Somehow, we got ahead on the purchasing of milk, and there was no place to store it in the freezer. So, I had this 1/2 jug of 2% milk sitting in the fridge long past the sell-by date, over a week. I knew it was on its last legs, and quite frankly, I was very surprised that no one had complained that it was tasting off. (I can't drink milk, so I have no way to verify whether or not the milk was beginning to sour. And I'm not about to fill the minds of my family members with thoughts that their milk could be less than perfect, so I didn't ask any of them if it tasted off.)
So I set out to use it all up in a day. When I was thinking through all the different ways I could use up milk, pudding was a stand-out winner, as it could be flavored to mask any off tastes, and it uses a lot of milk in one batch -- I could use up over 3 cups of milk in a single batch of pudding cups (as opposed to pancakes, muffins or cake which would only use about 1 cup per batch).
My pudding recipe actually calls for 2 1/4 cups of milk, but I used 3 1/2 cups, and allowed it to heat, slowly, and evaporate some of the water content, leaving us with a very rich, nutrient-dense pudding. (It's the same sort of thing I do when making yogurt. I allow the milk to heat slowly, reducing the liquid by about 1/4. With yogurt, this yields a thicker product.)
To make sure it would taste yummy and be eaten right away, I made the batch of pudding, chocolate-flavored. Thanks to my resident pudding fiends, that jug of milk is now history, and we had happy tummies, here.
(The rest of that jug was consumed with dinner that night. For the future, I plan on watching how much milk I buy and whether or not there's room to store excess in the freezer.)
