Dear Aunty Thistledown

Dear Aunty Thistledown,
I fear the supermarkets will drive me over the edge. The queues, the bouncers, stumbling down the aisles with fogged up glasses to elbow in for the last of the dairy products. It’s the world’s most tedious night club. Please, I beg you, there has to be a better way.
Regards,
Shopper on the edge

Dearest Shopper,
I don’t want to admit defeat too early, but, reading between the lines, I think this might be a matter for the police. Who is making you go to the supermarket? Do they have weapons? Should I call someone on your behalf?

I, for one, very rarely go to the supermarket. Not after the first lockdown when our weekly online order of six litres of milk and 3kg of yoghurt was swiftly recategorised as “panic shopping”.

We learned that our entrenched shopping habits, which had always been celebrated in the past, were morally bankrupt and we were left to fend for ourselves.

Thankfully, we discovered that there is a vast array of local businesses that provide the same goods as the supermarket. If you ask around, someone will tell you their dealer.

We struck it lucky with a local food wholesaler who supplies bakeries and restaurants. Kaans could not possibly look down on us for buying multiple bottles of milk when they were brazenly dealing 2.5kg cans of tomatoes and four-litre flagons of olive oil.

But, we have a dedicated milk supplier now. It’s a slippery slope, this shopping around thing. We have turned to harder stuff. We are now buying milk powder.

We get it delivered 8kg at a time from Milligans.co.nz. Yes, it’s the same people who make your pet lamb’s milk, but I promise you this stuff is for humans. A delivery costs us $86 and it makes up 64 litres of the sweet white stuff. That’s about $1.35/L for milk. We just wanted the milk, but we will take that 50% discount too.

We mix it up in a 2L Sistema juice jug with an electric whisk and pop it in the fridge. Visitors will often assume that we keep a house cow or that we know where to find a milk vending machine. Either way, it tastes the same as whatever milk people have decided they are drinking.

We also use the powder to keep us in yoghurt. Ruapehu District Council, for reasons unknown, has detailed information on turning milk powder into yoghurt on its website. We have one of those easy-yo makers which is basically a glorified thermos for holding a jar in boiling water. If you look in your “just in case” cupboard of clutter, you probably own one too. If not, Ruapehu DC says you can get by with a jar wrapped in a blanket.

The more milk powder you put into your yoghurt mix, the sweeter and thicker it will be. Although sweetness is in the eye of the beholder, you may like to add some sugar or berries to your yoghurt once it’s done.

We make a thick Greek-type yoghurt 1L at a time. This is two cups of milk powder (about $2.70’s worth) into a 1L jar with a couple of tablespoons of yoghurt retained from the last batch. Or, a sachet of starter culture (about $1.40 each from www.countrytrading.co) for the times when the old yoghurt fails the sniff test. Top up the jar with water and mix well. Place it somewhere warm (i.e. the yoghurt maker) for about eight hours or until you remember you were making yoghurt.

The internet says you can also make butter by blending milk powder, oil and water. The internet sometimes lies. The resulting table spread is all right. But, I would not call it butter outside of wartime.

Hmm wartime. Oh dear! I completely forgot about your potential hostage situation! Let’s see… How about you fill your trolley with bales of toilet paper? That should be enough to alert the authorities.

Aunty Thistledown

• Cali Thistledown lives on a farm where all the gates are tied together with baling twine and broken dreams. While she rarely knows what day it is, she has a rolodex of experts to call on to get the info you need. She’s Kiwi agriculture’s agony aunt. Contact our editor if you have a question for her terry.brosnahan@nzfarmlife.co.nz