I got the full eight quarts down yesterday, and my temp this morning was 97.0 — higher than it’s been since I started checking it.  I’ll have to give it a few days to see if it’s really climbing, though.  I also remembered to weigh myself, so I’ve got a baseline weight of 254.

I may not get through a full eight quarts today, because I wasn’t hungry when I woke up, so I got a later start. That’s okay; it’s not like two gallons is a magic number.  That’s just what I figured a guy my size should shoot for.  The idea is to overfeed yourself, so it’s better to drink too much than too little.  I may end up averaging more like closer to 7 quarts a day; I’ll just have to see.

A little on how it’s done:  You don’t drink it in three big batches, like meals.  You sip at it gradually throughout the day.  That way your body always has a ready source of energy, and you don’t feel like you’re sloshing when you move.  So I keep a glass of milk on my desk and try to take a sip pretty often.  The other key is to drink it warm, as close to room temperature as possible.  I figured lukewarm milk would be nasty, but it’s actually pretty good.  (Of course, this is raw, pastured Jersey milk with plenty of cream; maybe store-bought stuff would be nasty warm.) Drinking a big slug of cold milk can cause some stomach cramping or discomfort, but warm it goes down easy.  I pour a quart at a time, so by the time I finish it, it’s getting fairly warm.

Off to refill my glass….

Tom Naughton has a good post today about raw milk.  He looked up the regulations for raw milk in a bunch of different states, and had some fun with how stupid they are.  My favorite is Nevada:

Raw milk sales are legal but, in practice, there are no raw milk sales in the state. In order for a farmer to obtain a permit from the state dairy commission to produce and distribute raw milk, the county milk commission must first certify the farm for the production of raw milk or a raw milk product. There has never been a county milk commission in existence at any time, so to this point, there has been a de facto prohibition of raw milk sales.

Most of us who saw “Brazil” took it as a warning.  Apparently some government folks took it as an inspiration.

And here’s a very good article from a raw milk drinker, telling the story of how they had to work their way through a chain of confidences to contact the raw milk “underground” so they could start getting some.  It also covers the evidence that raw milk is safe and healthy, and why that’s the case.  As the author says, it’s amazing that milk is the only food that you can’t buy unprocessed in most states.  You can buy everything else raw—meat, vegetables, fruit, grain, etc.—and decide for yourself how much you want to cook or process it, but not milk.  Once upon a time, it was sort of about safety, but that’s not what it’s about now at all.  It’s inertia and corporate protectionism, plain and simple.

We drink raw milk and cream and make yogurt from it, but unfortunately we mostly still eat pasteurized cheese.  Hard cheeses like cheddar are just a lot of work, but one of these days I’ll give cheesemaking another shot.

Now that I’ve written my position paper on raw milk, I can move on to the article I had in mind in the first place: making raw milk yogurt.  (As Bill Cosby said in Buck Buck/Fat Albert, “I told you that story so I could tell you this one.”)  If you’re still not sure about using raw milk, or only have pasteurized milk from the store, you can still use this recipe; just watch for a special note in part 2. Read more »

First, a little milk history. Pasteurization of milk started at a time when dirty milk was a real problem. Industrialization was increasing the numbers of cows per dairy—a precursor to today’s huge 10,000-cow factory dairies—so it was becoming harder to give them all good individual care. People didn’t really understand the connection between cleanliness and disease prevention. They couldn’t cool the milk as quickly or reliably as we can today.  They milked into open pails, often without making any particular effort to make sure the cow and equipment were clean, or even to keep manure out of the milk.  (Look at a cow sometime, and you’ll notice that where the milk comes out isn’t all that far from where the manure comes out.  Certainly within splash range.)  This led to a lot of contamination, and a lot of illness as a result. Read more »

Yesterday’s post kind of drained my writing energy, so to paraphrase Mike and the Bots, today’s entry will be an anthology of short, plotless posts.

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