The Happy Milkman

My happy milkman

I feel like milk is a big part of our lives here.  Here are a few reasons why:

* We have a nursing baby = several feedings a day and even in the night
* Our family drinks about 3/4 gallon of milk a day.  Milk comes in 1 liter boxes, so this means we go through 3 boxes a day.
* We are always getting evaporated milk as a free present at our store when we buy a certain amount in groceries.... our cupboard is full of these cans
* When Ella turned 2 we took her bottle away, and now she is more emotional and spills milk all over.

The name of this brand of milk above is translated as the happy milkman.  I love this brand- I like to think of a happy milkman.  I call Ike our vecyoli molochnik (happy milkman) and it makes us all smile.  I feel strange asking for several boxes of milk at a time from our little store.  But to get through 2 days we need at least six boxes.  Once I had someone ask me if I was buying a cow.  But most of the lady sellers in our neighborhood are very supportive of our milk-buying and say it's very healthy.  I go to these ladies for the majority of our milk purchases.

The thing I like about Russian milk is that it doesn't need to be refrigerated until the box is opened.  So you can store it in the cupboard.  The thing I don't like about it is that it tastes funny.  (of course, people who grew up here probably think that American milk tastes funny, too).

At first when we got cans of evaporated milk as gifts from the store, I thought "what am I going to do with these?"... and also " how am I going to carry any more weight than these four bags plus the baby home?"  But then one day when we ran out of milk, I looked online and discovered that I can rehydrate the evaporated milk and we can DRINK it!!  So now it's our "emergency milk" for when we run out of the regular kind and one of the kids is sleeping and I just can't make it to the store.

And one more thing on milk boxes...  I've seen several Russian families use a milk box as their "garbage can" in the kitchen.  They cut it in half and put their food scraps and used napkins, etc in there.  Our kitchen garbage can is as tall as Ella and we empty it every couple of days.  I'm always baffled by the huge difference of waste.  Milk boxes also make great starter pots for tomatoes, herbs, flowers, and other vegetables.

You can buy milk on the street sometimes from people who sell it out of the trunks of their cars.  So far I have not been so brave.  But I'm always surprising myself!