Bloggle

There are millions who wouldn’t think of coffee without abundant cream and sugar. (Hello, New England!) And there are a precious, precocious few who would consider condiments of *any* sort anathema to the coffee experience. For them, the NYTimes offers this point of view:

Coffee purists would never, ever add dairy to their coffee, and they would sooner drink General Foods International’s instant Hazelnut Belgian Café than add soy milk. After all, we’re now in the age of microlot coffee, when beans are harvested and handled with the same care that goes into making wine, and the flavors of an exceptional cup of coffee can be as layered and complex as a glass of pinot noir. Cream would just ruin it.

If it sounds snobby, consider this: would you dab a Peter Luger porterhouse with ketchup? A slab of well-aged beef needs nothing more than salt, pepper and a good char. There’s nothing arrogant about leaving the Heinz out of it.

Firstly, never is a very  long time. To say that one might never add cream — or any dairy — is to rule out the little slice of heaven that is the espresso macchiato, or the more bountiful coffee and dairy expression that is the cappuccino. And that would be wrong.

Secondly, Peter who? Oh… yeah. I guess it’s a New York thing. Sorry, if you want to make a purist’s analogy between coffee and aged beef, maybe you should refer to a purist’s steakhouse, and those are in Kansas City. Yes, both of them.

Thirdly, hey… check out that photo! That’s an old-school alt.coffee regular in the picture! Neat. ;)

And fourthly, if you think this isn’t an issue near and dear to the hearts of many, note that the original Times piece has more than 100 comments on it, which is to say, this may be a greater issue than Global Climate Change and FISA, combined.

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It’s fair to say that, on this side of the pond, Heather Mills doesn’t get much attention. Who? Oh, you know… married the Beetle. No, not that one. The other one. There you are.¹

In the UK, however, Heather gets the same sort of air-time and intense media scrutiny as, say, Britney, and for similar reasons: their lives are high-wire acts that could come careening down — in a tragic yet altogether riveting manner — at any moment.

But now she’s done it.

During another typically bizarre day for Heather Mills, the former model yesterday urged people to try drinking milk from rats and dogs to help save the planet.

First of all, just try to *not* imagine milking a rat. It’s rather like trying not to think about pink elephants, albeit on a much smaller scale. And second, it’s just the kind of nonsensical declaration that gets people, like Laura Barton at the Guardian, to pondering, “…how does one milk a rat?” and, “Would rodent milk make a decent latte?”

“I would imagine she was thinking that any mammal produces milk,” says Juliet Harbutt, chairman of the British Cheese Awards, kindly. “However, if one would like to envisage, just for a moment, the difficulty of actually milking a rat, perhaps it would provide the answer. It would probably be easier to milk a whale. They’re bigger.”

According to Harbutt, the milk of goats, sheep, buffalo, reindeer, camels, horses and asses is used to make cheese, and theoretically one could milk a pig. “Though again,” she adds, “milking a pig could only be described as a challenge.”

No kidding.

As to the latte angle… your typical coffee bar serves more milk than they do coffee. Lots more. Three to five times more. Behind the coffee bar the choice of milk is serious business… business that you might routinely dismiss with your preference for 2% or 1% or — for pity’s sake — soy! And in the rarefied atmosphere of world-class barista competition, finding just the right milk is critical (if, occasionally, somewhat more serious than it appears.)²

But reindeer milk! Weighing in at a whopping 22% milk fat, reindeer milk is pretty much a brevé on the hoof! Consider that for your Christmas cappuccino!

Notes and Links

1. Honestly, I don’t think she’s got any air-time here since she did on that C-list celebrity dance-off thing, and even then we only tuned in to see if her prosthetic leg might come flying off during a particularly dramatic dance move. It didn’t, otherwise we’d still be talking about it. ↩
2. You really have to watch the video. Really. Do. ↩

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