I Can't Believe It's Not Yet Butter

I finally got back to my town after two weeks of a beekeeping training and three at a training for all of G15. My hut was a disaster for over a month after my return (finally clean as of one week ago). Why? How? Simple: it was full of junk I picked up on the trip and I still have no bookshelves. It was easier to leave the hut than stay in it and clean. Note: bookshelf problem is now resolved - I bought two in Kissidougou and I hung a bunch of stuff from the bamboo rafters.

Mango season is just now changing from local to grafted varieties. I wanted to dry as many as possible and get people to do it for themselves, too. So I biked to the next town over, where there's no ban on bamboo. I spent the morning teaching them to build a simple solar drier. They were so happy they immediately built a second one with their own modifications - improvements based on a lifetime of working with bamboo. They gave me the second one, refused payment, and then thrust a calabach (see "Gone Fishin'") full of milk at me.

It was finally decided I would chug over a liter of water and fill two bottles with the milk. I did, took the milk home, and left it until the next day.

When I first got the milk I knew I had to make butter. Margarine is disgusting and I had a sudden craving for a hunk of bread with slabs of real, spreadable milk fat all over it. I opened the first bottle, found it had fermented a bit, and thought pasteurization would surely kill the fermenting bacteria and perhaps boil off the alcohol. I put it into a pot and got the second bottle of milk. I could feel the pressure in it and figured the easiest way to avoid spillage would be to point the mouth of the bottle into the pot of milk before opening it. I cautiously set up the pot on my table, started to loosen the cap, lost control of it, and had a milk explosion.

My hut at this time was hard enough to walk in - I had to dodge piles of junk everywhere and in some places the only viable foot room was created by tossing inhibition out the door and walking on stacks of papers. The explosion did not improve anything. Chunks of fermented milk were everywhere, stuck to everything. As the days passed, I did eventually get it all cleaned up - hunting down different chunks by smell - but that was yet to come. My mind was still set on butter-smeared bread. I pasteurized the milk, let it separate for a day, made butter with the fat, and made hot chocolate with the milk.

My first clue something was wrong came when I had to scrape the fat off the bottom of the pot. Still, no one joins Peace Corps unless they're optimistic. My second clue was when I had to spit out a swig of hot chocolate and dump the rest of that cup. Optimism.

I threw out half a loaf of bread I'd attacked with the butter. On the bright side, the solar drier works. On the bad side, I still haven't managed to get milk home before it ferments.