Milking It

I have never been a big milk drinker.  We drank iced tea with our dinner at my house and it always seemed weird to me when I was offered milk with a meal.  Milk is mostly a breakfast item for me.  I use it on my cereal and like a glass of milk if I am having pancakes. 

I have grown up under the major assumption that milk “does a body good.”  It is a source of calcium and our bones need calcium to stay strong.  These are things we were taught.  If its good for babies it must be good for adults.  But I have recently been reading a lot of nutrition studies that point out the fact that cow’s milk is the perfect food for just one type of baby; it is called a calf.   It is the perfect food for a baby that is expected to grow to at least 1300 pounds.

So, I have been looking into the alternatives.  I am currently experimenting with using almond milk on my cereal and that half glass that I use to take my vitamin.  I don’t mind the taste and on my cereal I don’t really notice a difference.  A cup of almond milk has almost half the calories of the 1% milk that we usually stock in the fridge and the same amount of calcium and vitamins A and D. 

All that being said, I do have one major issue with almond milk.  It just isn’t milk.  Milk comes from a breast or teat, not from a nut.  I don’t know what the process is for manufacturing this stuff but I know that no one is “milking” an almond tree.  I suppose it is a marketing thing.  People are not going to be comfortable with substituting their milk for almond juice.  And they will not line up to buy something labeled almond milk-like substance.  In reality, almond milk consists of almonds and water so the term should probably be almond water.  Water on your cereal?  No way!  That is a job for milk.

In a New York Minute

The approach of summer reminds me that I need to stock my cupboards with a couple of summer food staples that I can only get in the grocery stores where my parents live.  They are items that I need once I start grilling.  One of these two items is Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans.  They are hard to describe except to say they are like traditional homemade baked beans, sort of pale in color with a thick texture, and nothing at all like the saucy variety you might get from Cambell’s.  I like both but there is no substituting one for the other when I am craving Grandma Brown’s.  They are a must have with burgers. 

Sometimes when you grow up with something that is common in your local grocery store, you don’t even realize that it is a regional product.  This is the case with Grandma Brown’s.  I am from Upstate New York and have no trouble finding this item in any of the stores there.  When I lived in Connecticut, I eventually found one store that carried them.  In my current location in Massachusetts, they are nowhere to be found.  They are actually manufactured in Mexico, NY and although I don’t know where that even is, I am definitely a fan.

Another product that I have to hunt down, especially during grilling season, is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que’s Mojito Marinade.  Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is a restaurant located in Syracuse, NY.  It is actually fairly famous and has been featured on at least one food show as one of the best BBQ joints in the country.  They have a full line of sauces, rubs and marinades and where I can often find some of their products, not all stores carry the Mojito Marinade.  It is my brother’s fault that I even know this product since he lives in the Syracuse area and once gave me a variety pack of their sauces.  They are all good but the Mojito Marinade makes my day on chicken, especially if I am going to use it to make fajitas or quesadillas.

I am ready for the coming season, I just visited New York and picked up six cans of the Grandma Brown’s and already had a couple of the Mojito Marinades in the cupboard.  If I hadn’t gotten stocked up, though, I have discovered that Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans are available on Amazon.  Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a web site and is also available on Amazon.  The days where items were truly only available to a small regional market have vanished but unless you grew up in Upstate New York, I think it would be hard to just stumble upon Grandma Brown’s via a Google search.