The production of the cows on which I depend is down, so being somewhat in want of cream, I had the idea to buy half & half from the store, not shake it, get cream off the top, and then just kind of use it up as the cream content dwindled.
It had been my experience, at least as far as I thought, that for some reason, the cream in half & half was less processed, adulterated and funny-tasting than store-bought and Dairy Commissioned Ultra- Pasteurized 'cream.'
I got some education as my plan unraveled.
First, I realized that half & half is homogenized. So I gave up.
But later on, as my non-processed supply dwindled, I asked my wife to pick up a half & half. I figured homogenized was better than nothing, at least, this once.
She grabbed a carton for me from the local Giant Eagle. I got around to tasting some, and after so doing, I noticed a little cloud printed on the carton, "Made with Real Milk."
Uh-oh.
The brain cogs began to turn. If made with real milk, what about the cream? I was flabbergasted in reading the ingredients. It said half & half on the carton but it contained no cream whatsoever.
Just corn syrup solids, titanium something or other, maybe some carrageenan, and other stuff I never consume. No more tastes.
I last saw cream, in a store, that was similar to what I drink, in 1992. It was pasteurized, not ultra-, and it was pure. It was good. Now we've come this far. I would be hurting without direct production cows.
For example, today, I wanted nothing more than to eat some cold pumpkin pie. Not the sweet kind most folks know but the unsweetened kind my Sharon sometimes makes for me.
I was pressed for time, so instead of buckling down and baking a pie, I took 3 fresh whole wheat rolls I made (ingredients: organic hard red winter wheat berries, olive oil, yeast, water) and piled pumpkin (ingredients: pumpkin) from a can and roasted sunflower seeds (ingredients: sunflower seeds) on before each bite. I also had some raw collard greens on the side, and to really top it off super, I was sipping cream, which, really, made it super.
3/4 of the can was gone when the 3 rolls were gone.
I could live without cream but it would be like a kid who loves ice cream going without any kind of thing that was at all like ice cream. And boy - I enjoyed that pumpkin thing today far more than I ever did any pumpkin pie, with all its spice and eggs and everything!
Bonus paragraph: A European once said, "Leave it to the Americans to come up with something like process cheese." Did you ever stop to realize that what Americans call 'milk' is actually process milk, and what they call 'raw milk' is milk?
Extra Bonus paragraph: A young man once exclaimed with great emotion that an acquaintance of his had lost his eyesight from drinking raw milk. I since thought about it and realized it was not raw milk but dirty milk that had been the problem. That problem, as solved by the young man and his camp, is pasteurize the dirty milk, and kill all the harmful bacteria and all the enzymes and everything, in the dirty milk. You see that just keeping everything good alive and clean in the first place is fundamentally a better idea.
