Monday, April 14, 2014

Milk

As most of you know, I track my weekly food waste and last week I had a big surprise. We had spoiled milk. I don't remember having spoiled milk during my entire adult life. And while I remember milk spoiling when I was a child, that too was a rare occurrence. (Back then, we drank whole milk that spoiled faster than the skim milks of today. Also, spoilage usually happened because one of the kids forgot to put it back in the refrigerator.)

During my childhood, we always had whole milk, butter, and ice cream in our house. We even had butter milk, which I hear if you weren't raised on it, is not too appealing for most people. My father was a farm boy, and the way he saw it, dairy products were a must for every day life. We were happy he thought that because we all our liked milk. There was no need to tell my sisters and me that we needed to drink it to get strong bones. We were already consuming it with gusto.

Not only did I enjoy milk, it was a useful tool sometimes during supper. That was on those days when my mother served liver or sweet potatoes which I considered the worst tasting foods on earth. The rule was that you had to have a spoonful of everything, but no more if you didn't like it. So I would get the smallest spoonful I could, then spend the next while taking a small bite, then a drink of milk to wash it down. Another small bite, then a drink of milk. I could easy drink a couple of glasses of milk using this method before a small serving of sweet potato was gone. That seems kind of silly now, but it was my tried and true method then.

Through the years, my milk drinking has decreased and I prefer water today. However, the Carnivores in my family still love their milk. When there were four of us living here, we bought milk 2-3 gallons at a time, and that would happen a couple of times per week. However, with Wally and Theo buying their own milk now, obviously Ward and I don't need as much. I have cut back to buying a gallon a week. Sometimes that's not enough and sometimes that's too much.

I hear there are a lot of uses for old or spoiled milk, however I haven't paid much attention to them before. I never had any reason to. However, maybe that's something I should look into these days.

Do you drink much milk?

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Today's poem is a few clever lines from Shel Silverstein again.

Shaking

Geraldine now, stop shaking that cow
For heaven’s sake, for your sake and the cow’s sake.
That’s the dumbest way I’ve seen
To make a milk shake.
~Shel Silverstein