More about Milk Allergy

Well I have had a busy few days.

I always like to be as frugal as possible so it was the usual task of digging deep into the internet to find ways to manage a Milk Allergy cheaply.

Soy milk made at home the easy way

I found a Soy milk maker on ebay and ordered it. It came yesterday.
The Instructions are in Chinese pictogram style writing but luckily they also include a very basic English translation.
Last night I soaked my first batch of organic soy beans(bought in bulk on Amazon for £21/5KG).

This morning I was up early and rinsed the beans(now about thrice their size).
They went into the bottom of the machine with a Litre of water.

I pressed the button and waited.
First it heats up and then whirrs around with a stick blender thing that comes out of its lid.
This process pauses and repeats and 20 minutes later there is a big jug of Soy milk which needs straining.
The milk looks just like the stuff you buy in Sainsburys.
Its very hot so needs to cool before you can really do the next bit.

The remaining strained out sludge is called Okara and I shall be looking into what to do with it later.

I put most of the milk in a big clean coffee jar and a tiny bit in a glass with a dot of vanilla extract and a few grains of sugar.
It was yummy.

I need to get something finer to strain the okara out as the sieve, although quite fine, isn't small enough mesh really.

Pricing this up (just beans per litre) it would cost me 27pence a litre which is nearly half the price of cows milk bought in UHT. And about £1 cheaper per litre than Soy milk in Sains where it is cheaper than the health shops.

The machine cost me £58 but takes all the hassle out of making the milk.
You can do it in a saucepan with a blender to cut up the beans but I like the convenience of the machine enough for the price.

I am soaking another batch of beans for making soy yoghurt which I shall do this evening.

Sausages have milk in! Who knew?

Another thing I would miss enormously are Sausages.

Quite a lot of sausages have milk powder in them so they are out.

I now have a meat grinder with a sausage making attachment so that I can make sausages without the milk.

Yesterday, I made some bangers with the new contraption.
It was very easy.
I used my blender to make bread crumbs to eke out the meat.
Added Herbs and seasoning to the crumbs.
Cut up some Belly of Pork with scissors and mixed it all together with my hands.

You have to be very fussy about cleanliness for sausage making else you would give yourself food poisoning.
The machine parts get washed first. Then immediately after use and are all oiled for the next use.

I managed to make enough sausages for about 16 links.

This is not cheaper than Asda Cheapo bangers at £1 for 20 frozen  or 50p for 8 fresh but they were so much less greasy (my microwave browner is usually overflowing with fat when they are cooked) and the flavour was very very nice.
It cost me £79 for the grinder and £3 for the sausage casings.
The casings will last a while as I dont think I even used a 1/4 of the amount.

You can use a hand mincer/grinder to make the sausages but they are hard work and you are in a sort of lottery when you buy a mincer due to the poor manufacture.
A really good one is about £40.

There are some meat grinders that run on electricity for anywhere from about £30 but they are priced low to sell abundantly and often are under powered or shoddy workmanship.



I shall be trying to make Tofu and cheese in future weeks and will increase my store of herbs for variations on the sausage front.