I know fine food, but it doesn't always show.

When I buy milk, I get the organic kind, sure. But it really doesn't taste different from the regular kind. It's basically the same feed for the cows; maybe organics get a little more grass, but the same processing, the same homogenization, the same pasteurization, same packaging, and transport processes. Let's not kid ourselves about that! Milk is milk and I buy organic to avoid the hormones and antibiotics while also supporting slightly more sustainable husbandry measures.

But here's where I turn totally Philistine: I buy ultra-pasteurized milk. The purists will tell you that pasteurizing milk deadens the flavor and then they'll claim that the nutrients are destroyed by the heating of the milk (shoot, it probably does change the milk sugars and a bunch of other things). I buy ultra-pasteurized because it has a longer shelf-life in the fridge! I'm a single guy living alone and the only time I drink milk is with cookies (cheese is my preferred dairy source). So a half-gallon of milk lasts a long, long time in my house. I need the extra two or three weeks of storage time--and I still throw out half-drunk cartons.

It gets worse: I found that I actually like the taste of the ultra-pasteurized stuff better than the regular stuff. No, like most Americans, I've never tried unpasteurized (unless I got some in France, unawares). I'll bet there's not a pretentious gourmet out there who would admit to that, but hey, I like slightly cooked milk!


CDs listened to today:

• Peter Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini
• Olivier Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise
• Matias Aguayo: Are You Really Lost
• William Schuman: Symphony No. 9