Sometimes in the wee hours of the night, my brain is restless and I scour the internet looking to see if I can do something… ANYTHING that isn’t of the standard “norm.”

It started with cheese. Mozzarella cheese. When I quit my job in September, my homestead/homemaking skills blew up! I wanted to make, create, and do everything I never had time for– and on the list was mozzarella cheese. 

After we successfully made mozzarella, we didn’t know what to do with the leftover whey. In research after the fact, we found out this whey byproduct is sweet whey. Whereas sour whey is using a milk product and something acidic like citric acid or lemon juice. Sweet whey comes from making cheeses with rennet. 

I looked up so many sweet whey recipes because I didn’t know what to do with this liquid gold. You can add it in place of water in recipes, but we already use our homemade broth and stock for this. You can add it to smoothies, too. But I let it go to the back of the fridge and forgot about it… yuck.

I had maker’s remorse. Haha. I really wanted to use up that whey. It bothered me. Really bothered me. 

We then went back on the keto diet… I know, EYEROLL. I gained over 20 lbs in 6 months by staying at home. And here’s the thing, I was more active than ever! I also wasn’t indulging. The only thing different was we were drinking more raw milk from our local farm, making sourdough bread like the rest of the pandemic world, and normal loaves in place of store-bought. I wasn’t eating bread for every meal, either.  Turns out, everyone is wired differently and blah, blah, blah…. hormones… blah, blah, stuff you don’t need to read about.

One thing I discovered on keto is something called fathead dough and it’s made with lots of mozzarella cheese! You can make crusts and noodles with it. So of course, I have to give it a try with this farm-fresh milk! But we’re going to have leftover whey again. This is where my weary traveled brain comes in.

YOU CAN MAKE WHEY POWDER!!!

And here’s how you do it:

Once you have your sweet whey, you can flavor it now with an extract (vanilla or almond, perhaps?). You then place the whey in shallow pans or dishes and dehydrate it! It can take up to 24 hours depending on how much you have. 

After it reaches its dry powdery forms you can put it in a blender or sift it into a jar and store it in the fridge. 

And now you have ZERO WASTE RAW MILK that is KETO-FRIENDLY! 

Now don’t even get me started on how egg white protein powder is made… that’s for another day and it equally blew my mind!

HAPPY MAKING!