What do you do when all your girlfriends are on the verge of delightful motherhood?
You console yourself by doing all the things pregnant girls can't do! Go wild!
Like, buy raw milk at the farmer's market.
Hippie?
Even lowest-common-denominator RealAge published an article suggesting that if you are going to drink milk at all, at least some of its nutritional benefits are destroyed through pasteurization. It may help with allergies. On the flip side, the New York Times depicts devotees as death wishing crazies. But I'm young, I'm single, I have life insurance!
A quart of skim and a quart of whole were both $4.25. A pint of cream was $10. Naturally I got the whole. I figured I could separate my own cream, thanks anyway, nice try.
I was kind of excited by the prospect of un-homogenized milk, ever since I went to the San Mateo country fair last summer. I prefer skim anyway, but was completely converted when I looked at a homemade sign made by a little girl for a 4-H project, explaining how milk is obtained and prepared. She described the milking process and the pasteurization process, and then, just as straightforwardly, explained the homogenization process, which distributes the cream and remaining white blood cells throughout the fluid. White blood cells? You mean pus?
If that doesn't turn you off milk, nothing will. My solution was to stick to skim, in the hopes that nothing was distributed throughout the milk, no pus mixed in with the cream.
It was fun - so olde tymey! - to see the layer of yellowish cream on top of the whiter skim in my glass bottle of milk...only I had no idea how I was supposed to "skim" it off. I don't have a cream skimmer. I can't even do the butter churn on the dance floor. And I've had enough experience pouring things to know that you don't always get the top layer, or the bottom layer, or whatever layer you're trying for. And then I remembered - my gravy separator!
I poured about half the bottle into the separator, only couldn't see the clearly delineated cream layer anymore. So I put it in the fridge, and lo, what was left in the bottle sure looked like skim milk. I had a small glass. Would it taste strange and funky like that time I got 16 ounces of goat milk yogurt? Would it taste "ethereal" like the milk in that New York Times article?
I have to be honest with you. It just tasted like milk. Skim milk.
Pregnant ladies can relax. You're not missing anything over here.
I think I'll go pour myself a cocktail, light a cigarette, have some sushi and dye my hair.
I've been tempted to figure out how they turn a little green soybean into the "milk" I buy in such large quantities at Costco... but I'm assuming the result would not be an increased love for the substance. Cow pus is probably healthier than whatever chemical process makes the happy little beans into the vanilla-y white liquid I usually drink.
Posted by: boots | January 22, 2009 at 02:07 PM
Huh, that's actually pretty interesting and sciencey! And now I'm totally craving milk... pus and all!
Posted by: Angela Noelle | January 22, 2009 at 07:42 PM
I think cow milk is gross anyway. I mean, even if you don't know about the pus, just think about what you're doing.
I think I'd rather stay in the dark about soy milk, too.
Posted by: Fraulein N | February 09, 2009 at 01:21 PM