Terror in a Bucket—55-Year-Old Powdered Milk

After church earlier this month, I got to visiting with my friend Penny.  She gives organ lessons to my daughter-in-law Buttercup.  Anyway, Penny has been storing food for a while.  Years.  Decades.  Because that’s what “good” members of our church do.  (Not really.  Very few have any significant amounts of food storage even though it’s been recommended for over 100 years.)  Penny decided it’s time to update her stores and offered to let me try out a few of her old buckets to see what kind of shape they’re in.

Here’s what Penny had to say about how the food had been stored:

The milk and wheat are at least 55 years old.  They were in Vegas in a closet under a car port for 25 years at least. Pretty hot in the summer, and not too much cooler in the winter.  Up here, the past 30 years, they have been under a shed where they get warm in the summer, and the temp gets below freezing in the winter.  I'm surprised the milk tasted as good as you said it did.  That can of wheat [actually a plastic bucket] had been opened; it will be interesting to see if the sealed cans have weevil. We might be able to lift another can of wheat out of there although that road equipment is backed right up to it. Sometime this summer the equipment will probably be moved and we'll check about the beans.

I opened the wheat bucket first.  It was less intimidating.  I planned to try sprouting it and making some bread.  Well, that bucket had weevils—just a few skins.  I still tried sprouting the wheat berries, even though I was sure they wouldn’t germinate.  And I was right.  Zero percent germination.  The weevils all looked dead, but I didn’t want to take any chances.  So I didn’t make bread with it.  That bucket went straight out to the compost pile. 

The bucket of milk was a different story.  Note that it wasn’t stored with Mylar bags or oxygen absorbers.  Just a plastic bucket.  It looked like Carnation instant powdered milk. That stuff tastes nasty even when it’s fresh, and this stuff was old and stored for decades in the heat. Talk about terror.  But, you know, trying this stuff out is part of my job description.  So I mixed up a quart, along with the requisite sugar and vanilla extract. 

The first sip wasn’t bad.  After the second sip, it caught up with me.  Not horrid, but not good, either.  I’d rate it a C or C-.  I wouldn’t want to have to live off this. 

The next order of business was to make yogurt with it.  It set up beautifully within about three hours.  I tried it out the next morning, prior to making a smoothie with it, and the plain yogurt had an off taste.  I made the smoothie with strawberry jam and a banana.  While I could detect the off taste even through the banana and jam, it wasn’t really bad.  I could eat it on a daily basis. 

Finally, I made some Magic Mix with it and used that to make some chocolate pudding.  I taste tested the leftovers in the pan after they had cooled down.  The powdered milk definitely imparted a bit of an off taste.  But after the pudding had chilled in the refrigerator, it was a different story.

Pretty good stuff. 

Family reviews:  First off, all ten of us who ate the pudding made with 55-year-old powdered milk are still alive.  No one has experienced any intestinal upset or disturbances of any kind.

Belle and I both detected an off taste but very happily finished the pudding.  Aaron, Jared, Buttercup, and King of the Picky Eaters didn’t notice anything wrong, and scarfed theirs down.  Same with Tom, Penny’s son.  Two missionaries were at our house for lunch on Saturday.  One said she would only take a taste of her companion’s pudding (just to be polite, I guess), and then proceeded to help her finish it off. 

So there you have it.  Now, in no way am I recommending eating food that is so old.  This powdered milk likely doesn’t have any vitamins left—just my guess.  But the minerals are still in there, and so are the calories.  I have the option of sprinkling the powdered milk in the garden—calcium is good for tomatoes—but I’m just going to put it in the basement with the other dry milk.  I will have no problem sharing it with others in the future.

Links to related posts:

Homemade Yogurt   

Basic Food Storage--Dry Milk 
An In-Depth Discussion of Dry Milk
Magic Mix

Making Powdered Milk Taste Like Whole Milk