What is this mess?!!!
That was the question!
When we first arrived in Shkoder, I noticed that some of the vegetable stands had a few randomly packaged bottles of milk. What I mean is that in a 1.5 liter Coca-Cola or orange juice bottle, there looked to be milk, instead. They were usually on the ground, unrefrigerated. It looked rather gross to me, and I was confused by it.
After a couple of weeks or so, we learned that it was fresh, local milk. It was a little bit cheaper than the pasteurized and homogenized milk sold at the bakeries and stores.
We began to buy a couple of bottles every morning that we could. The older boys would go out early in the morning to get them before they were sold out.
We were staying at the hostel then. The boys would cook it at night, put it in the refrigerator, and make butter from the cream that had risen to the top overnight. They would add a little bit of salt, and it was quite good to spread on the fresh bakery bread. Butter is a bit more expensive here than what we were used to in the US.
When we moved to the house, we began buying processed milk from the store again. We are on the other side of town from the hostel. We weren't seeing the fresh milk anywhere around us. The kids had seen men delivering milk on mopeds. We were hoping find someone to deliver to us, but who, and how?! We are in a foreign land, and there are different systems here!
I began to notice men on mopeds that were loaded down with bottles of milk. Some had many cloth bags filled with bottles hanging from both handlebars, as well as from the crate on the back. I couldn't just stop them while they were scooting down the road.
One day, while I was shopping with one of the boys on the other side of town, we came across a moped, loaded with bottles, but parked. There were several people standing around. I tried my best to ask, with the help of Google Translate, about getting milk delivered to my house across town. They found a woman to help me who spoke English. She brought me over to someone who she said would be good. We got my husband on the phone and they made arrangements to have four bottles (6 liters) delivered daily, starting the following morning. He said that he would be there at 7:30.
My family and I were very excited about this. Finally, fresh milk! We'd be able to make butter, cream, half and half, etc. Hopefully it'd be healthier, we wouldn't have to go out daily to get milk… It had been about a month and a half that we had been in our house and had been trying to find a way to get fresh milk.
The morning came, and at 7:30, we heard the sound of a moped coming down our road. It stopped at our gate and the driver banged on our gate. We we opened the door. He met the family and talked with my husband a little. He gave us four bottles of milk and we paid him 600 leke (about $6).
We went in, heated the milk, then put it in the refrigerator immediately to cool. We bottled it once it had cooled. Much to our disappointment, when we put it in our oats the next the morning, it didn't taste very good. We wondered if he had given us leftover milk from a previous day that he hadn't sold. After all, he had had several full bottles in his crate at 11am the day that I had met him.
The next day, we went through the same process and had the same results. My family was not too excited about this. My husband decided to ask our nextdoor neighbor about this. She told us that she would talk to her milk man. My husband told our man that we were going to stop having him deliver the milk due to it being sour.
We talked to Mariana's man and made an agreement with him. Being cautious, we decided to start with only two bottles a day. I hadn't disposed of any of the sour milk yet, so we had a growing amount of aging milk in the house.
We cooked the milk that we had just gotten, which tasted fine when I tested it in the pot(as the others also had) and put it in the refrigerator. I decided to taste it later that day while it was still in the pot in the refrigerator. Much to my dismay, it was sour! I also noticed that it was still warm after being in the refrigerator for at least six hours!
Off we went to ask Mariana how she handles the milk. She advised us to cool the milk before putting it in the refrigerator, and to use glass bottles. She was so sweet to give us a couple of her glass bottles, as well as a strainer. We followed her advice and had success.
However, we still had 24 liters of milk that I didn't want to go to waste, if I could help it. I was very excited when I saw that the older milk had separated, thickened, and risen to the top, I have made and used bread starters for many years, and have made yogurt before, so I knew the benefits of fermentation.
I began to strain out the liquid, which is called whey. I wrapped the solids in a woven cloth, and twisted and squeezed as much liquid out as I could. My daughter got involved and looked like a pro! It ended up being exactly like feta cheese! We sprinkled it over our salad that evening. It was very satisfying mentally, and it tasted great.
I sat down and watched several videos on making cheese. People usually heat it up and then add lemon juice or vinegar. I did that to some of the milk, and as I was stirring it, it became stringy. I had made mozzarella cheese! I couldn't help but think about the women years ago discovery the same things in the same way.
It was a big project because of the amount that we were dealing with, but it was a great learning experience for the whole family!
The little kids have spent hours riding their bikes around the yard with crates of empty bottles strapped onto their bikes, pretending that they are the milk man. When they hear the moped coming down our quiet street every morning and stop at our gate, they love to run out with the empty bottles from the previous day. Our three year old spends a good part of his day making the sound of the moped with his mouth. It has been a cultural change that we have all enjoyed.
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