Back to School Food Storage Basics-Powdered Milk

Today Crystal is talking about powdered milk on her Everyday Food Storage website during her Back to School series. You can see her full powdered milk article here. Everyday I plan to list things I learned from that series on my blog to help me better understand it. I am pretty new to the food storage area so I hope these really help me! I bought some powdered milk from an order we took up at church and it was the instant powdered milk. I think that is all I have ever used. My family never noticed when I made some and put it into my empty milk carton. But I never really knew about non-instant powdered milk, so this was a good lesson for me.

Here's what I learned today:
1. There are lots of things you can do with powdered milk besides drinking it. Like making your own sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream soups and just cooking with it. The benefits of doing that are that you will save money if you use the non instant kind.

2. As of August 2009, if you buy non instant powdered milk you would only spend about $1.00 for a gallon of milk made with it. If you made sweetened condensed milk you would spend about 60 cents a can where as at the grocery you would find it for $2-$3 a can. If you made evaporated milk it would cost you 25 cents a can whereas it is usually about $1.00 at the grocery. Those are some big savings!

3. There are two types of powdered milk: instant and non instant.
Instant is puffed with air and it would take 2 #10 cans to = 1 #10 can of instant. So, it is more expensive and takes more room to store. Instant also mixes better for drinks. I have found that I like instant better for drinking.
Non instant does well in baking and is cheaper and takes less room to store.

4. There are milk alternatives which are like a flavored milk drink. They add shortening, corn syrup and other stuff to it so it really is not as healthy of a drink as milk. You can use it in baking but most say you need to use less shortening because it is already in the milk alternative.

Some things I found on Crystal's site that I find helpful about powdered milk is:
1. Powdered milk conversion sheet- this will help you know how to mix the milk.
2. Powdered milk handout- this gives lots of information and recipes on using powdered milk
3. Making Powdered Milk Drinkable - This gives you some great tips on getting your family to drink powdered milk.
4. A video on mixing powdered milk- this video gives tips like using sugar or vanilla to help family members like the taste better and to make sure and serve powdered milk cold.

Some recipes I want to try using powdered milk are:
1. Sweetened Condensed Milk
2. Evaporated Milk
3. Magic Mix
4. In other recipes I already make that call for milk

What I take away from this lesson:
I need to buy some non instant powdered milk and use it in my baking to save money. I probably will still use the instant for drinking because my family seems to really like it, but I might have to try it on them too and see how they react.

Questions I still have after this lesson:
1. If you do not live near an lds cannery are your only other sources to buy it from emergency like companies and how much more expensive are they? I need to go check that out. I wonder why stores do not carry non instant milk.