Milk Day!

Today is the day I go get my milk!  I love milk day.  I have two places I buy raw milk from - one is just a small landholder who happens to have a cow, and I have a standing agreement to buy milk from her once per week.  I bring my jars, and she fills them for me.  The other is a full-fledged dairy.  I bring my jars and leave them on a shelf, for next week's order, and find the jars I left the previous week in the fridge, filled that morning.  Sometimes she has beef or chicken for sale in the freezer.

Also on my way is a lovely store.  It's kind of like a cross between a co-op food store and a farmstand, offering a selection of locally pasture-raised meats and local cheeses, all done humanely and organically as possible.  These people believe in 'the cause' to have our food 'raised the right way'.  Yes, the prices are a tiny bit higher than what I might find at the grocery store, but I know it's worth it since the food is as naturally nutrient dense as it can get.  For example, they have whole chickens that are 8 lbs (or more) for $40.  It seems like a lot of money, but with my calculations and a few good recipes, I can probably get 4-5 meals out of it, plus some really good soup stock.  Having chicken once per week means it could reasonably last us a month!  They also offer 'stewing hens' for $10.  Muahahaha...  Aaahhhh the possibilities!  They're scrawnier, but I happen to have recipes in an old cookbook (1933) for...stewed chicken using old hens.  Either that or I could just toss it all with the bones from the other chicken in a giant stock pot at get a ton of chicken soup stock from it.

Someday when I have enough money I will go there and buy a whole month's worth of meat.  For now, though, I buy delicious pasture-raised eggs there for $4 per dozen after I get my milk.  

However, in the midst of this happy-go-lucky joy-ness I have on thursdays, there is one small problem.  I HAVE NO GAS!  GAH!  I cannot go get my milk (or pick the children up from school) without gas.  And I only have enough money for either milk or gas, but not both.  Dagnabbit.