Tuesday, April 7, 2009

M is for Milk


My dear friend Michelle Pieper gave me the inspiration for this blog. She told me about this very interesting underground movement where people are choosing to drink raw or unpasteurized milk instead of pasteurized milk. It's part of the whole raw food movement with the idea being that cooking food or pasteurizing it takes away from its nutritional value. The process of Pasteurizing was invented by Louis Pasteur, a French Chemist (freshman chemistry rears it's ugly head) and entails a process of heating the substance (in this case milk) to really high temperatures and then rapidly cooling it down. It's considered adequate for destroying almost all yeasts, mold, and common spoilage bacteria and also to ensure adequate destruction of common pathogenic heat-resistant organisms. BUT it also kills beneficial bacteria, which is why there is this whole underground movement to consume only unpasteurized milk. The raw milkist say that if the cows are healthy and organic, then the milk will be too. One of the reasons pasteurization was so important was because cows were prone to getting bovine tuberculosis which can be passed on to humans through their milk. Nowadays we don't worry about that threat. Honestly, when I think about unpasteurized milk, I get this horrible image of frothy, smelly, chunky milk that should not be ingested by anyone...especially me. After reading alot on the subject and becoming completely obsessed with raw milk, the image in my mind has changed. What I was picturing was non-homogenized milk....GROSS. I'm all for more nutritious milk but I'd still like it to be sterile white and consistently watery :) . You're probably wondering why an entire post is about milk...well, anyone who knows me (Erica), knows that I'm slightly addicted to milk. I drink it ALL the time, but got concerned when I started reading about how many antibiotics and hormones dairy cows are given. Those sort of things are passed directly on to their milk and are not taken out of the milk through the pasteurization process. It's not a huge concern if you're not a big milk drinker, but for me and little kids, it's bad news. I'm making the effort to change (which means I'm trying really hard, but those cardboard half gallon , smelly, organic milk cartons are EXPENSIVE). I'm truly intrigued with the whole Raw Milk idea and need to try it. It's only legal to buy the stuff in some states and South Carolina is one of them. So me and Michelle will be hittin the road soon to taste test this controversial drink. We'll let you know how it goes and if we'll be boarding this band wagon.



I'll end this post with a picture from my weekend. We celebrated Mooch's (Michelle's) 27th birthday in Augusta. The town was preparing for the Masters coming up this weekend and the azaleas were in full bloom. OH! and I found some really cool antique watch faces downtown at one of the many vintage shops they have. I'm excited to see what we'll make with them....stay tuned.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOIS !

JMB said...

No need to travel, buy it here!

http://athens.locallygrown.net/market/index/3?page=2

erica said...

Oh! I thought it was illegal here. Hm, will def check this out. Have you tried it??

JMB said...

Nope, no raw milk for me.. only organic. :) I'll let you know if I do soon though.