Tag Archives: coconut milk

Got Milk, Any Milk?

Banana Milk .

It sounded good to me. I love bananas. I love them plain I do or with some ice cream, just a scoop or two.

Let’s stop this Seuss train before the good Dr.’s estate decides to serve me, not with a treat  but a suit of the costly variety. 

Sorry, I just can’t quit.

Milk Alternatives

I recently read that dairy farmers were losing market share to “milk alternatives”.

“Johnson. Tell me about this great product idea you have.”

“Well sir I think the world of milk alternatives is something we should get into.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Well sir, we soak some stuff in water, we take out the stuff and the remaining liquid we call “Whatever stuff we used Milk.” The pitch needs to be polished up a bit but you get the picture.”

“Sounds promising but we’ll leave the promotion part to the advertising section.”

They are now making milk out of just about every food item not usually associated with dairy products. My local grocery store offers a cornucopia of “milk” types. Almond, coconut, soy, banana, cashew, macadamia, hemp* and quinoa are all food items that have been “milk-a-fied .” To be fair, coconut milk has been around forever. Almond and soy milk are a close second.

My first exposure to the  idea of coconut milk was introduced to my lexicon during the 60s (1960s) by Giligans Island.  I’m sure it had been depicted in other artistic forms before that , musicals and the stage, but for a smaller audience.

The island displayed a myriad of uses for the coconut, many of them purely fantastic. I do admit though the concept of a coconut radio intrigued me at a young age.

Banana milk sounded tasty. The promise of a tall glass of cold liquid banana sells itself. Who doesn’t like bananas? The mighty banana can go toe to toe with any fruit to accompany any meal whether its breakfast, lunch, dinner or that sneaky 2 am snack. 

Gilligan’s Island was overstocked with bananas. I was going to try it.  How could I go wrong?

 I’ll tell you how. Concoct a liquid that somehow captures the essence of gutter water topped off with a not yet ripe banana peel and shake enough to generate a froth like substance. You could also throw it in a blender. Spoiler alert:  It’s the same nauseous result.

Everything looks tasty when accompanied by a good froth. Unfortunately in this case looks are deceiving. 

To be honest up until now the only milk alternative I had consumed was almond milk and that was an attempt to rule out dairy products as the reason for a multitude of sinus issues. It wasn’t too bad with cereal if the cereal was chocolate frosted sugar bombs. My sinus problems continued to march onward.

If you are trying to limit the amount of fat in your diet, I think almond milk might be an alternative to cream in a White Russian cocktail. Someone try it out and let me know how it was.

Once you open the cocktail bar you could probably find quite a few recipes where almond milk might make a healthier choice with the alcohol making it tolerable. Go ahead and try a few and let me know what you thought of them. I am trying to lead a healthy life style but I’m not a first adopter. 

The other “milk” types while sounding interesting are not enticing enough for me to try.

At best I could probably tolerate a few but life is too short to just “tolerate” anything I consume. I think the alternate milk craze is here to stay for a while or at least until some new milk alternative takes on a light shade of blue ** and the marketing department can’t sell the public that blue means it’s wholesome.

*Stoner Alert:Legally grown hemp does not have a significant amount of THC to alter any sense but taste. 

**Blue seems to be a popular color for a beverage in the future. See Star Wars (the first movie), Star Trek TOS (The Original Series ) Silent Running to name a few.

Just following good SEO here. Back to where it all begins.