… and this is why my grandma would boil the milk my father and uncles bought straight from a vaquería, a kind of urban dairy which held cows and milked them and sold the raw milk; they just stirred it a bit and allowed it to cool down to room temperature and then sold it, twice a day as they also milked the cows twice.
But nobody was foolish enough to not sterilise the hell out of raw milk by boiling it before drinking it. This kind of urban dairy only were phased out in the 1960s as industrial cooling became widespread in Spain and so transporting milk from farms to cities was possible.
@Yiole_Gionglao my pals in Germany sit their milk out on the counter and refrigerate after opening it. Shelf milk is milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and can be stored at room temperature in your pantry for later use. It is just not very popular in the US. It is in a box, I think the box is lined with metal foil or mylar? I don’t think Germany allows raw milk to be sold in stores, you would probably need to go to a farm. I am not a huge milk drinker.
I am paranoid, I worry about the cook dropping some nose gold into my food at the restaurant more than I do the best buy dates. I don’t eat out much either, come to think of it. I never pay much attention to the “best buy date”, it is just a date the food might not taste as good or fresh. My liquid coffee creamer is good for over 6 months! but milk only a week or two? I won’t drink milk if it tastes sour or has a noticeable odor. Meat will start to change color once exposed to air but I bag up my meat ASAP and freezer it.
Onions, garlic, potatoes, and other items are good pantry items. Onions will develop a black flaky powder over time. It actually has no affect, I just wash it off, dice the onion, and freezer it at that point. Potatoes will attempt to grow in storage, but I toss them, if they get soft. Eggs last a very long time in the cooler, much longer than any best buy date. The calcium shell keeps the contents bacteria resistant.
I know people like their food fresh, but it is a crying shame to think they toss out good food over a freshness date. Stale chips? I just toss them in soup.
I was given milk directly from the farm as I couldn’t keep anything else in when I was a baby, but I grew up not liking the store milk, I hardly ever use it for cooking except for mashed potatoes.
Well, now almost all milk is sold in Tetra Brik package with a best before date of about 3 months (but it could last far longer). Also the cows-in-huts-in-city coexisted with pasteurized milk which had to be kept chilled, and since many people didn’t had electric coolers (not until the early 1960s) there was a market for raw milk. I’m not sure but I’d say that chilled pasteurized milk lasted well into the early 2000s, it was sold in plastic bags with 1 litre capacity and had to be consumed in 2-3 days maximum. But preferences jsut shfited to longer shelf lifes, standard uperised milk kept chilled that could last for a couple weeks until open and the tetra brik milk which in Spain was always of the unchilled kind (Tetra Brik Aseptic, technically) with shelf life of months.
The thing is, milk is very nutritious, and that means that bacteria love it and will grow wild and cause infections very fast, and that’s why pasteurization was welcome as a savior since it meant that people didn’t need to boil the milk and din’t risk disease and death by drinking it later in the day.
But now we are in a sort of reactionary wave and people who always enjoyed the safety of modern hygiene and health just become health and food snobs for the “good old deadly ways”. Yeah, of course, drink raw milk, not that people ran the hell away from it for any good reason, did they? And of course, never vaccinate your kids, not that parents started doing it as soon as possible because of the funny mortality rate (come on, measles only used to kill 1 in 1000 toddlers… and it’s not gonna be yours, but maybe the neighbor’s who got infected from yours but sure he’s not gonna be upset or something).
Our ancestors lived in that “perfect” “natural” and “organic” world and ran away from it. But sure we know better…
I find the entire ‘processed foods’ argument dishonest…as ALL food is ultimately ‘processed’ by being chewed, churned up, dissolved in hydrochloric acid, and munched by bacteria. By the time any food gets to the bit where nutrients are extracted….it has been well and truly ‘processed’ !
Thus the fact that some factory did part of this process before you ever bought the food is utterly irrelevant. Processing is not, and never was, the real issue. The true problem is that many processed foods lack any nutritional value. White bread, for example, has deliberately had the most nutritious part of the wheat removed. Sugar has had all the nutrition available in molasses removed. And so on. It is our food being made bland ( and having chemicals added ) that makes it bad for us….not the fact that some factory ‘processed’ it.
I sometimes just have an entire bowl of petits pois with gravy. Low fat, good protein, vitamins, etc. A nice filling meal. Then if I feel hungry later I have mixed oats and sunflower seeds….and a can of curried mackerel for supper.
@Gloria_Exercitus I’m not trying to tell anyone what to eat. I just want to raise awareness on the alternatives to the manufactured slop that the stores try to sell us, and at ridiculous prices to top it off while fresh wholesome food is better for the body.
Sounds all good I tend to stick to fruits and vegetables, cheeses… I avoid sauces/gravy, pasta, white bread, boxed foods… My only sin is a steak with mushroom sauce, only once a month.
I just don’t understand how some people let charlatans dictate what they can eat or not while they promote alcohol, cigarettes and dyes in food.
Hi Quick response here, I believe if things are done the way you suggest it seems to be very expensive, I was in whole foods (a popular natural foods retailer) the other day and they wanted £7.00 for a sandwich, In the main retail stores like Sainsbury a sandwich is £3.60.
So it seems a big part of this is cost, all of us seem to look for cheap prices without realising what has to be done behind the scenes to achieve that chep price.
Don’t get me wrong I fully agree with you, I just like to like at the big picture.
You’re right, we should never lose sight of the big picture and I know that the topic of this thread relies on some naivety and ignorance on the part of shoppers when it comes to prices, me included.
It isn’t easy to change people’s habits, especially when the answers vary from one household to the next. I’m single living alone, I can afford to pay extra to give the best my body needs but it’s clear that a family of five will have problems meeting that goal. But as long as people know about healthier alternatives and strive for better food, leaving the junk on the shelves, the stores can better adapt their orders and send a message to the food factories.
I tend to stick to fruits and vegetables, cheeses… I avoid sauces/gravy, pasta, white bread, boxed foods… My only sin is a steak with mushroom sauce, only once a month.