Riot and Frolic

I'M NOT A HIPPIE!

But…

A) I own a refrigerator

B) Europe does many things better than the U.S.

C) I'm a big fan of real food.*

Recently, I've been buying eggs at the farmers' market and milk from a… cow.  Like, nearly, straight from a cow.  

Yes, RAW MILK.

And it's awesome.

As the Belgian nerds concluded, the only thing different about pasteurized and raw milk is just the taste, smell, feel, and appearance.  

…

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Nutritional values, bacteria-killing properties, and food politics aside, I dig the fresh stuff BECAUSE IT IS FRESH.

I can literally drive to the creamery we buy from, weedwhack their fence lines, and go see the cows (who are treated "like princesses").  They eat grass, and roam around, and the milk tastes like a meadow (in a good way).

Clearly, pasteurization is a great thing for many reasons, but when I read about the HTST (high temperature, short time) and UHT (ultra high temperature) processes, sterilization, and aseptic packaging that result in 6+ month shelf lives OF DAIRY, I wondered how close to Milk that stuff really is.  

(Ironically, my freshman roommate at UW-River Falls came from a BIG TIME dairy farm and she got raw milk from home and I was all "eeeewwwww".  Silly city girl.)

A lot of the raw milk fanatics (because there is a VEHEMENT argument going on about this) will tell you that pasteurizing milk was to help out in an age of little to no refrigeration and we all own refrigerators now and how it kills ALL the bacteria (good and bad alike) and RANT RANT RANT.

I just think it tastes good with cookies and it's the closest thing to having my own freaking cow.

The eggs thing is a little more of the same.  Organoleptic, again.  

The eggs are from chickens: wandering about, being slightly predatory, and eating grains and dirt and bugs and the souls of frightened ballroom dancers (okay, I'm scared of birds), and laying eggs in a coop.  Not in a factory, not fed full of drugs and whatnots.

Most importantly, the yolks are pretty, orange, rich, and make great cookies.

Plus, I can leave my eggs on the counter and that's the British way, and everything from England is cool, right?

The British population trusts chickens to not make foul eggs and Americans blast our eggs with water,  then sanitizer, then dry them off, and put them somewhere chilly.  There's many a hilarious cooking/baking message boards where British people ask Americans why they would put their eggs in the fridge after said Americans ask if the eggs they left on the counter overnight are all right to eat.

Silly Americans?

The Europeans have a lot of different ideas on how to "do" food, including egg pasteurization and of course, the ever-friendly topic of GMOs.  [Did you know the E.U. has a tidy 49 GMOs allowed, where the U.S. has upwards of 250?]  No matter which continent you're on, eggs are pretty hardy, but the difference in processing is interesting.

And AGAIN, which ever side of the raging debate you land on, it's all about GOOD COOKIES.

*and really junky, GMO-laden food, but mostly food resembles closely what it started as.