Milk it

As a kid, I knew that there were two kinds of milk that we used at home--cow's milk and buffalo milk.  Well, here in the US, where buffaloes once roamed in large numbers, I should qualify that as milk from water buffaloes.  To us, it was simply buffalo.

Pandurangan delivered cow's milk.  And Ramamani (?) had buffaloes.  Pandurangan seemed to be at ease with adding water to the milk, which often led to problems with our neighbor who checked for the specific gravity using a lactometer.

It was a simple life.

I came to the US, and the grocery stores were filled with different kinds of milk.
Homogenized.
Low fat.
Skim. 
Ultra pasteurized. ...

Almost every carton had an image of a happy cow.  No buffaloes.

And then there were other kinds of milk.  "Milk" I should say.  Soya milk? Almond milk?  I had never heard of these in the old country.  Of course, I was familiar with தேங்கா பால் (coconut milk); but, nobody--I mean, nobody--that I knew drank that as an alternative to milk.  Coffee and tea were not made with coconut milk.

Over the three-plus decades that I have lived here, the non-dairy milk options have vastly increased.  As a fan of cashew, I once tried out cashew milk.  And, a few months ago, I tried out oat milk.  They tasted like what you would think it would taste like--crap!

I don't drink milk, nor add it to coffee.  But, I eat a lot of yogurt.  Of course, there is non-dairy yogurt.  I am too much of a wuss to taste something that was made from cashew milk or soy milk.

The reality is that we humans have invented this milk fetish.  Other mammals couldn't care about milk.  Not even cats.  Like us, cats are lactose intolerant.  Well, most of us humans are lactose intolerant, which is why we convert it into yogurt first, and then make a religion out of தயிர் சாதம் (yogurt plus rice.)  Force feeding milk has been one hell of an advertising success for the milk industry.

BTW, did you know that the buffalo is the national mammal of the US?  To drink buffalo milk will then be highly patriotic, no? ;)