Reuse your Container

Now that we’ve used up our sour milk in our Sour Milk – Use or Toss? Challenge, let’s talk about how you can reuse that milk container for other purposes. Did you know that milk jugs represent one of the largest volume of plastics in landfills?

I have a pretty planter in front of my fireplace. The container was given to me by a co-worker after Christmas. It originally held a huge amount of goodies that was sent to the company. I had mentioned that I liked the container better than the goodies, and one day it showed up on my desk.

Finally empty!

For those of you just joining this post series, our challenge was to cook with 1/2 gallon of milk that had slightly soured rather than waste money by pouring it down the drain, thereby supporting our goal of saving money and frugal shopping. Where many of you wouldn’t hesitate to dump sour milk down the drain, we made 5 delicious meals, and only used ingredients that were already in my pantry or refrigerator.

Wow! I had no idea that it would take 5 recipes (and 5 posts) just to use up 1/2 gallon of milk! As I mentioned in Post #3, the milk seemed to be multiplying every time I opened the refrigerator. But look at the picture! It’s finally gone.

Secret pancakes

And still we have milk! This is Day 3 of the challenge to use up 1/2 gallon of slightly sour milk so you don’t have to toss it.

This morning, I made pancakes. Nothing special about that, but wait until you hear what I did. (And don’t tell my family!)

I love using Bisquick to make pancakes. I’m too lazy to make them from scratch, even though I know it’s more frugal. (Maybe we’ll come up with our own homemade Bisquick recipe).

Spinach Ravioli with Alfredo Sauce

Tonight we’re having Spinach Ravioli with Alfredo Sauce.

This was extra fun because son#2’s girlfriend was over for dinner, and I was walking her through the steps to make the homemade sauce. With 3 sons and a husband, it was so nice to actually have another female in the house!

The ravioli was purchased at Costco, and comes with 2 packs of herbed parmesan cheese packets. Normally, I just toss the ravioli with a bit of olive oil, add the packets, and serve. But we’re still on our quest to use up the half gallon of milk, which I swear is multiplying in my refrigerator!

My secret ingredient

We’ve all had this happen before…milk that’s just too sour to drink. Do you pour it down the drain? Don’t! Slightly sour milk is fine for cooking. The challenge: use up the 1/2 gallon so I don’t throw it away.

I have 1/2 gallon of fat free milk that no one wants to drink, even me! After performing the “sniff test” more than once, the milk was deemed past the drinkable stage. It’s time to cook creatively!

A half a gallon is a lot of milk! I can’t think of one recipe that would use it all, so it looks like I’ll be cooking all weekend. Here’s how I used up this milk, and by using food already found in my pantry and freezer.