I’ll never understand UHT milk, or why it’s so popular in Spain. There is only one supermarket here in Seville that stocks fresh milk and even then it doesn’t always have it. And up until recently there was only one bar I knew of that made coffee with fresh milk – the Horno San Buenaventura. So when Flor invited me out for breakfast one morning after yoga class I was very pleased to discover that the new Italian restaurant across the street from the gym also makes their coffee with fresh milk. That’s TWO.
Seriously, there is something about the taste of UHT milk that makes me gag. But most Spanish people have never had any other sort of milk. I guess there isn’t such a huge dairy industry here or else they use it all to make cheese.
Anyhow, this is what good coffee in Sevilla looks like…
… at Al Solito Posto and Horno San Buenaventurea
casa azahar 
Umm, what is UHT?
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ULTRA HORRIBLE TASTING! 😉
Oh alright … UHT Milk
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I’m at the other end of the spectrum. We use whole milk here at The Havens. I go down to the dairy (about 2 miles away) and pick up my gallon jug, put it in the fridge overnight and then skim off the pint of cream that rises to the top. Then we drink it fresh for a couple of days, usually have it with oatmeal or something, and I make yogurt out of the rest of it. There is nothing like fresh unpasteurized unhomogenized milk, and once you’ve had it it is virtually impossible to go back. Plus it does not have any of the things that get put in milk (which are not revealed to you as the consumer on the packaging because they are deemed “Inert”) but which are used to bleach it to the total whiteness that the consumer has learned to expect. The milk I drink has a lovely pale ivory cast to it. Only “downside” is in the spring when the wild garlic comes up the cows deem this to be a wonderful treat and consequently the milk acquires a (very) faint garlic flavor for a few weeks. I like garlic, even with my oatmeal.
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I used to do this too! Back in Winnipeg when I was young and had a car. Very nice milk.
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I know in the States they had it and I had to buy some during the “storm of the century” when the locals, anticipating the end of the Universe, bought all the milk and bread and other staples.
They MAY have it here but I’ve not seen it and I doubt anyone would buy it unless they were camping or something.
I think that was the only kind we bought in Italy but I don’t know if it was the only available or just the cheapest.
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My mom bought this a few times when we were kids and we were on a cross-country road trip and we were camping every night. This would have been about 1984. The stuff was effing disgusting and my mom never bought it again. Since then, I haven’t seen it on the shelves here – I suspect it didn’t catch on because it tasted so crappy.
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This is something that people in my area occasionally buy if they are afraid they will run out of milk during bad weather, but no one even thinks of making it a staple. I think it is because of the aggressive marketing of milk — homogenized and pasteurized though it might be — as the all American chug, to the point that, when I was young, you were regarded as bad and benighted if you didn’t drink it.
And I hate it. Maybe totally fresh unfucked-with milk would do something for me, if I could get it, but whereas I dig cheese and yogurt, I cannot get a glass of fresh milk past my nose. It gags me. It fills my head with a cloying, nauseating smell that I can’t retch out of my sinuses fast enough. Pour it on oatmeal, or possibly in some complicated drink, and that hideous stench is broken up and dissipated, but DRINK it? It’s right up there with engine oil.
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I can imagine this reaction as I almost never just drink a glass of milk anymore. I occasionally have it on cereal and maybe every few months or so I’ll get a craving for honey on toast with a glass of milk. Weird. But the milk has to be really really cold and I have to drink it quickly or else it kind of grosses me out. So I usually only have milk in my coffee.
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Didn’t they used to have (and maybe still do) UHT creamers for coffee in Canada, WC and Mudhooks? I don’t remember seeing boxes of it, like they have here.
It really does taste vile. Last week there wasn’t any fresh milk at the supermarket so I got some UHT stuff for coffee. Ick. Even just that small amount is disgusting to me. Before Nog came to live here I had got into the habit of drinking my coffee black at home because they don’t sell milk in half-litres here, and a whole litre always went off before I could finish it. But in those days I also used to have brekky out almost every day at the Horno. I couldn’t understand why their coffee was so much better than anywhere else I’d tried until one day I saw one of the guys filling up the hot milk dispenser … with fresh milk!
When I talk about how awful UHT milk is to Spaniards they have no idea what I’m talking about. To them that’s what milk tastes like. *shudder*
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I don’t think I’ve seen any UHT anything around here. Unless you are referring to those mini coffee creamers in the 1tbsp size containers you often find at less fancy coffee places. But even those are not UHT from what I am aware of; they need to be refrigerated.
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Yeah. I think they are just plain milk (or cream), though sometimes when they go “off” they don’t just go sour, they can turn into a sort of rubber. It’s weird.
There are also pseudo milk that people use for their coffee but I don’t touch that. And, of course, Carnation milk in the can. What THAT is is anyone’s guess but it has been around since they’ve had cans.
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Oh, Carnation milk in a can is evaporated milk. It’s been heated but at a lower temperature, to evaporate some of the water content.
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I’ve got used to the taste of UHT now, and I quite happily drink a couple of glasses a day as well as over my cornflakes at breakfast. But I’m practically addicted to milk and have been all my life so whether it’s fresh or UHT I’m still going to drink it.
Germany is another country where it can be difficult or expensive to get fresh milk. I think it all comes down to how big the dairy industry is, and how far milk has to travel from the dairy to the consumer. In Spain most milk has to come from the north west, and trucking that down to Andalucía means a fair percentage would spoil by the time it reached your fridge.
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Yes, it’s the transportation factor that often causes the Corte Inglés not to have any fresh milk. Like awhile back when there was a trucker’s strike, and more recently with roads closed due to the weather.
You must be seriously addicted to milk to drink that crap, Andy. 😉
It also bothers me to use UHT cream in sauces, but that’s all there is around here since M&S closed. Usually the garlic and wine helps mask the icky UHT taste, but even the texture is all wrong. Bleh.
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I prefer UHT milk to normal milk. In Germany UHT milk tends to be more common and it’s what I’ve grown up with. To this day I drink UHT milk if I just want to drink milk rather than use it in tea or with cereals.
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And living in England hasn’t changed your tastes?
It really is hard for me to imagine anyone actually preferring UHT milk, but I guess it’s a question of what you’re used to. If that is what you grew up with then that is what milk tastes like to you. Still … *shudder*
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When #1 was about three or four years old we used to buy milk from a farmer who had his farm outside the town where we lived at that time. I knew the farmer way back because we both had been nurse’s aids at the geriatric clinic.
Anyhow, #1 declared there were two kinds of milk; “cow’s milk” that was bought at the farm and “ordinary milk” that was bought in the food store. He really liked to help me to skim the “cow’s milk” in the morning and use the skimmed cream in his cocoa.
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