Milk

Mamma's Pride was a satirical brand ad in the 1990's computer game You Don't Know Jack. Jellyvision was the company. See if you can find some of their spots. I don't want to ruin the surprise.

We go through milk. Plain and simple, once Deborah's commute goes down to a couple miles we will probably buy as much gas in a month as milk. Well, probably more. But you get the point.

We buy two gallons at a time two times a week, frequently with a fifth to hold the ship together. With milk prices climbing, we certainly hold our food budget in check by buying cheap milk. I'd love to be able to tell you that we can afford the costs (transportation and processing being necessary inclusions) of buying pastured, real, cream top, unpasturized milk. We don't. At the current price and the newness of the dairies I know about, I am not going to put those kinds of stakes on the table. Someday, sure. Just not until we've gotten through childhood or I find a dairy I can trust more than the big brands. Don't get me wrong, those brands don't carry much of my trust.

So let's meet the Kroger Dairy system. Kroger uses their milk as a loss leader. They sell it for way less than the distributed brands and it has our eye. When we can move to paying a dollar more per gallon, we'll likely move to Prairie Farm, a Midwest Co-Op. But for now its Kroger. Kroger operates 15 dairies and 3 ice cream plants across the country. One dairy is in Indianapolis, Crossroad Farms Dairy.

Crossroad Farms is run by InterAmerican and they process milk, orange juice, icecream and all sorts of food products. To me, this means they buy commodity milk. It will take more research to get more information on it.

At least I've come clean about our milk. I do hope to find a dairy we can visit to buy our dairy products soon. Maybe we could even find a place where I could "steal a few gallons" in exchange for accidentally dropping a few dollars in a by let or maybe a case of beer every once in a while...

One can hope...