Epicurion Queries

There’s been a minor rash of milk related food poisoning incidents in the Midwest lately. From drinking unpasteurized milk. And I just think, who drinks that? I mean, if you aren’t a dairy farmer, how would you even have access to it? Isn’t that illegal?

But of course Veronica drinks unpasteurized milk. It’s just mama milk, not cow milk. And it’s not homogenized so it separates as it sits in the fridge, waiting to be used. It’s easy enough to recombine the milk fats with the rest of the milk. Generally just the shaking and sloshing that gets done while heating the milk up under the faucet will do the trick. But it’s got me wondering: can you make cheese or butter from breast milk?

I’m not going to try. Don’t you worry your pretty little head. Mainly because I’m way too lazy for that kind of thing. But the scientist that lives in my head is definitely curious. I mean, it’s milk. You should be able to make milk products. But then who would use them? Ronnie’s not up to cottage cheese or even yogurt yet since she’s under a year. But would those things be OK for her to have since they wouldn’t be cow milk, which as I understand is the reason you need to wait a year before switching to whole milk from breast or formula? And if you have other kids, would they be fine eating breast milk ice cream? Or is the whole thing just too squicky and overly hippie dippie freaky to even consider?

People do some freaky-ass shit with their maternal by-products. Of course there’s the whole eating the placenta deal, which while fascinating is just far too gross to even consider. I don’t care if placenta pills ward off post-partum depression. I’m not living in the wild, nursing my litter of babies in a cave for weeks on end, needing the iron richness of my placenta to provide the only nourishment I’m going to get until they’re old enough for me to leave them and go hunting again. Therefore I’m not eating my placenta. End of story.

I did remember to ask to see it this time though. I can’t remember why I didn’t after I had Kirk. I know I was worried that birthing the afterbirth would somehow hurt which…yeah right. You can’t feel that after a whole damn baby just went through there! And I don’t remember watching while Mr. b cut the cord. I still didn’t see the cord be cut this time but I did ask to see the stuff before it got sent to disposal. It was all dark and weird and organy (duh) and there was a tiny little hole in the sack the nurse pointed out which would have accounted for the slow leak that was my water breaking. The umbilical cord is sort of whitish grey. Again, interesting from a scientific perspective, but I don’t need to save it for posterity.

Frankly I was far too jittery, literally, after having Ronnie to even consider anything more than satisfying intellectual curiosity. Apparently it was the pitocin. I had the shakes big time once she was out. They put her freshly born unwashed bundleness on my chest and I held her and loved her and tried not to vibrate her off of me I was shivering so hard. It took quite a while to get back to normal.