Cheese!

From Severely Allergies to Grinning From Ear to Ear

Background: Milk Allergy Mystery Unraveled

My whole life I’ve been allergic to milk. No, not lactose intolerant. That would be inconvenient, but sufferable on occasion. No, I mean ALLERGIC. When I was little, I got hives. The hives reaction ceased when I was still small, but if I had even the slightest bit of dairy, then sinus and breathing issues kicked in. Lactose-free milk caused the same reaction, so I’m sticking with the word allergic until I have a better one.¹

For some bizarre reason, though, there have been times in my life when I could have some dairy without a reaction. It’s like my body needed it so badly, that it forgave me for consuming it, like during pregnancies…when I could never seem to eat enough butter, cheese, and ice cream. Once I had the baby,…bam! Back to difficulties breathing and sinus infections if I just walked past the cheese section of the grocery store, never mind eat it.

More bizarre was prior to that, the year I lived as an exchange student in West Germany, I could eat almost anything dairy I wanted, pretty much, just not drink straight milk, which still elicited a reaction. It was magical! It lasted only while I was in Europe.

Fast forward, I was relating these bizarre occurrences to an acquaintance that worked at Whole Foods a few years back. Apparently, there are two different proteins (A1 and A2) and as per testing myself, I’m only allergic to one of them (A1), the one most prevalent in cows in the US, but not the cows in Germany.² One mystery solved. I couldn’t drink milk by itself and had to limit my intake, but on special occasions I could buy the A2 milk carried at Whole Foods and bake with it without much of a sniffle, which opened a welcome door for me.

Then I found a lovely regenerative farm where I could buy meat. They started selling raw A2A2 milk and so I cautiously tried their kefir (test the waters). Bingo! Amazing. I was struck by the energy I had after drinking a little bit.

Not long after this discovery, I moved. It took a while, but I finally hunted down another farm within a day’s drive and got myself added to their waitlist of customers.

The day finally came when we could go sign the paperwork to be added to the fortunate few permitted to buy raw milk.³ I related my experiences with milk to the woman who runs the farm’s store and she said, “Yeah, we get that a lot.” I raised my eyebrows and she continued, “when they pasteurize the milk, it takes out all of the enzymes that people need to actually break down the milk.” In other words, it removes the good stuff, the stuff that makes milk digestible for people like me!⁴ I was still skeptical about drinking straight up milk, as even at my body’s most lenient times, this had never been possible, but I had been craving milk badly, something I had not done since my last pregnancy. So, I bought some raw milk and drank it.

At this point, I’m going to take a moment and put the asterisks and have you imagine all of the fine lawyer print: do your own research. Do not take my opinion or experience, especially if you have the reaction of anaphylaxis! Make sure you have a good regenerative, small farm, with great hygiene protocol. Yada. Yada. Yada. You know the drill. I’m relating my personal experience. Don’t sue me…or anyone else for that matter. Research it and drink according to your own risk tolerance. And, know your state’s laws. Some states have a real bone to pick with the natural world.

As it turns out, I’m not allergic to milk. I’m allergic to pasteurized milk.

To make a long story short: I now drink a half to a full gallon of milk a week. Straight! I started slowly and built myself to a large cup full with honey before bed. I feel myself to be healthier and healthier every day. Many other allergies have gone away as well and I am by far healthier than I have been in years. Decades, in fact. I sleep better, too. I cannot begin to describe how free I feel and I personally credit that to raw milk.

So, now that I found an amazing source of raw milk, I could finally try something I have always wanted to try: making butter. I’ve wanted to make butter since I read Little House In the Big Woods as a kid. It’s hard to make butter when you’re allergic to milk. With a source of milk that I could drink, I was on my way to discovering a whole world of food options!

Making Butter: Gateway To Creating Magic

Oh! If anyone would have told me in 2023 that one of the highlights of 2024 would be making butter, I would have thought they were insane; however, when those fat globules separated from the milk, I squealed like a teenage girl seeing the Beatles in person.

Of course, I shared my joy at making butter with the woman at the dairy farm’s store and timidly asked about how hard it was to make cheese. (I was on a roll, but I still burn bacon on occasion, so didn’t want to get my hopes up.) It was then that I got suggested the book The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. So, I bought a copy and started reading. At first, I was enthralled, then intimidated, then not so slightly overwhelmed. It all sounded great, hypothetically, but it also seemed magical…the kind of magic that involves either skill or talent and probably both, but certainly not neither! I was fully on the side of doubting I could pull it off.

Still, one day I roped my husband into helping me. With his calming presence, the cheese miraculously did what it was supposed to do! One by one, I’ve been gaining confidence at this new art form, which gives credit to the book. With that said, I also watched some videos to actually see the process in action. That helped make the words and pictures make more sense. As I had never been able to eat dairy in any of its forms, I had had no real idea of what curds or whey were, except that Little Miss Muffet ate them while sitting on her tuffet.

I’m happy to report that, so far, knock on wood, everything I’ve made has turned out at the very least edible. I’m no connoisseur, but my husband has heroically eaten it all and says he likes it. (Not sure if this says just how amazing my husband is, or if it’s truly as spectacular as he says, so you’ll have to just try it for yourself!)

The book includes old school wisdom and knowledge (my favorite). It does speak to raw milk specifically, with caveats for those who would rather heed modern advice.

For me, I enjoy reading the process and how things work, like this part on Curdling the Milk: “When milk sours, it thickens, Lactobacillus bacterial cultures consume the lactose in milk and transforms it into lactic acid. And, as the milk becomes more acidic, its proteins, sensitive to acid, change their shape. The denatured proteins settle out of the milk and form a new structure that’s known as curd. When that curd is then hung, it expels its whey and transforms itself into cheese.”

The book is not all technical, but it’s enough technical that it helped me better understand what was going to happen and why.

The Dos, the don’ts, the whys and wherefores, while for me it was too much to read from cover to cover, especially not in one sitting like I do with many other books, it has served me well for many months now as a reference guidebook, one I hope to keep learning from far into the future. It is the book which keeps on giving. I simply pick a new recipe to try and dig in. Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

Kefir

Kefir (Cranberry) Soda

Dream Cheese

Shankleesh

Paneer (We’ve used this several times as this one can be utilized to use up milk that has been left questionably too long in the frig…like…ahem…when we visited family for three weeks and forgot about the quart of milk still left in the back of the frig. The paneer tasted great in my khachapuri AND I didn’t have to let milk go to waste!)

Basic Rennet Cheese

Whey Cheese

Mozzarella

Sourdough⁵

As I work through the book, from easiest to hardest, I would like to point out that when I made the mozzarella, on my own sourdough home-made pizza crust with meat and fresh tomatoes from my local small farm, as well as herbs I had grown myself, my husband declared it was the best thing I had ever made. I actually agree (and I’m my worst critic). I think the only way it would have been better had the tomatoes come from my garden, and I had been the one to take responsibility for preparing the animal. I have since added a large cast iron skillet to the ensemble and my pizza making abilities have gone to another level.

Side Benefits

Whey & sourdough are now added to my cooking repertoire. Substituting whey for water or milk in recipes has been a wonderful discovery. Whey pancakes are the best! If you haven’t already tried them, I would highly recommend you do. If you’re going to make cheese, having side recipes for the whey is a good idea. (They also suggest using it in the garden as an organic fertilizer or feeding it to animals, like pigs. I’ll have to take their word for the pigs. I’m pretty sure pigs will fly sooner than I could convince my husband to get one.)

I’m not great on the sourdough front.⁶ Bread in general is an extra challenge because I’m allergic to gluten as well, a protein I’m told is quite similar to milk,⁷ but I’ve found a pesticide free farm and one day with my gut biome more fully rebuilt, I might just try wheat again.

Oh, the possibilities seem endless for what I could eat. To put my joy in perspective, there was a time when I became allergic to everything, up to and including water. To now have the world of culinary delights wide open seems nothing short of miraculous.

What a journey!

My biggest goals for 2024 was to become healthier, buy the change I wanted to see, and support small, regenerative farming farmers. This book was one way I was able to accomplish all three of those goals and I still have miles to go before I’ve unpacked everything in it.

My final goal was to learn how to write. I started this Substack Christmas Eve 2024. So, all in all, despite the many ups and down, I’m declaring my 2024 as a success!

Thank you for reading. I would truly love to have your thoughts and feedback. I don’t want this endeavor to be simply me shouting into the void or talking at some random people. I’m writing this post and every other as a gateway towards opening the doors to conversation, to sharing, to community, to meaning.

—>Have you ever made butter or cheese? How did it go? Have any tips?

—>Please share in the comment section! (Bonus points for tips on baking gluten-free bread!)

1. I’ve read some really fascinating books on allergies and the brain. Purportedly some allergies are triggered by traumatic events. (Epigenetics) It is quite possible that I developed an allergy to milk initially due to my mother one day stopping nursing me cold turkey as a 10 month old, simultaneously switching me to cow’s milk along with a full, regular diet. (See also NAET)

Another interesting factoid comes from Train Your Brain: How to Build a Million Dollar Business In Record Time by Dana Wilde which purports that there are medically documented cases of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorders) where one personality will have an allergy while another personality has none (p.3). So, who knows, maybe I’ve simply developed an extra personality and got rid of my old, allergic personality, and my husband just never noticed.

2. Fascinating study out of China, which I find ironic as when I lived in China, I was told that Chinese people did not have allergies because they were genetically and culturally superior. Apparently, the Chinese do not read their own research. Nevertheless, there are some quite interesting bits of information in the paper, not least of which: “These results suggest that A1 β-casein consumption leads to reduced SCFA levels. SCFAs are fermentation products of gut biota [28] that have anti-inflammatory effects [29, 30] and enhance colonic cell function [31]. Accordingly, the consumption of A2 β-casein at the exclusion of A1 β-casein is expected to support microbial SCFA production, and hence avoid impairments in colonic health attributed to low SCFA production.”

Effects of milk containing only A2 beta casein versus milk containing both A1 and A2 beta casein proteins on gastrointestinal physiology, symptoms of discomfort, and cognitive behavior of people with self-reported intolerance to traditional cows’ milk

3. As per bizarre state laws, I am now the proud owner of three eyelashes of a cow I’ve named Gertrude. I’m not entirely sure which one she is, but I’ve petted a few of them and seen them all. They’re freaking adorable. On the other side of the fence.

4. This is not the farm I go to, but this farm’s website has a handy dandy chart which explains what is removed from milk during pasteurization. Since I have a fondness for charts, I’m including it here: Redmond Farms.

5. Sourdough is included in an Appendix as it is both delicious to serve with cheese, but more importantly, it is a way to cultivate the fungi used in making Blue Cheese.

6. I owe a big thanks to a woman named Natasha, who clued me in on the trick of adding psyllium husk to water and letting it sit to congeal. This helps substitute for the missing gluten when making gluten-free breads. Here is her gluten-free sourdough pizza crust: Natasha’s Home. To simplify, I’ve tried this in the bread-maker to good effect as well, just make sure you leave time for the husk and water to form a gel before adding the other ingredients. Then add ingredients as you would normally in a bread-maker!

7. Another interesting study, which makes my head spin, but if you can wade through the relevant science jargon, it does comes with some fascinating information:

A1 beta-casein milk protein and other environmental pre-disposing factors for type 1 diabetes

Such as:

“Regional and between-country differences in the incidence of type 1 diabetes are correlated with milk consumption.⁴² One of the main milk proteins is β-casein, which accounts for about 30% of the total protein in cows’ milk.⁴³ Several variants of bovine β-casein have been identified, which have differential cleavage patterns in vivo stemming from their amino-acid sequences. Cows’ milk contains two major β-casein variants, known as the A1 and A2 types.⁴⁴ These variants differ by a single amino acid at position 67, with a histidine amino acid at this position in the A1 β-casein type and proline in the A2 β-casein type. The histidine residue in A1 β-casein allows cleavage of the preceding seven amino acids, yielding the exogenous peptide β-casomorphin-7 (BCM-7) (Figure 2).⁴⁴ BCM-7 is a μ-opioid receptor agonist⁴⁵ that can cross the gastrointestinal wall and enter systemic circulation.⁴⁶ μ-Opioid receptors are expressed throughout the gastrointestinal tract and elsewhere.⁴⁷ As both the cereal protein gluten and cows’ milk protein A1 β-casein have been implicated as dietary antigens in type 1 diabetes, it is of note that gluten also releases the 7-amino-acid opioid peptide gliadorphin-7.”

Or, this:

“Notably, human breast milk β-casein contains a proline in the homologous position as bovine A2 β-casein protein, so human β-casein is of the A2 type.⁵⁰ Thus, breastfeeding during early infancy eliminates early exposure to A1 β-casein, although BCM-7 derived from dietary bovine A1 β-casein may be transferred to the infant via human breast milk”