Frozen Milk

In the US, you go to the grocery store whenever you please and as long as you've chosen a reputable place and are careful to look at the date, you can buy milk with a rather long expiration date of usually at least 2 weeks.

In Grenada, you have to go to the grocery store on certain days of the week to actually get milk while it's in stock, and you have to be extremely careful when you look at the dates to make sure you get the longest expiration date possible (one week). You also have to decide if it's worth nearly $7 for a gallon or nearly $4 for a quart.

At home, I drink a ton of milk. Perhaps because someone else is paying for it, perhaps because I drink less water, or perhaps because I just happen to think about it more (and we have milk every night with dinner). Who knows. In Grenada, I really don't drink much milk. I'm happy enough to drink glasses of water all day and I really hate how expensive and short lasting it is. I rarely go through a quart before it expires (luckily sometimes it's still useable for a few days past expiration). I put it in cereal for the most part, occasionally in recipes, and rarely just in a glass.

One of my roommates last term used to buy milk and then freeze it. My other roommate and I laughed at her, made odd faces at her, and generally thought that was the strangest and weirdest thing ever, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a good idea. I'm not interested in freezing a whole bunch, but I figured if I could freeze half of a quart and then split the whole thing between two weeks, no harm no foul and money saved! When I was home over winter break, I found a nice cheap container to store my frozen milk in and gave it a shot for the first time last week.

I pulled the second container out yesterday afternoon to defrost in the fridge as the other container was used up. Here's what I've learned so far: it takes an obscene amount of time to defrost milk! No really, it's been nearly 24 hours now and there is still a big chunk of frozen milk in there! In the future, I will have to remember to take it out in advanced or else I might be left milk-less one morning. Perhaps it's related to the fat content of the milk? I accidentally bought whole milk last week (they mismatched the cap color with the label so I didn't notice I had the wrong one until much later) instead of skim. We shall see!