Couple of Loose Ends
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 at 2:41 pmCategory: My Drivel
A couple of things to tidy up this morning.
A message overnight via satellite from Ted with his thoughts on the small matter of integration.
Ted is currently camping out in Northern Saskatchewan where he is hunting Sasquatch in the company of someone named Billy Two-Legs.
He and Billy are being plagued by what he describes as “mosquitoes from Satan’s own diabolic swarms.”
“They are completely impervious to DEET,” he relates, “and we have reached the inescapable conclusion that they are an introduced alien species and the latest attempt by the Grey Men to subvert humankind.”
Well, quite.
He continues: “You want to know how to tell how well you’ve fitted in? Well, you Euros all have different kinds of power outlets in your house depending on which country you’re in, right? Go around and see whether you’ve changed all the plugs on your appliances.”
This does have the advantage of being empirical, so I’ve been and checked and it seems that only two three-pin plugs remain: one on a little used kitchen blender and one on a soldering iron that I’ve never been able to master.
On that basis I suppose I can say “Vive la France!” and I’ll have an extra large portion of snails, frogs’ legs and tripe sausages all liberally soused in a rich garlic sauce.
However, I’m obviously not integrated enough to meekly accept that all loo paper must be pink and I was disappointed (though hardly surprised) to see the mountain in the supermarket was still rather monochromatic when I passed last Friday morning.
What was surprising, however, was that the store was completely devoid of pasteurised milk.
Despite having pioneered not only the practice of pasteurisation but also of refrigeration, the French have historically had a distant relationship with what most of the English-speaking world regard as being “fresh milk” preferring either the slightly sweet and burnt flavour of UHT long-life stuff or, in rural areas, drinking raw milk.
Raw milk is having something of a resurgence here. Personally I prefer it and am not suspicious of it. I give it to the kids too. There is nothing inherently dangerous about the stuff after all, though it does require careful animal husbandry and absolute cleanliness in handling.
Pasteurisation is instead of proper hygiene.
Some groups of farmers have started getting together and funding vending machines that dispense raw milk to the public from places like garage forecourts (you bring your own jug) in an attempt to boost margins over what they can get from the dairies and this is really starting to take off.
Clearly this Friday there hit been some hiccup in distribution and the shop’s supplier had failed to – literally – deliver, so the supermarket had phoned up the local farm that supplies them with packaged raw milk and asked them to step into the breach and the fridge was filled with that instead.
I hoped they were sensible enough to have paid them well for their trouble.
July 26th, 2010 15:25
There’s a vending machine in a town south of here…but it is a very French operation…the wife of the dairy farmer stands beside it all morning until it runs out telling everyone how expensive it is for her and her husband to do this!
Not from my own experience, but from that of a bemused friend who went to try the milk and ended up with an earful on the miseries of having to sell milk in this way!
July 26th, 2010 15:31
Do you know if the film Victor/Victoria was popular in France? There is a memorable scene where James Garner asks for a glass of milk in a French bar, and the bartender replies “Cow’s milk or mother’s milk?”.
July 26th, 2010 17:17
Raw milk is enjoying growing popularity in the U.S. as well, although I suspect it won’t really hit its stride here until you can spray it out of a can or it comes with a McDonald’s Happy Meal…
Pearl
July 26th, 2010 19:36
I always thought careful animal husbandry meant marrying a man who won’t turn into a pig.
July 27th, 2010 09:43
hello Jon – a brilliant idea from Ted!
Brilliant because it suggests George & I Are integrated But bloody hell, how we hate the Two-pins! Wobbly, pins misaligned with holes, Enormous plastic bits that need a mallet to bash them into receiving part…
And wasn’t there a reason for the Third Prong? Are we, with all our diligently swapped plugs, about to Burst into Flames?
Raw milk would terrify me, specially when having festered for hours in a garage forecourt tin box.
What we miss is abundant and varied tubs of Cream in the supermarket chilled bit.
July 28th, 2010 00:47
Missing – can you help?
July 28th, 2010 09:26
There’s a war on raw milk being conducted in the US:
http://gawragbag.blogspot.com/2010/07/turns-out-theres-war-on-raw-milk-going.html
I hope it’s as successful as the one on drugs.
BTW Billy Two-Legs? Not much of a distinguishing feature, having the two legs is it?
July 28th, 2010 10:45
Fly – there’s always one. There’s also plenty who are getting off their backsides and having a go at improving their lot. I’ve located our nearest outlet now – 24/7 and going great guns. 55 cents per litre.
GB – don’t know about the rest of France, but around here “mother’s milk” is old fashioned slang for strong spirits of the home produced ilk.
Pearl – pleased to hear it. It’s being credited with all kinds of healthful benefits. Probably wrongly, but still.
Kyknoord – where I grew up “careful husbandry” usually meant not getting caught…
DD – You should be safe. French installations are – if anything – inherently safer than the UK due to the extensive use of RCD cut-out thingies and the near impossibility of wiring the fuse into the neutral side of the circuit. Admittedly it was a Frenchman who told me that…
Derek – I’ll lift the photo of Trevor from your site and get on to it.
Gaw – knowing Ted they’ll be more to it than that. We’ll see. Nice looking blog by the way – I shall have a proper read later on.
July 28th, 2010 15:05
Great price!
August 5th, 2010 19:58
Raw milk’s quite popular here in Colorado, especially in the area immediately around Boulder, which is the unofficial world headquarters for all the trendy back-to-nature food movements. Unfortunately, people keep getting sick on raw milk because of the aforementioned lack of proper hygiene, and the government will probably step in very soon and shut the dairies down. Whether they would do the same thing to a regular dairy with, say, a salmonella problem, remains in question.