Day 9 - I Get Raw.

Ahhhhhh. This is the sound I am making as I finally sit down. Today was another one of those days where I was so busy I barely had time to eat. I started with vanilla yogurt and blueberries and didn't even have time for a picture. After a trip to the dentist I had a heaping serving of garlic mashed potatoes to fuel me for the day.


I spent two hours practicing tennis before my last lesson tomorrow, then had an apple and the last of my sunflower seeds before I headed to Richfield Springs. My first stop was the Mountain View Dairy; I've been eating their cheese for weeks, but this was my first trip to their farm, it seems to be the only way to get their milk. The cows at Mountain View are grass fed, grain free (grain has less nutrients, and therefore so do the cows and their milk), antibiotic free, growth hormone free, and they seem pretty happy.

There's something serene about cows chilling by a stream. If I was a cow, this is what I would want to be doing, I would not want to be pent up in a barn eating just corn. Those are some good looking cows. And having majored in Animal Science at Cornell and had my hands in more parts of a cow than you can imagine, I feel qualified to judge. Another interesting thing about Mountain View's dairy products is that they are raw, meaning they are not pasteurized. Why should I dispense with Louis Pasteur and his methods of killing microorganisms? According to Mountain View's pamphlet:

"Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer."

Let's break that down: everything is associated with heart disease and cancer, and I'm not sure there's enough scientific evidence to prove that pasteurization leads to colic, growth problems, or tooth decay, so let's discount that last sentence for now.

Low fat dairy products have long been a pet peeve of mine. You see, certain vitamins, such as A and D, are soluble in fat, not water. Which means when you take the fat out of your milk, yogurt, cheese, what have you, you lose those vitamins. If you drink reduced fat or skim milk, check the ingredients - you'll find Vitamin A palmitate, it's been added to make up for the natural Vitamin A that was removed. That's all well and good, unless you have an allergic reaction to the palmitate or a stomach condition that is exacerbated by processed foods.

A similar principle applies to pasteurization. If you take out the bad bacteria you're going to lose the good bacteria too, and now we're left with Jamie Lee Curtis pumping everyone and their mother full of Activia, a six-pack of which costs more than a gallon of raw milk and comes in tiny little containers that either get thrown out or take a lot of fossil fuels to recycle and reshape into new plastic.

But, you may ask, won't I get sick?

"Modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection."

That is also from the pamphlet. And it makes sense. Kind of like how your urine is sterile when it comes out of your body, if it went into a stainless steel tank, through sterilized tubes and into a refrigerator, it would stay that way.

Well, that's enough pontificating about why you should, at the very least, drink whole milk, and eat dairy products that are as fatty as possible. If you're worried about weight gain, just decrease the amounts (trust me they're more filling in their fatty form) or exercise a little bit extra.

Here's a picture of the store at Mountain View Dairy and some happy, sleepy cows.


This has nothing to do with anything, but as I was leaving Mountain View, I saw baby turkeys.


Last week, Mr. and Mrs. Maple satisfied my need for sweets, but they are no longer with us. So when I drove by Ingles Maple Products on Rte. 28 in Richfield I had to turn around and go back. And boy am I glad I did. I met Bill Ingles, a decendent of Ulysses S. Grant, his wife Ruth, and a kitten!


They had all kinds of maple products: soft maple candy, hard maple candy, maple mustard, maple tea, maple syrup, of course, and even granulated maple sugar! I had to buy the sugar to give my self some more options for the rest of the month; it was a little expensive, $9 for a 10 oz. jar, but according to Bill, "it takes a lot of propane to make that sugar." I bought the sugar and some more maple candy.


As soon as I got home I had to try my maple candy and milk. Mr. and Mrs. maple cannot hold a candle to the Ingles maple candy. Not just because it's made of sugar and it will melt, but because it is freakin' delicious! And the milk? Superb! So filling that I went out and spent two hours trimming branches in my driveway because I felt like I'd had half a meal.


After the tree trimming I had another glass of milk and an apple, and then I did this: walked Zoe 1 mile, biked 3 miles to Russell park, ran 3 miles in Russell Park, biked 5 miles home (took the long way), did the dishes, did the garbage. I am Popeye and raw milk is my spinach.

It was late by the time I finished all this, so I wanted something light and cool because it was hot and muggy (93% humidity as I'm writing this). A dear friend of mine recommended pickle soup. I know, I know, that sounds crazy. The ingredients are: cucumber, plain yogurt, dill, and some garlic. I was nervous about this after my awful awful yogurt based salad dressing. And how could it really taste like pickles without sitting in a jar for months? But it did! And it was delicious, and the perfect cold, easy to make treat after a long day.

(The recipe calls for peeled cucumbers, but I left them unpeeled because there's a lot of nutrients in the skins of fruits and vegetables, but I will save that for another blog.)