MY TWO unofficial breakfast jobs at Abe and Sarah’s farmhouse are: 1) hand-grinding the coffee–Abe is a big drinker of the stuff, as am I, and 2) sneaking in to Abe’s dad’s milkhouse to scoop up a pitcherful of ice-cold organic raw milk. Okay, maybe not sneaking in, as Abe’s pop fully condones the practice. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it. This morning I joked that I got the milk and got away without being fired upon.
Raw milk is thick, creamy and delicious. The Amish swear that it is more healthy as well. But is it safe? I have been drinking it every morning for about a week now, and I am still bumping along. Yet there has been some controversy related to its sale, which at least in these parts, requires a permit.
I stopped by another Amish farm this morning which happens to sell raw Jersey and Holstein milk. They are licensed and make the fact known with a sign outside and with the framed license on full display inside their small store. Not all Amish have gone to the trouble, and have thereby gotten themselves into trouble.
ONE THING we do each morning, usually after finishing the meal and prayers, is to read a chapter from the Bible. Lately we’ve been on Proverbs.
This morning Abe paused, as he does occasionally while reading, to comment on a verse.
‘Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags’, Abe read. ‘I should think about that when I got the glue’, he remarked.
‘The glue’ is our new terminology for not being able to get out of bed in the morning, as in ‘I think someone poured glue in my bed last night’. We have had some late bed times lately and have ‘gotten the glue’ more often than I think is the norm around here.
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Hi, Amish America. I lived on a farm owned by a caste brahminical family from India for three years. I know, I know. Brahmins aren’t farmers, Vaishyas are. They owned the farm, but we worked it for them. Long story. Anyway, cows and cow products have been part of Vedic Indian culture since time out of mind. Indians do culinary things with milk we westerners don’t even dream of.
These Indians had a herd of Brown Swiss on the farm and they (and we) used the milk regularly. One of the Vedic customs the family insisted we follow was that all milk to be consumed had to be brought to a boil so that it would foam and rise, then it was removed from the burner to allow it to drop down. This boil/rise/drop process was repeated two more times before the milk was considered fit to drink. Since most of India, even today, doesn’t have refrigeration and given the fact that cows can pass tuberculosis through their milk, I’m thinking Indian culture is onto something here. 😉
And the milk was still fanflippingtastic. So rich you could mistake the milk for cream. After moving on from the farm, I would drink a gallon of milk at breakfast and again at lunch. No kidding!
The riddle of Amish scrapple and other mystery meats | Amish America Comment on Notes from the Amish breakfast table (March 2nd, 2010 at 10:43)
[…] I don’t know that there’s much to worry about, but he’ll take his fully-homogenized-and-pasteurized-in-the-sterile-grocery-store-container and that is THAT, thank you. I must have a shorter memory or am just less dainty about it than pop because I am a regular drinker of the raw stuff. […]