There’s a quart of milk in my fridge. A several-weeks-old quart. And it’s about to get thrown out.
It’s a curse when you live alone. Every once in a while you need some milk for cooking. A cupful, perhaps. Certainly not often enough to use up a whole quart. (Nope, I don’t use it for anything else.) But if a recipe calls for milk, there’s no good substitute.
So I buy milk, whole milk, in the smallest available amount. A quart. I never give it much thought when ordering groceries. (A holdover from the lockdown; I indulge my laziness and still have groceries delivered.) I just look for a quart of whole milk on the website and click +1.
So, long story short, I figured the current quart was well past its useful life even though still almost full. (Yes, I throw out a lot of milk.) So I looked for the expiration date, just to be sure:
January!? But it’s already several weeks old! Who keeps milk for months?
Some of you probably already know what “Ultra Pasteurized” means. But I had to look it up. It’s a special high-heat pasteurization process that kills all the bacteria. (They weren’t all killed with regular old-fashioned pasteurization??) Then the bottle is specially sealed and — voila! — it has a shelf life of several months.
Well, that extra shelf life may be great for the grocery stores, but it means nothing to me. For my entire life, milk has been something that keeps for a couple of weeks at most. Then you toss it … before it starts separating, smelling, and curdling. Ick!
In my book, any white liquid that keeps for months, doesn’t need refrigeration until after it’s opened, and has to be shaken before it’s used is, at best, a milk substitute to be viewed with great skepticism. And while I might buy it again, I guarantee it will get tossed in a couple of weeks, just like the real stuff.
You are, unsurprisingly, correct. This is yet another example of a PRODUCED food; and seems designed to make less work for the shelf-stackers at the supermarkets.
Long live the simple foods – the ordinary milks to start with !
And long live Colorado, whose comments on everything are unfailingly pithy and to the point !
😀
This stuff went into the trash, er, down the drain, as soon as I saw the expiration date. Whatever it was, it wasn’t “milk” as I’ve always known it.
yet another zombie food product
And yet it was the only quart-size whole milk the store offered. Guess I’ll be throwing out half-gallons from now on.
sometimes, i’ve seen pints, perhaps those would be more useful and try a store that sells real milk. sad, that this is what it’s come to.
I sometimes see pints. I’ll have to start watching for them again. Meantime, this is a Kroger store. I’d expect them to have everything. But I discovered just this week that when I search for something specific, they don’t necessarily show it, but alternatives instead. Ticked me off.
When I searched specifically for “Meadow Gold whole milk,” they showed it. It had not displayed before. And it’s real milk. What a racket.
Great post, I learned a lot. Who knew? My solution to milk wastage – I also live alone and got tired of tossing out cartons of milk – I switched to powdered milk – goat milk specifically. It works great in morning coffee, over cereal like Cheerios, and for cooking. Very creamy and smooth and great tasting. Plus it is easier to digest because I am lactose intolerant. And I am throwing away whole milk intolerant, too. I had never heard of Ultra Pasteurized before your post – thank you!
I use powdered CoffeeMate in my coffee and don’t eat cereal. I’ve thought about powdered milk but figured it just would’t be the same as regular whole milk. Ultra Pasteurized came as a bit of a shock. This was the second or third bottle of the stuff I’ve bought without realizing it was different, other than the packaging. Even if the milk is fine, the whole thing seems deceitful and I resent it.
I never have to throw out milk because I use it mainly for cereal in the mornings. What works for me is I get the quart size and freeze them, always having one open and one thawing out in the fridge. I didn’t know about ultra pasteurized, interesting. In the same vein, however, I had some sealed Oscar Meyer franks that were so many months old I couldn’t remember (date stamp missing.) Had to be at least 4 months! They looked perfectly good, which is rather frightening. Tossed ’em.
I never thought about freezing milk. Didn’t realize that was even an option.
I keep franks and brats in the freezer and just pop one or two out as needed. But yes, I think all foods should have some kind of date stamp. I have so many things that me, myself, and I just don’t/can’t use up fast enough — condiments, spices, canned goods, etc. Shocking how old some of it gets. But a pinch of something now and then, a splash of this or that salad dressing, an occasional can of soup, a one-time recipe, anything that migrates to the back of the shelf — it happens. I try to remember to use a Sharpie on lids or labels to remind myself when I actually open something, and on the ZipLoc bags when I freeze something. But none of that keeps the stuff from getting old, and time passes so quickly …
When I was a wee lad (12ish YO) we had a Jersey Cow and untold numbers of chickens. And an old chest freezer. The freezer always had several gallons (Glass bottles with the little circular cardboard stopper. As side note… the cream on top was so thick that you could invert the bottle without spilling a drop – stopper or not. Anyway… we had so much milk and so many eggs, that we fed the chickens milk and the cow eggs. I don’t remember freezing eggs, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t cause we didn’t waste anything unless absolutely necessary.
BTW I was 12 in 1952.
I remember visiting my uncle’s farm in Missouri when I was a kid. — plus or minus 12. They had cows and fresh milk and I didn’t like that thick stuff at all. I did, however, love the frog legs from their small lake. Hadn’t thought about that farm in many years. I don’t recall that they had chickens. But I remember being out sitting on a fence watching their wheat harvest. Interesting thing you had going there with the milk and eggs, cows and chickens. I’ve heard there’s a way to freeze eggs, but have never tried it. Or freezing milk.
Great ! – someone older ‘n me !! (but not by much ..)
And me!
I’ll toast to that.
Please don’t toast with ultra-pasteurized milk …