Remember when milk used to come from cows? It was whole, good, and we never heard of lactose intolerance. Who knew what lactose was? If a child got sick, fingers didn’t point to milk. Milk was wholesome, we drank it and never thought of it coming from anywhere else but a cow. We would have drunk condensed milk but were afraid we wouldn’t get big.
Many kinds of livestock provide milk used by humans for drinking and other purposes like milk baths for exotic personalities. You never knew that someone was going to take a milk bath unless you saw the milk tanker pull up outside the house and run a hose to the upstairs bathroom. Pretty rare. When the internet intruded into our lives, we discovered that other animals could supply us with milk including buffalo (11%) goat (2%) sheep (1.4%) and camel (0.2%). Milking a buffalo was right up there on the list of dangerous pastimes. Donkey, horse, reindeer and yak are included, although rare because someone once decided to milk a horse, got sober the next morning and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Stick to cows. (Donkey, horse, reindeer and yak had very few drinkers of their output yet these hardy people live into the hundreds going to the fields each day to chase reindeer and yak for their milk. They almost never succeed and are forced to drive their ox-cart to a nearby 7-11.
But wait, there’s more! Whole milk, two-percent milk, one-percent milk, and skim milk are popular too. The difference between 2% milk and 1% milk is not discernable. The only thing we can say about 2% milk is that it’s twice as fat the 1%. Borden’s probably got to be number 1 because they had a cow named Elsie as their mascot. If they had used a donkey or horse they would have gone bankrupt.
What’s new on the milky horizon? We now have ‘nut milk’! Whoa Buzz, do you mean they can make milk from nuts? Yes! Here’s how. Buy raw nuts. Soak the nuts overnight. Drain and rinse the soaked nuts. Blend the nuts with fresh water. Strain the nut ‘milk’. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sweeten, if desired. Go out and purchase a quart of milk. Drink that milk. Of course, by the time your nuts are dry, the cereal is stale so forget it.
Not everyone can enjoy milk but there are alternatives. Liquor! Sorry, just placed that there to see if you were still reading. Alternative milk products include soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, and cashew milk. (See previous paragraph for what to do with nut milk) Then there’s coconut milk which, in my opinion is closer to water than milk and you’ll need a machete to open the ‘container’.
There’s another kind of milk that sounds good to people who get high. Hemp milk, or hemp seed milk, is a plant milk made from hemp seeds that are soaked and ground in water. The result resembles milk in color, texture, and flavor. The downside? It contains no THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Its only good use is as the liquid in a bong.