Review: Homestead Creamery

I’m starting my rotations today! (At long last! Interactions with real human beings!!!) So while I’m at orientation learning my way around the hospital, I’m leaving you with a review. :O

Disclaimer: I was not paid or compensated in any way for this review. All opinions are my own!

Several months ago and in the span of 24 hours, I heard from two local friends about the awesomeness that is the Homestead Creamery milk offered at Kroger in the dairy section. I love Kroger’s for its coupons, manager’s specials and convenience. It’s pretty much where I get all my groceries, and although I regularly shop just the perimeter of the store, I rarely stop by the milk section because I may or may not be slightly lactose-intolerant, and as such, I’d never noticed this milk that they speak of.

It comes in a glass jar that you put a $2 deposit on that they return to you once you bring the jar back (this is awesome because I still have yet to find a place in the state that recycles glass). Homestead Creamery is located in Wirtz, Virginia, and since we are rather lucky souls/close-ish to the Virginia border, they actually supply the Kroger in our town. The milk at the creamery comes from two local farms and is free of all hormones and antibiotics. :] In addition, since they’re sold in the aforementioned recycled glass bottles, they stay fresh longer and are more environmentally friendly.

Did I mention that aside from just regular milk, they also have chocolate, orange cream (tastes like a creamsicle!), and strawberry?

nomnomnom.

I decided to try out all of them and made something different with each one! Click the pictures for the recipes! :]

Strawberry Chia Pudding

Orange Creamsicle Oatmeal

Chocolate Cherry Protein Shake

This is the first “real” milk I’ve had in probably over a decade (I switched over to soy/almond/coconut long long ago) and most likely the only one I would ever get from now on. At $2.49/quart, it’s likely pricier than the standard (I have no idea since milk and I divorced a couple eons ago), but it tastes so much better that there’s just really no going back.

To sum it up:

• No hormones/antibiotics
• Minimal processing from happy cows that are mostly grass/grain-fed by what they grow
• Local-ish (well, for me) producer
• Glass bottles = no container waste! (In their video/slide show from Whole Foods, it said that 1 glass bottle takes the place of ~40 plastic jugs that end up in landfills.)

Nutrition Facts (for 1 cup) – taken from their facebook page!

• 2%: 120 cal, 5g fat, 12g CHO, 8g protein
• 2% Chocolate: 210 cal, 5g fat, 26g CHO, 8g protein, 1g fiber
• Orange Cream: 220 cal, 8g fat, 29g CHO, 8g protein
• Strawberry: 210 cal, 8g fat, 27g CHO, 7g protein

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Fitness Fav on Friday (Fuel)

This week’s Fitness Favorites is on our favorite fuel (food, supplements, hydration, recovery, etc.)! This week, I’m pairing it with this week’s Spill It, Sundays theme because the themes overlap! …This is also because I’m currently in CA and eating the world, saving the world (aka replaying Chrono Trigger) and spending time with my friends/family, so I’ve been kinda absent from the blogging world, despite my earlier ambitions to switch my blog to self-hosted during my luxuriously long summer vacation (5 days).

The airport I usually fly out of has an on-time departure rate of ~3%, so this is me chillin’ in the VIP lounge.

Just kidding. There is no VIP lounge at that airport. I’m hanging out in my friend’s office and we parked two chairs together to make me a “bed.” My pillow is composed of a towel covering a giant plastic bag of a bunch of plastic bags. Yepyep. High-rollin’. (It was really, really comfortable, actually. I slipped into a coma for a couple hours.)

don’tjudgeus. This is due in part to the fact that my brother and I have been doing super hardcore workouts and end up in all sorts of soreness, so moving is an issue.

A somewhat frightening Asian market find. I really hope they mean ginkgo seeds…?

My favorite way to start the day in the summer (hooray for warm weather!!!) is usually with a smoothie of some kind.

Basic Green Smoothie

As far as supplements go, I like Cytosport 100% Whey Protein (Chocolate) because it’s pretty inexpensive (as far as protein powder goes), especially when you get it from Costco!

Chocolate Raspberry Protein Smoothie

For hydration, I adore coconut water.

Coconut Acai Bowl

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Come join in on Fitness Fav Fridays! :]

in disguise

“I’m convinced that this school is actually a culinary school in disguise. How is it that everyone here knows how to make such amazing food!?”

She may be onto something there. My personal theory is that the restaurants here (although a lot of them really are awesome) are somewhat lacking in variety, so instead we learn to make everything on our own. (Or maybe that’s just what happened to me.)

This is my plate from the Wilderness Medicine dinner! :] Recipes for the 2/3 of the dishes I made (fried apples + honey molasses cookies) will be posted shortly!

Salad, cornbread, venison tenderloin, mashed potatoes, chili, bear stew, squirrel stew, roasted brussel sprouts, venison shepherd’s pie, turtle cheesecake, chocolate eclairs, green bean casserole, cole slaw…

Fall Community Harvest Dinner

And so my food adventures continue. This was the day after the pumpkin potluck.

I had a ginormous lunch at church (as per usual)… :x

The Lewisburg Farmers’ Market hosted a Community Harvest Dinner with locally grown + produced food prepared by all the market vendors. :D!

Bread! <3

Potatoes of all sorts!

Sage Mint Chamomile Iced Tea!

This was my first plate. (Venison stew, tomato + rice soup, sweet potatoes, various homemade breads and salads, chicken cacciatore, roasted potatoes…)

Pumpkin bisque, sage mint chamomile iced tea, vegetarian lasagna, more sweet potatoes (those were my favorite dish)…

I had about 3 more plates of food after this. :x The food was beyond delicious, and I’m really, really hoping they’ll have another one of these again in the spring.

I barely even made it to the dessert table because we made a couple communal plates (this is just a tiny representation) so we could try some of everything.

Food makes my world go round.

We stuck around afterward and Ross taught us the Virginia Reel. :D

pumpkin potluck

I’m usually really good about writing recipes into the future (thank you, scheduled post option!), but really, really terrible about updating about my life in a timely manner. Luckily, med school is a great scapegoat to blame everything on and most people completely understand, so I’m in the clear! :]

Several weeks ago, one of the first years had a pumpkin potluck to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Volunteers signed up to make some kind of a dish/dessert with pumpkin in it, and there were raffles for different donated items. Anyone who paid $5 at the door would get to eat all they wanted. This may seem counter-intuitive for trying to raise money for diabetes research, but food fundraisers tend to go pretty well here, mostly because no one knows how to cook/has time to cook, so they jump at whatever chance they can get for homemade food.

There were pumpkin muffins, pumpkin spice rice crispy treats, pumpkin sticky buns, pumpkin swirl brownies, pumpkin oreo cheesecakes, vegan pumpkin walnut bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin risotto with fresh parsley + goat cheese, pumpkin lasagna, pumpkin mini meatloaf balls, sausage + pumpkin cornbread stuffing, pumpkin coconut soup, pumpkin bisque, pumpkin cornbread, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin chili (2 types!), mashed pumpkin, pumpkin ginger snaps, cape malay curried winter squash, gluten-free buttercream stuffed pumpkin cookies…

In short, it was glorious.

While I do enjoy dessert as much as the next person, the Cape Malay Curried Winter Squash dish was probably one of my favorites.

My favorite dessert (this is saying a lot because there were about 2.5 tables filled with desserts) was the gluten-free buttercream-stuffed pumpkin cookies. The wife of one of the first years is a magical cook and he said her cheesecake alone was enough for him to want to marry her. I need to try this cheesecake (I’m in the process of trying to obtain the recipes for basically everything she makes). :O

The event raised $320! :] Not bad for a $5 admission, yes yes?