Ashland Food Co-op

MILK AND THE DAIRIES NEXT DOOR

July 30th, 2009 by Matthew

“Bread, MILK and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.” -Leigh Hunt

Milk

THE MAGIC OF MILK

Today, in contrast to this statement, most of us humans view milk as an ordinary commodity. A pasteurized, homogenized industrialized, and subsidized commodity. We “creatures of the breast” (mammals) have forgotten what an extraordinary substance milk really is.

In its purest form, milk is a magical, living fluid that contains all the vitamins, minerals, nutrients and calories necessary for new mammalian life. Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, puts this fact in a larger context when he states that:

[Milk] gives newborn [mammals] the advantage of ideally formulated food from the mother even after birth, and therefore the opportunity to continue their physical development outside the womb. The human species has taken full advantage of this opportunity; we are completely helpless for months after birth, while our brains finish growing to a size that would be difficult to accommodate in the womb and birth canal. In this sense, milk helped make possible the evolution of our large brain, and so helped make us the unusual animals we are.

The cultural practice of dairying and drinking the milk of other animals (sheep & goats, and later yaks, camel, cattle) is believed to have originated over 10,000 years ago, and has also had a significant affect on human development. Although milk from dairy animals was not as beneficial and suited to us as mother’s milk, its efficient source of calories and nutrients played a major role in the success and spread of early human civilization.

Pholia Farm Cheese

And perhaps most importantly (at least to the culinarily-inclined among us), milk is the foundation from which the myriad of other amazing dairy products are built. Cream, butter, ghee, yogurt, buttermilk, creme fraiche, sour cream, koumiss, kefir, and thousands of fresh and aged cheeses are all derived from milk.

This all being said, we have most likely forgotten about the magic of these substances because most of today’s milk is the opposite of magical……

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Tags: Ashland Food Co-op, Eat Local, Eat Local Week, local food, milk, sustainability, Umpqua Dairy
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Get Cultured

July 29th, 2009 by Mary

Science didn’t invent fermented dairy foods like yogurt and cheese. Cave drawings from 4000BC show humans enjoying their homemade or should I say cavemade dairy products. In fact, little crusts of cheese have been found in Egyptian tombs. Quality fermented dairy foods were a mark of sophistication in Greek-Roman times so the ultimate insult was to call someone a “barbaric milk drinker”. These fermenting skills were carried to all of Europe, and all European countries have a long history of fermenting dairy. No one had a refrigerator to store their raw milk , so creating a lactoferment food that preserved the dairy for a few days to a few weeks was the way to go. The ferment process converts the lactose sugars into lactic acid, an antibacterial. Lactic acid also predigests the casein or protein in milk making it much more digestible than non-fermented milk.

Freshly made Curd

It’s been 30 years since my days revolved around the goat milking parlor, but I still miss the fun of making my own fermented dairy products. Occasionally I still make soft cheese for East Indian cookery because it’s so easy and so delicious…..

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