Back in my past, I dated a woman who was very fond of saying to me, “who drinks cow’s milk? Cows do, that’s who.” She was the one who liked to put me in diapers. [I wrote about her here]. She was not at all into drinking milk for all the reasons that we know about now, but didn’t really know then. Well, she knew, but I didn’t. After all, she was Californian.
Bovine hormones. The fat and sugar content. The simple idea that cows had 4 stomachs and we have only one…”the only milk you should drink is mother’s milk.” That always got me looking at her rather perfect breasts, and was at times a prelude of a shift from serious conversation to one of a more playful nature.
But I love what cow’s milk does in coffee, I love how it froths and foams, and in cereal, well, not that I eat much of the stuff, but milk has a certain solidity to it and just pleasant and balanced flavour that made it too hard to give up.
But, along with sugar and flour, it is on my hit list of ingredients to break away from. On a recent business trip, I stayed with a friend and he had an oat milk in the refrigerator, a brand called Oatly. I have had oatmilk before and not liked it. I have had rice milk before and not liked it. I have had soy milk, coconut milk, cashew milk, almond milk, walnut milk, etc all in a vain effort to find an alternative. Nothing doing…it was all too thin or had a weird flavour profile.
But not Oatly. It was delicious in my coffee. It was even better than regular milk. It was mildly sweet and a bit nutty. I really, and I mean really, loved it. On my next trip to the supermarket, it was oat milk that ended up in my shopping basket—not that brand, so here’s to hoping, but that type.
Meanwhile, I have been participating in this Zoe gut health and wellness study which is telling me not just how good or bad the stuff I am consuming is generally, but how my specific body is reacting to it—because everyone responds differently. I will write in detail about this study at some point, because it is fascinating. But essentially, once they have tested your reaction to foods over a period of weeks, analysed your stool, your blood, and your blood sugar, they know how your body will respond.
Where is this going? Well, I always thought oats were really good for you. Not so. Too much sugar. So, for me, oats are sort of 50:50…so my new discovery of oat milk as an alternative isn’t going to work if the goal is to help my health according to Zoe.
I went to a wonderful farm stand the other day, and found that they had Oatly milk, the one I had liked so much. But instead of buying that, I thought I would try their hemp milk instead…to see if it tasted good, and knowing that hemp seed had a much more attractive health profile for me. My kids didn’t much care for it, or at least one of them didn’t. The others were non-committal. But let me tell you, I LOVED IT. But you know what it reminded me of? Infant formula. Yup. And by the way, I would know.
I’ve been wanting to find an infant formula that I was happy to drink every day, and now I have found something better, a healthy seed-based drink that is good for my gut biome. I can feel an update coming to my recipe for night-night milk laced with turmeric and honey, recipe here. When it tastes this good and feels this good to drink it on so many levels, I can tell I will be drinking a lot of it. What do you drink that makes you feel good?
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