Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Drinks / Retail Bliss in the Land of Locavore Milk
Posted by Nicki Wood on Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 10:43 AM
I went to the Franklin Farmers market last week and the Hatchers were all sold out of lower-fat milks.
Attention shoppers! It's Hatcher's whole milk you want. Hatcher's, which is produced in College Grove, Tennessee, offers an unhomogenized whole milk, only the second time I've ever seen unhomogenized milk for sale. In other words, it has cream on the top. The cream is not like whipping cream -- it's thicker, closer to butter. You could stand a spoon it. It's visible in the photo, clinging to the sides of the carton.
When Hatcher's whole milk is poured into coffee, the cream glides out first and slips into the coffee with an unctuous, soft "plish," then melts into an unspeakably thick, rich balm that floats the caffeine on a magic carpet down the gullet and home to mama.
Go on -- buy it. You can use the excuse I used: "I want my child to see what real milk looked like in the old days." She was intrigued by the idea and liked the taste, but a little put off by the globs of cream in her cereal. I found it udderly divine and know in time she'll get used to it.
Comments (9)
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Hatcher's is really good—especially the chocolate milk, which is like drinking pudding. (That's a compliment, considering that I will, in fact, drink pudding from the bowl before it's had a chance to harden. Try it before you judge me.)
But it hasn't whetted my desire to taste the fresh, unpasteurized milk that is illegal to sell for human consumption in the state of Tennessee. To those who know, I'm asking: Is the taste difference really that powerful?
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So the sale of raw milk is illegal in Tennessee? Is that the retail sale of it? Could you still purchase it direct? That would explain why I can't find it anywhere. Been meaning to try it myself.
You can buy unpasteurized milk labeled "for pets" -- I wish I could recall where, Maybe craigslist, maybe FFM.
Unhomogenized milk is still pasteurized -- it's not legal to sell unpasteurized milk for human consumption. People used to get sick from it. That's how Rachel Jackson died -- milk sick, they called it.
May the cream does integrate if you shake it, but it separates again and floats to the top. That's a good thing in my book.
Here is a question that I have, why does organic milk stay fresh for weeks when the typical Kroger / Purity milk goes bad in 10 days?
Organic milk is ultra-pasteurized, heated to 280 degrees instead of about 160 (don't quote me on that 160) of regular pasteurization.It destroys some of the flavor and nutrients -- Fluffermuffin says it tastes stale -- but it does last a lot longer.
Speaking of vile things emerging from the always-comical undersides of a cow, back when I was an undergrad in KY, I visited then gf's family in Litchfield Co. When we arrived, granny-mom silently offered me a jelly-glass of what I assumed to be milk. After two glugs, I spat it back in the glass, and as politely as I could, I told her that the milk gone bad. "Milk??? That's Buttermilk" she replied. And no mas buttermilk for The Z.
