VFP: Milk How-To

VFP introduces almost a dozen new ways to use a standard milk bucket. The page introduces the main . Yes Virginia, we have butter and cheese!

Milk Drinks

Milk Powders

Milk and Cream powders are used in a variety of food recipes. They're a base ingredient in Breads and Creamy Soups, and you can use them as a stackable way to store and transport milk (using bottled water, you can reconstitute bottles of milk and cream for use in recipes that require the liquids).

Homemade Cheese

There is an easy way to make cheese and a less-easy way to make cheese. The method you choose depends on how you feel about killing baby cows. Regardless of which method you pick, you'll also need the following items to craft your cheese:

• Some Drying Agent
• A Cloth Squeeze Bag
• Some water
• At least 1 Milk Bucket

Curdling Agent

Creating cheese or yogurt requires some Curdling Agent and Calf Stomach Lining is one way to get it (the idea is based on rennet). Calf Stomach Lining is a new drop VFP adds for baby cows. To get it you have to kill a calf; there is no other way to obtain it. The "good" news is that you always get this drop; it's not random. The bad news is that you never get the drop if the animal is on fire either manually done by your weapon or via a lava blade or some such thing. Once you have the stomach lining, use the recipe below to create the curdling.

Alternatively, you can create curdling in a more complex two-step no-animal-was-killed-in-the-making-of-this-cheese way. The first step is to obtain some Enzyme Extraction Agent. Once you have the extraction agent you can use the recipe below; note that you can use any tree sapling provided it has been registered under the treeSapling id in the Forge registry.

Arguably the enzyme-extraction route is the better method because you're going to need this ingredient for other recipes any way, and both nether warts (for extraction agent) and tree saplings are highly renewable resources. However, you will have to initially collect many more ingredients with the second method.

Let's Make Cheese!

Obtaining curdling is actually the hard part of this process. Once you've got it, the recipe for Homemade Cheese is pretty easy. Each recipe produces 2 pieces of cheese with each piece restoring 4pts of hunger(). Our example uses the standard milk bucket but any item registered under portionMilkLarge will work.

Powdered Cheese

A few recipes require the powdered version of cheese. To create powdered cheese, use the recipe below. Note that you can use any cheese registered under the foodCheese id in the Forge registry. Each powdered item is equivalent to a single piece of cheese.

Making Lots of Cheese

If you don't have a craft table extension to help out, to make a lot of cheese at once, you can use the SuperBlock mod's BIG Milk Bucket. Each big bucket contains 15 buckets, so you'll be able to make up-to 15 batches of cheese or 30 servings in one go without having to collect 15 separate milk buckets. The iron cost of a big bucket is about the same as 15 separate buckets. You'll need to craft a couple recipes' worth of cloth bags as well.

Homemade Butter

Creamy Soups

Creamy soups are like standard mushroom stew but work for a variety of other vegetables like pumpkin and carrots and some new mod foods like cheese. In addition they restore more hunger than mushroom stew(), are stackable to 24 (configurable), and retain most of the curative effects of the Cream from which they're made (does not remove the withering effect).

There are two basic recipes for creamy soups: the first uses a Bottle of Cream and the Food Powder that matches the flavor of soup you want; the second uses Powdered Cream instead of the bottled cream. The second recipe is a fully 64-stackable recipe (all ingredients stack to 64).

Integration

If you play with food mods like Harvestcraft or RealWorld, there are two additional creamy soups that become craftable automatically; these are: Creamy Tomato Soup and Creamy Leek Soup.