I checked out her information about dried milk (not instant) and decided to give it a try.

Now, I have to admit, it wasn’t an easy sell.  I add vanilla and a little sugar (1 ½ teaspoon per gallon) to the drinking milk I make (hence the “ice cream milk”) to make it more appealing. My older kids aren’t drinking quite as much milk as they used to but I consider it to be a great success.  I NEVER run out of milk.  My little one drinks it without a problem.  My older ones didn’t need to be drinking half a gallon of milk at one sitting (which they were doing before) but they can if they want to now.  They can, because I only pay $1.78 a gallon by using dry!  I saved over a dollar a gallon which at 9 gallons a week has been saving me a bundle!

I recently gave my kids the option to go back to regular milk.  All but one of them dismissed the idea immediately.  If you aren’t ready to completely give up your regular milk, what about trying it just for milk you use to bake and cook with?  The little savings really add up over time.