This post is a part of The Nourishing Gourmet’s Weekly Pennywise Platters Carnival. Welcome to all new readers!
The suggested theme that I’m embracing today is “reducing waste in your kitchen.” I love finding new ways to talk about breastfeeding and this is a great topic for it. How can moms reduce wasted breast milk?
I’ve never been a mom who pumps her milk but I know that many of my readers are or have been. And I know some of you have excess milk supply, and sometimes even have to throw out some of your milk when you make too much! I can imagine only too well how awful that must feel, after having endured pumping for X amount of minutes only to pour it down the drain. I have read enough tweets about the pain and suffering of spilling it but throwing it out can’t feel that great either. Either way, it’s wasted.
So why not use that milk in something for yourself? Many breastfeeding moms probably already do this, but for those who don’t know, you can cook and bake with breast milk. Cow milk is made for baby cows and yet we drink it without batting an eye. Breast milk is made for baby humans. So why not give it a try? I’m sure it works better than soy milk, which is what I use in most of my personal cooking. Breastfeeding is already the most frugal source of food for our babies; therefore, breast milk is a very frugal replacement for cow’s milk.
I’m not suggesting you pour it in a cup and drink it up for breaskfast but why not add some of your extra pumped milk to a batch of muffins or your favorite mac and cheese? I bet you won’t even be able to tell it’s there. I personally have only tried breast milk (my own) in my tea, and once in a batch of Annie’s pasta. (It’s my favorite processed macaroni and cheese. I can’t even stomach Kraft Dinner anymore. Blech!) I had run out of soy milk and needed just a little bit more to make it saucy. I was frequently nursing my oldest who was then still just a baby, and I was making more than enough milk so it wasn’t difficult to produce. I just hand expressed some milk into a 1/8 measuring cup – it took me about 5 minutes I think) and that was that. I mixed it in and Bob’s my uncle (which he is, my uncle that is. I like changing the expression to make it make more sense to me)!
In tomorrow’s Foodie Friday post I’ll post a recipe using breast milk. For now I’ll just leave you with the above as “food for thought.” Ah, another one of the many uses for breast milk. Waste not want not ladies!
Have you ever used breast milk is your cooking? If so, do tell! In what? Could you taste the difference?
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Tags: uses for breast milk
Have you read that ‘Fresh Milk’ book of stories? There is some weird but neat stuff in that book including a guy who makes breastmilk ice cream!
Naomi’s last blog post..Well, I’m sad to say I called it.
[...] to food you return at the grocery store, plus some tips for avoiding food waste in your home. Waste Not Want Not @ Breastfeeding Moms Unite! Don’t pour that unused breast milk down the drain! Melodie talks [...]
I was going to use my milk stash to make home-made ice cream for my son, but the freezer stash I THOUGHT was huge and would last forever was gone by summertime…..
LOL My daughter never leaves any to spare.
Although, I can relate to the breast milk in tea. I’d get an awful feeling if we were running low on cow’s milk and I knew I’d need enough for my coffee in the morning. (I’ve even told my husband to just leave a splash in the container for me). Now I don’t worry because worst comes to worse, I’d hand express a bit of my own milk!
Dawn’s last blog post..Writing Leads that Sell
I have considered this. There have been many times that I have had to pour the pumped milk I had in the freezer “just in case” that was never used. Since my son won’t take a bottle I stopped pumping. I probably wasted 40+ ounces.
I use ice cubes of milk to make baby food with, and I gave my husband a bite. Afterwards, I said “You just ate food made with my milk” Hehe… it was tasty!
Kim R.’s last blog post..The Diaper Free Baby- Christine Gross-Loh *Review*
Hold on a second… who are these moms who are pouring out breastmilk? I’d sooner cut off a finger than pour breastmilk out. Seriously. I have gone to incredible lengths to make sure every last drop of that milk gets to my baby (including some very creative ways of bringing my breastmilk home from work when I had no bottles and no icepack to transport it with) and the one time I accidentally left two bottles of pumped milk out overnight, I cried, and I mean cried, the moment I discovered the catastrophy.
Why woudln’t a mom just freeze it? You can put breastmilk into the deep freeze and keep it for 6 months or more. Or, you can use it to make homemade babyfood, or donate it, any other number of things baby-related.
Breastmilk freezer bags are a pumping moms best friend.
TheFeministBreeder’s last blog post..Okay, nobody panic…
“Cow milk is made for baby cows and yet we drink it without batting an eye. Breast milk is made for baby humans. So why not give it a try?”
This part rhymed, and I’m a sucker for an accidental rhyme.
I would also be heartbroken if breastmilk was wasted — it’s such amazing stuff!!
desiree fawn’s last blog post..Love List
@FeministBreeder – It was your specific tweets or posts that I referred to in my post about the pain of losing any milk. I think maybe @onefinebreeder has had similar things happen to her, but I could be wrong which is why I didn’t post names above.
@Naomi – No, I haven’t read that cookbook. I bet it would be a fun read though.
@Sarah and @Naomi- Breast milk ice cream hey? That would be different I bet.
Melodie’s last blog post..Waste Not Want Not
I NEVER throw out excess milk. i donate them to NICU babies at a hospital near my place or use the excess in cooking experiments. we’ve used my excess milk with my daughter’s breakfast cheerios or oatmeal or cream of wheat. we use it to mix it with her avocado shake. we’ve tried using it to mix with her scrambled eggs and some pasta dish too.. what i want to try next is making breast milk soap.
On breast milk ice cream –> did you know that in September 2008 PETA wrote Ben and Jerry’s and asked them to replace cow’s milk in their products with breast milk
Jenny’s last blog post..Check out HIPP!
I’m not a pumping mom, and so I don’t have any excess breast milk kicking around. But I don’t think I would use it in cooking all the same. I don’t know why, and I fully admit it makes no sense, but it holds an ick factor for me. Plus I think it would maybe freak out other adults if they knew, so I would feel sort of bad feeding it to them.
Maybe it’s the whole bodily fluid thing? Which cow’s milk is, too, but it somehow feels more sterile to me.
Whatever, I’m trying to justify something that makes no sense. If it works for you, I say go for it!
Amber’s last blog post..Can Can She do the Can Can?
Sorry, as much as I love breast feeding a breast milk I can’t get on board with ingesting it myself. Not that I haven’t tasted it (good stuff, you know), I just couldn’t deal with the thought – not that it’s gross so much as it just doesn’t seem natural to ingest one’s own milk. Plus BABIES need that milk, way more than I or my family do. That’s why every nook and cranny in my freezer is currently bulging with frozen milk. As soon as I can arrange a time to drop it off I’ll be donating a big percentage of it to Mother’s Milk Bank of North Texas. I feel that even though they pasteurize the milk and charge processing fees, it’s going to little teeny NICU babies to whom it might make all of the difference in the world.
[...] said yesterday’s post, Waste Not Want Not, that today I would post a recipe using breast milk. Now to be honest I have not tried the version [...]
To those of you who donate your extra milk, I applaud you. The more I think about it the more I think using leftover milk (or even having leftover milk for that point) applies to moms whose babies have weaned (but still have some milk in the freezer) or to moms who thought they would bottle feed, pumped and stored some milk, but then didn’t, or for part time bottle feeders – the ones who bottle feed in public, for instance, or who leave bottles for babysitters, but otherwise breastfeed from the source.
Melodie’s last blog post..Waste Not Want Not
I have to come clean her and admit that I have never once tasted my breastmilk. Yes, I am a full-on lactivist, but I don’t want my own milk coming within a hundred miles of my own mouth. Honestly, the thought makes me gag a little. I know, I know, I’m sure it’s incredibly hypcritical. But “human milk is for human babies” <— babies being the operative word here I think.
I just don’t have the guts to taste it. I believe everyone when they say it tastes like canteloupe juice, but I don’t have any interest in finding out for myself. I like my milk sterilized and pasteurized and bleached white (then dyed brown with chocolate).
TheFeministBreeder’s last blog post..Okay, nobody panic…
I just wish I could pump enough to make anything with it. Half a cupcake anyone? Baby spoon of ice cream? I am in awe of you ladies who can actually pump enough to feed your babies while you are out *and* have some spare to throw away! And FeministBreeder – go on, try it! Have a drink first and go crazy. I hated to waste any in the early days of oversupply, and I would wipe the excess off my chest with my hand and lick it up. Yum. We even offered it to our cat, but she wasn’t interested.
Cave Mother’s last blog post..I Heart My Ring Sling
[...] me howl. I thought it might be a good way to end the week and put some polish on my past two posts Waste Not Want Not and Vanilla Breast Milk Cupcakes With Strawberry [...]
[...] and the milk produced when you or your child is sick is different from that when you are well. Breast milk can also be used as a substitute for regular milk in cooking or baking. To read a recipe for breast milk cupcakes, [...]