Another Lamentable Loss

Listening to: Fat Bottom Girls – Queen (hells yeah!)

Mood: Mildly annoyed and fading (the annoyance, not me)

So another thing I really, really miss about the US is the milk. It comes so nice and clean and pasteurized. If you want skim milk, you buy that. No skin to be found unless you boil it.

Let me describe the milk situation here for you. It took me a good 2 weeks to even figure out how to get milk delivered. Even then, it came about rather as accident. I happened to stumble upon the milkman in the basement. He sold me a book of tickets. The idea is, you place however many tickets out that you want in the night in some container. Now no one told me this, so I put ALL the tickets out in the bowl, figuring that he would take some and leave some milk. The next day, I complained to my husband about the milk man not coming. He had a good laugh, and then scolded me – it was really lucky someone didn’t come along and just take all of our milk tickets. Sigh.  So next night I put out a few tickets. Each is good for 1 liter of milk. Voila, the milk was there in the morning.

Now, the milk here hasn’t been cleaned in any way, shape, or form. There are quite a few stories in our family of liver problems from not properly boiling milk. I’m not sure if I believe them or not, by I sure don’t want liver trouble….so the milk must be boiled. 15 minutes covers it and you have to watch it or it boils up out of the pot and covers your stove, most likely making your housecleaner roll her eyes because you let it happen again. Not that I would know… Ahem.  Anywho. We have the option of getting skim, or “diet” milk. I have asked for this as I have been drinking skim milk since I was little and love it. I have yet to once get skim milk. They just toss in toned (whole) milk and call it a day. I hate, hate, hate whole milk. I hate seeing the fat float on top, and yes, that is not at all an exaggeration. So the milk goes in the pot. As anyone who has ever cooked milk knows, the minute it boils (which is non-optional here), it gets a gross skin on top of it. WE filter it through a fine sieve, but you never really get it all out. I have theories that it sits and makes skin at night in the fridge, but that’s just my imagination. I think. Then there's the taste of fat in your mouth that comes with skim milk. Ugh.

Oh to grab a liter from the store….

Becky