Tag: Milk

Panther milk

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panther milk

This Spanish delicacy (leche de pantera) originated from the Spanish Foreign Legion in the 1920s. Soldiers mixed any alcohol they had with condensed milk as a substitute for medicinal pain relief and then it became a fashionable drink in the 70s.

Ingredients

  • 5ml of grenadine (optional, for colour)
  • 35ml of rum or brandy
  • 35ml of gin
  • 35ml of condensed milk
  • 100ml of whole milk

Recipe

  1. Put everything in a cocktail shaker
  2. Shake (don’t stir) with ice
  3. Strain into a glass
  4. Lightly dust with cinnamon
  5. Transform into a panther
  6. Step 5 was a joke
  7. But seriously, drink responsibly

You can also buy your own Panther Milk.

TMK Creamery makes vodka from milk

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Cowcohol vodka

The classic White Russian cocktail comprises of vodka, a coffee liqueur and cream, served with ice. If you don’t have cream, milk will do. But what if you could make the vodka out of milk too? That’s where TMK Creamery comes in.

Todd Koch is the owner of TMK Creamery and his idea of making vodka from milk came after reading about Dr. Paul Hughes—an Assistant Professor of Distilled Spirits at Oregon State University— who had tested whether a way to ferment whey into a neutral spirits base solution that was “both environmentally sustainable and cost-effective for small creameries”.

Large, corporate-owned creameries can afford the expensive equipment that converts whey into profitable products such as protein powder. But at his family-owned, 20-cow farmstand creamery, Koch and his wife simply fed their whey into the fields through a nutrient management system. Rather than continue to bury the byproduct, Koch decided to ferment as a means of profitably upcycling the whey while bringing visibility to his animals. He teamed up with Dr. Hughes and a nearby distiller to manufacture the creamery’s newest product: a clear, vodka-like liquor they call “Cowcohol.”

Cowcohol. Genius.

But, according to Atlas Obscura, Koch isn’t the only “cowcohol” distiller in the world.

Read the full story at Atlas Obscura and check out how they make vodka from tulips in the Netherlands.

The $5 milkshake from Pulp Fiction

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Of all the things I remember from Pulp Fiction, the $5 shake that Mia Wallace ordered isn’t one of them. But you can’t spell insignificant without significant and Binging with Babish tried to recreate it.

The issue was getting the total cost of the ingredients up to $5 and making it taste that way and in true Babish style, he pushed the boat out with multiple variations of increasing costs.

The final attempt was decadence beyond the realms of human decency but, hey, it sounded like it tasted good. I wonder how Babish would do with an expensive Boston Cooler.

Stream the video below.

Binging with Babish: $5 Shake from Pulp Fiction

Related: Homer Simpson’s Moon Waffles, the safety of milk, and how to make MooMoo Milk.

Daughters, milking cows, and etymological debates

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An Indian woman milking a cow

Victor Mair wrote a very in-depth piece on the etymological origins of the word “daughter” and its connection to milking cows.

I was just thinking how important cows (and their milk) are for Indian people and was surprised that’s reflected in such a fundamental word for a family relationship as “daughter” — at least in the popular imagination.

The etymology of ‘daughter’

Upon further investigation, Mair traced “daughter” back to its roots, via Middle English, Old English, Proto-West Germanic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European, and finally Vedic Sanskrit—duhitṛ (“one who milks”).

But rather than take Wikitionary’s word for it, Mair posed two questions to a host of linguists:

  1. Is that analysis reliable?
  2. Is duhitṛ cognate with “daughter”?

Enter a mixed bag of responses for and against the cognate connection. I won’t list them all here but if the answers were on a spectrum, every part of it would be covered but here are two extremes:

duhitṛ is indeed cognate with Eng. daughter. While I’m no kind of Indo-Europeanist, I do recall hearing that connecting it with √duh, dogdhi, etc. is spurious. But I don’t have any references to hand.

Whitney Cox—Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago

Vedic duhitár- does NOT mean ‘one who milks’! That’s a 19th-c. myth that was exploded generations ago.

Don Ringer—American linguist, Indo-Europeanist, and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania

Read the article over at Language Log and choose your own etymological adventure. And if you’d prefer articles on milk from other animals, check out pule, made from donkey milk, and cheese made from moose milk.

Is milk a healthy drink or a poison?

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A glass of milk

Who knew milk could cause such a stir? With the UK leaving the EU, a US-UK trade deal could see cow’s milk contain an undesirable ingredient: more pus.

US rules allow milk to have nearly double the level of somatic cells – white blood cells that fight bacterial infection – that the UK allows. In practice, this means more pus in our milk, and more infections going untreated in cows. Much US milk would be deemed unfit for human consumption in Britain.

With this in mind, Kurzgesagt produced a video entitled “Milk. White Poison or Healthy Drink?” for its channel:

Over the last decade, milk has become a bit controversial. Some people say it’s a necessary and nutritious food, vital for healthy bones, but others say it can cause cancer and lead to an early death. So who is right? And why are we drinking it anyway?

But it’s not just cow’s milk that has its share of controversy. Oatly, the popular oat milk brand, has been in the news after selling its stake to Blackstone, a private equity firm accused of contributing to deforestation in the Amazon. It’s also linked to President Trump.

There are also environmental issues with other cow’s milk alternatives such as almond milk. According to Pete Hemingway from Sustainable Restaurant Association, it takes over 6,000 litres of water to produce a litre of almond milk. Not exactly eco-friendly. If someone in your family is suffering, it better to ask your doctor is diverticulitis hereditary.

We still have pea milk, moose milk and donkey milk, I suppose.

Milk. White Poison or Healthy Drink?

How to make MooMoo Milk from Pokémon

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MooMoo milk

Miltank remains my most hated Pokémon. Fans of the game will know exactly why and which Miltank I mean—Whitney’s Miltank. But the one thing it has going for it is MooMoo Milk.

In-game, MooMoo Milk restores a Pokémon by 100 HP but IRL, it’s not officially a thing so there are a plethora of recipes for it. I settled for this recipe and bottle tutorial (because MooMoo Milk is a brand in the Pokémon world).

MooMoo Milk recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 cup of milk
  • 1/2 tablespoon of agave (1 tablespoon if you want it sweeter) or 1 tablespoon of sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Instructions

  • Mix together serve

If you don’t want to make the bottle, you can skip to 9:08 for the milk recipe. It might not help you defeat Whitney’s Miltank but it’ll be damn tasty. Now I’m wondering how MooMoo Cheese would taste so I can add it to the growing Cultrface cheese collection.

EASY Pokemon MooMoo Milk Bottle DIY + Recipe (collab with iloveanimewebshow)

Pea milk is apparently a thing

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pea milk

I’ve written about dairy products made from donkey milk and moose milk I’m going a little left field with this one. I introduce to you: pea milk.

Last May, Sainsbury’s started stocking pea milk and the benefits are pretty good:

  • 8x more protein than almond milk
  • 40% less sugar than cow’s milk
  • 2x more calcium than cow’s milk
  • Dairy-free, nut-free and soy-free
  • High in fibre
  • Low in saturated fat
  • It takes 100x less water to farm than almonds and 25x less water to farm than dairy

At first glance, you’re probably thinking pea milk is green and comes from garden peas. But in fact, pea milk is made from yellow split peas and it’s creamy in colour.

While any plant-based milk alternative has its environmental and moral advantages, it’s important to adjust your diet to reflect any potential loss of nutrients from cow’s milk if your pea milk isn’t fortified.

If you are going plant-based, however, she [Dr Hazel Wallace] says there’s one thing you should always consider when choosing a product: “Plant milk doesn’t offer us all of the nutrients that cow’s milk does, so for people who are vegan or can’t consume dairy because they’re lactose intolerant, it’s really important that we encourage them to check the labels for fortification. Plant-based milks are not required to be fortified, but they should be,” she says.

Fortification is the process in which vitamins and minerals are added to the base product. The Mighty Society’s pea milk, for example, has been fortified with calcium, Vitamin D and B12, but this doesn’t mean to say that all pea milk products will be.

But we’re missing an all-important question: how does pea milk taste? The folks at Cooking Light tried some in 2018 and uploaded the experience on YouTube.

Stream it below and if you’ve had pea milk or you’re looking to try it, let us know how it is in the comments.

Taste Test, Pea Milk | Cooking Light