During Christmas vacation and into the New Year, we were delighted to have my youngest sibling, Andy (or Andre as I like to call him), stay at our house with us. The kids absolutely love it when Uncle Andy visits; he is young, full of energy and has tremendous capacity for playing, roughhousing and entertaining them with his guitar and singing.
While he was here, Andrew accompanied me on a grocery trip or two and even did the shopping for me one week as I was preparing for the birthday party. Very helpful of him, and we really appreciated it, except for one thing. It seems Andrew has a taste for the finer things in life. No not caviar or champagne; well, maybe he likes those but they are not my primary concern. No, Andy had the audacity to introduce Jay and I to Borden milk.
Ok, Tricia, we know you are tired from the holidays and birthdays immediately following and have now come down with a nasty cold, so you are bound to be a little fuzzy in the head…WHAT are you talking about?
Well, readers, for a long time now I have wondered why there are differently-priced gallons of milk at every grocery store and supercenter I shop at. The milk I buy is $1.99 ($1.50 if you find a rare sale) whether it’s purcased at Tom Thumb or Walmart. Yet at every store, there is another brand of milk offered for almost double that $1.99 price. I’ve always thought it was weird, for why in the world would I purchase more expensive milk? After all, milk is milk, right? (You’d think so…I myself have lived in blessed ignorance for many years now!)
For some reason the disparity in milk prices came up in conversation while Andrew was here. I was astounded to hear him comment that the “other milk” (the more expensive kind) actually tastes much better. “No way!” I replied, “Milk is milk!”
“You’d think so!” he answered, “but it’s not true!”
I would’ve brushed aside this conversation without a second thought had not my dear sweet little brother decided to bring home a gallon of “the better stuff” for us to try. I should comment here that he used his own money (well, actually our parents’ money…ah, the college life!!) to buy it. Jay and I reluctantly tasted the Borden…
and I am here to report that Jay’s reaction was that Borden skim milk tastes like nectar from the gods compared to the “ordinary stuff” we’ve been buying our entire married life. Bummer. Sure it would be nice to start drinking Borden. However, I am responsible for the grocery budget around our house and since I am always looking for ways to trim here and there, I absolutely cannot in good conscience stomach paying almost double for my milk. Around our house we consume about 2 gallons of skim and 1 gallon of whole milk each week…that type of thing adds up you know.
Well, Andrew has left us…he’s off to Austin to work with some other A&M college folk on cutting a CD for RUF. (BTW, it should be great…look for it on the top 20 list come February!) On Thursday, Jay made a grocery trip to SuperTarget to stock up on various things and upon his return home I was horrified to learn that of the two gallons of skim milk he’d purchased, one was (gasp!) BORDEN! Yikes!! What is a wife to do?? Andy has lured Jay to the darkside and now my husband wants not just any old milk, but special, creamy Borden. Traitor!!
Don’t get me wrong: I think the Borden tastes better too. In fact I love it. But I still don’t know what to do about my grocery budget!! So, I propose a taste test:
All of you who dare, next time you are buying milk, spend that extra $1.50 (call it a Happy New Year’s gift to yourself!) and pick up a gallon of the “good stuff”, whether it be Borden or Lilly, or whatever (for our testing purposes we used Borden’s Plus Lite Line Skim Milk). Then please leave feedback telling us which you and your loved ones prefer. I will be anxiously awaiting your decision!
We took the kids to an open house at a dairy farm a couple of years ago and had the opportunity to have milk that had still been in the cow only a day or two before, and had been processed right there on the farm.
That stuff we buy in the stores, even Borden, does not deserve to be called milk. It was so different, so much better, that I really have no words to describe just how good it is. Although I do understand how a calf can be quite happy subsisting on nothing but milk for the first few weeks of its life.
If their home delivery service had reached to our area I would have signed up on the spot.
So maybe an idea for a lucrative cottage industry would be to invest in a sturdy little dairy cow thereby making that delicious milk available in our town!
You all have it wrong! Goat milk! That’s the stuff. Though I must say, it is a wee bit more expensive to have a goat barn out back. By the way, I’m not talking about something even an hour old; try right out of the goat…
Yum!
Excellent.
I’m naming my first daughter Lilly.
We happily pay $3 a gallon for raw, organic, Jersey milk. We have to go to the farm to pick it up (under NY state law regulating the sale of raw milk.) It is worth every penny.
I have been newly introduced to the world of Blog-starting with Angie’s. So funny that I would choose this entry to read. Milk is so important in our house also – but could you imagine drive thru milk(you order the milk, you pay, and you get milk without even opening your car door!), without hormones, and increased protein and calcium for just $1.99 a gallon? I have even found that the skim milk is wonderful(not blue or gray in color) and does not go sour very quickly. Get it at your nearest Braum’s store.
Thanks for the tip, Kathy! The kids love to drive through Braums for a milkshake treat but I never realized you could actually get milk handed out the window to you too!! How cool! We will have to try it!