Today is Wednesday, 2.18. Roughly two weeks ago (okay, possibly in very late January) I bought a half-gallon of milk. The expiration date was for 3.12 or thereabouts, so I figured I had at least three weeks of use without concern.
By late last week (2.11) it had turned slightly putrid, which is what milk does before changing into cottage cheese. Even if I had discounted the 3.12 sell-by date and went instead with a March 1st “drink it or lose it” deadline, I was still getting screwed.
AI sez that “properly refrigerated pasteurized milk typically lasts 5 to 7 days past its ‘sell-by’ date”…nope.
Whatever the sell-by date is, subtract 30 days…that’s the lesson.
While visiting a friend’s upstate New York farm in the ’90s, I was given a tall glass of chilled, farm-fresh, right-out-of-the-cow milk. I’ve never forgotten that wonderful taste, that wholesome feeling of slurping the real thing. I also ate some freshly-slaughtered pig sausage that weekend. I can’t even think about killing an animal for any reason, but it was beyond delicious.