Milk

I mentioned in the last post that we had bought a lot of milk. There are a couple of reason we had to stock up. The first, as I mentioned, is that we are making both ice cream and cheese this weekend.

The second is kind of depressing. There is a new study out that rates just how 'organic' different organic milks are. A lot of private-label brands, including the Trader Joe's brand we normally buy, are rated at the bottom because they won't even share where they get their milk from or how the produce it. Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't conform to high organic standards, just that TJ's doesn't conform to any standard of transparency. I love Trader Joe's but we aren't going to buy milk there anymore until they change that.

Our favorite area milk is by a company called Natural by Nature (which is a stupid name so we call it Naughty by Nature). They are based in Pennsylvania and all of their dairy products are from grassfed cows. In addition to all the other reasons to look for grassfed milk, we like that it's higher in good fats like DHA. Well anyway, for a long time they had full gallons of Naughty by Nature milk at the otherwise-disgusting Giant Foods down the street. They stopped carrying them so we had to start buying 1/2 gallons for considerably more money at the Whole Foods on P Street. Then they stopped carrying those. Well today we found that the Clarendon Whole Foods still has them so we bought four 1/2 gallons plus heavy cream and buttermilk. We gotta stock up.

According to the study, the only private label to open their milk up to scrutiny was Whole Foods so that, unfortunately, will be our back-up plan.

The study is available here --> http://cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/index.html