foodperson.com

There’s one advantage that the industrial tomato has over the homegrown variety—consistency, albeit tasteless, colorless consistency. Turns out the same is true for milk, among other foods.

We humans love consistency. How else to explain the proliferation of chains? Especially in this mobile world, we like knowing that if we buy coffee at Starbucks on Interstate 70 in western Kansas, it’s going to taste like coffee at Starbucks in Seattle.

Eating local, seasonal food, though, can be pretty jarring to someone—in other words, most Americans—who are as accustomed to consistency in their food as they are in their coffee shops.

Recent milk and egg experiences have brought that point home to me. I expect inconsistency in garden produce, particularly in terms of availability and especially at the edges of the growing season.

But milk and eggs are seasonal, too. (Meat, too, I’m sure, but I haven’t looked into that one yet.)

I’ve been talking to some area producers of pastured eggs lately, and I’ve learned a lot. (I will write about them as soon as we get the picture thing worked out; I’m trying to avoid driving the 50 miles to their farm.) If I’d ever before stopped to think about it, it would only make sense that, of course, those hens just might not feel like cranking out the eggs with great regularity when it’s searingly hot or achingly cold.

And those cows’ milk might taste a little different when they’re grazing on fresh grass rather than hay, silage or some other kind of feed. That didn’t occur to me back when I started drinking local milk.

So it has been with my Iwig milk. The next-to-last bottle I bought had a sharp taste to it, like it was beginning to sour well before its time. And, actually, that has happened with milk bought at a store that apparently doesn’t get it out of the truck and into the refrigerator in a timely fashion. I kept this bottle, though, and realized the flavor wasn’t changing (as it would if going bad), it just had a tangy flavor.

I bought another bottle. This one tasted different—and in a different way. I’d say it tasted like the carton, except that it comes in glass bottles. I may have to give them a call and see what the cows eat, exactly, and whether, here at the change of seasons, they’re eating less fresh grass and more hay or feed.

I’ll buy another bottle tomorrow, and I’m curious as to what the milk will taste like. I wonder whether I can get used to inconsistency in the taste of the milk I drink. I wish someone could explain to me what I’m tasting.