Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: K Frame on December 22, 2021, 10:03:29 AM
-
I'm at my friends' place in Rural Virginia again for Christmas. Monday my friend calls me and asks me to bring a really odd product... half and half.
He tells me that there hasn't been half and half in the stores in this area for weeks. No table cream, either, and says that there's none in about a 50 mile radius.
That's a weird shortage.
It's been plentiful in Northern Virgina. I brought two half gallons down with me. We should be good for coffee until sometime into the new year.
-
Recently noticed a shortage of quart-sized cartons of oat milk*. Half gallon sizes are still available, but not many of those on the shelf at the local grocery stores.
Sausage patties completely out at the local Food Lion, as well. I bought the last package of the store brand yesterday.
*We use oat milk in recipes that require milk as my wife is very allergic to dairy products. Makes great oyster stew. It's really nasty to drink, however.
-
My wife uses fat-free half and half. We haven't been able to find it for a couple of weeks now, at least the brand she prefers. You can find swill they call egg nog by that company but no half and half.
bob
-
Make your own. Mix equal amounts of milk and whipping cream and use that.
In many recipes and other things like mashed potatoes and my 7:00 PM bowl of cereal, I spike the milk with whipping cream as well. There is nothing like the taste of milk like it tasted back in the Fifty's. I look at it like reconstituting the milk to its original state. Ever had raw milk straight from a cow? If so, you know.
Woody
-
Recently noticed a shortage of quart-sized cartons of oat milk*. Half gallon sizes are still available, but not many of those on the shelf at the local grocery stores.
Sausage patties completely out at the local Food Lion, as well. I bought the last package of the store brand yesterday.
*We use oat milk in recipes that require milk as my wife is very allergic to dairy products. Makes great oyster stew. It's really nasty to drink, however.
Where's the teats on an oat?
-
Make your own. Mix equal amounts of milk and whipping cream and use that.
In many recipes and other things like mashed potatoes and my 7:00 PM bowl of cereal, I spike the milk with whipping cream as well. There is nothing like the taste of milk like it tasted back in the Fifty's. I look at it like reconstituting the milk to its original state. Ever had raw milk straight from a cow? If so, you know.
Woody
I like mixing milk and half and half in mashed potatoes. Obviously it makes them "calorie rich", but it sure does make them creamy and tasty.
As for dairy shortages, I haven't seen "none available" around here. Occasionally I will see very low stocks and not the brand / type I want, but there is always something. Then the next time I go in, the case is full.
-
Related. There is only a 1% difference in product availability now vs pre-pandemic. ;/
Jen Psaki
@PressSec
United States government official
Take that Scrooge, the Grinch and all of the doubters that this could happen. Also shelves are stocked at 90% (pre-pandemic levels are 91%)
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2021/12/22/ron-klains-christmas-message-to-americans-is-that-the-idea-that-they-cant-find-and-afford-goods-is-just-an-over-hyped-narrative/
-
Where's the teats on an oat?
I have no idea. Not sure I want to know.
-
I think I said something about this a couple of weeks ago... Aldi, where I usually shop, has empty spaces where the stuff usually is... I'm guessing a packaging issue?
-
I just talked to customer service at Shamrock Farms in Phoenix, the brand my wife likes. It seems there is a cream shortage because they have been selling cream to other producers. Shamrock has their own cows so they have the stuff to sell to other companies. I wonder if they are getting a touch more income for their cream from other producers and are scaling back their own production. She wouldn't give me a straight answer on that one.
bob
-
Whipping cream isn't available down here, either.
-
I think that almost every common food product is just a sneeze away from shortage. Lots of place the stuff is on the shelf but it is more spaced out, not as deep, and in the back doesn't exist. Labor shortages at producing plants, The farmers that provide the raw material are not seeing the record retail prices that would lead to more production. If they could afford more diesel and labor. Time to dust off that old chestnut, "The new normal."
-
My little general store removed an entire isle of shelves so the others look fuller.
-
ConstitutionCowboy said:
"There is nothing like the taste of milk like it tasted back in the fifties."
When we lived in Ozone Park (yes, that is the name) in the (one-upmanship warning) forties, it was my job to bring in the two quarts of milk that were delivered to the door. I was warned every time not to shake it up so Mom could pour off the cream on top for coffee. This, after the six-year old me shook them up one morning just to get the milk/cream layers recombined. My little brain had no idea that was a no-no.
I have no idea when it was they started to homogenize milk, or maybe getting non-homogenized milk delivered was an option, but up until about ten years ago one company had "HOMO" on their bottle caps and I thought that was hilarious. I guess someone wised them up at one point since they started spelling it out in smaller letters. I was saving them up just for grins, see attached and no, it wasn't "OWOH." I captured at least one with the spelled out word and included it in the pictured batch.
I guess with homogenized milk being the rule, it makes it easier for companies to add water on the QT, because I've noticed the same thing ConstitutionCowboy noticed. Robinson milk was the best around here, but then they were bought out by a Texas company, and the quality went down immediately according to Terry's Taste Tests.
Terry, 230RN
-
Remember returnable deposit containers? Could we be going back to that?
-
Remember returnable deposit containers? Could we be going back to that?
Price Choppers in the KC area have them. My daughter gets some every time she visits her grandma.
-
Back at Knob Creek, one of Arne's contacts commented that some US companies were putting out feelers for blow-molded containers, because their stuff was tied up overseas... I wonder - for a long time it was cheaper to buy disposable than it was to wash and reuse... Could that be changing on its own?
-
Another reason I like living in the Midwest, plenty of dairy farms and creameries. I go through a quart of half and half every 2 weeks.
I also only drink whole milk because 2%, 1% and skim are not pleasurable to tastes. I really like non homogenized milk if I can find it, nothing like shaking the jug up before consumption.
-
My grandmother had a milk cow up until my junior or senior year of high school. We drank a lot of home grown milk. Grandma also made cheese and butter. Hard to beat butter that was still in the cow yesterday morning. She had an old (it was old even in the '70s) Dazey butter churn. Hand cranked with wooden paddles.
My daughter and several friends of mine have goats but I don't care for goat milk.
-
Prior to the 1960s/1970s most communities, or at least many, had creameries that bottled locally produced milk and milk products. The rise of the interstates made shipping milk long distances a lot more feasible, so large production concerns started pushing the smaller local dairies out of business.
The last local creamery I was familiar with was in Reedsville, Pennsylvania. It collected milk from local Amish farms and sold locally. I don't think they delivered to individual homes anymore, but they did deliver to local stores and they had a fantastic ice cream parlor.
Unfortunately those small dairies just didn't have the economies of scale that the big producers did, so virtually all of them are gone now.
One of the local dairies in Central Pennsylvania was Irwin Dairies. No relation to my family. But when I got to college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1983 one of my professors cornered me one day and started asking me about the globe top milk bottles. The globe would be where the cream would collect and you could spoon it out. He was wondering why that wasn't available any more. I kind of hated to tell him that no, I was no relation to those Irwins.
-
Prior to the 1960s/1970s most communities, or at least many, had creameries that bottled locally produced milk and milk products. The rise of the interstates made shipping milk long distances a lot more feasible, so large production concerns started pushing the smaller local dairies out of business.
I remember in the late 60s getting milk delivered to the front door my a milkman and my 2nd or 3rd grade class took a field trip to the dairy to learn about the whole cow to bottle process.
-
Uh... We had cows.
We tended to buy milk.
It was just easier to deal with that way.
My mother tried organic gardening. That really sucked. They also tried pigs (one year) and sheep (one year). Had chickens for a while but they ate more than they laid.
Black angus beef steers, on the other hand, were a constant. We'd trade beef for pork...
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7lRTOTpGmQ
-
Half and Half was scarce here in Houston for a while a 3-4 weeks ago, but I have been able to find it lately. Got 2 half-gallons in the fridge right now. Good thing it lasts longer. Strangely, I have heard about a shortage of Fritos chips.
-
Living in Meridian, ID in the 4th grade, my mother would buy whole pasteurized but unhomogenized milk from a local dairy. She'd take the top layer of cream off the top for whipping, and the second layer for coffee. The milk was absolutely wonderful.
As late as the early nineties when I was living in Colorado Springs, we were getting fresh milk delivered from a local dairy in bottles to the little box on our door step. It was pasteurized and homogenized, but boy howdy was it good.
-
I am of late getting localish milk, Homestead Creamery and they have deposit glass bottles in the grocery store. The unhomo offering seems popular around here.
What really drives me nuts is oyster prices, wanting some local Virginia oysters for Christmas, unwilling to come off of $40/quart. Local crabmeat same.
-
"The unhomo offering "
HATER!
:rofl:
Yeah, the price of local seafood here in Central coastal Virginia is just stunning right now.
About the same for crab meat ... $38 to $40 a pound.
The oysters aren't such a problem, though, as my friend farms them on his dock.
-
You should see seafood prices here in landlocked flyover country. I was really wanting crab for dinner this week.
-
We have been having the issue of having TOO MUCH CREAM in our whole milk, ½&½, and Whipping Cream. I'm talking ¼" of it stuck at the top of the jug!
-
wondering...
separation equipment down and waiting on chinese parts?
-
Buttermilk and block cheese was almost non existent at the grocery store today.
-
We have been having the issue of having TOO MUCH CREAM in our whole milk, ½&½, and Whipping Cream. I'm talking ¼" of it stuck at the top of the jug!
That is truly a first world problem...
-
Christmas Eve and still no half and half or similar products here in the Mathews, Virginia, region. Noticed a bunch of other holds on the shelves this afternoon, as well, although those could be stuff people were buying in prep for the holiday.
The local Food Lion actually had decent prices on beef rib roast, $6 something a pound, but it seems that turkeys may have been in short supply.
Just finished dinner -- crab cakes and ribeye steak with salad and oven roasted broccoli.
Very tasty.
-
Didn't see my usual brand of eggnog at the local grocery store. :'(
-
No eggnog this year as even discount grocer Aldi is selling it for $3.49/qt. :facepalm:
-
Eggnog... some people like it, some don't. Just like fruit cake, maybe you have never had good eggnog but if you did you may like it. I was given this recipe during a 6 month deployment to Diego Garcia over Christmas, it is the official Navy eggnog recipe. So here you go:
Vanilla Ice Cream 9 Gallons
Fresh Eggs 11 Dozen
Ground Nutmeg 2 ounces
Fresh Milk 4 quarts
Vanilla Flavoring 2-3 Ounces
Eggshade 2-3 Tbsp
What is eggshade you ask, well so did I many times over many years until I called the USN Culinary Specialist school in Norfolk and talked to an old Navy Cook. It is essentially yellow food coloring. Just use a little bit at a time until you get the color you want.
You will need a big cooler to mix this in. They say it makes 225 rations. I have no idea how much a ration is.
Now to make it a little more manageable I have halved the recipe five times and have come up with something that makes between ½ and ¾ of a gallon.
Vanilla Ice Cream (I use plain vanilla and vanilla bean) 2.5 quarts (10 cups/5 cups each)
Fresh Eggs 8 (extra large)
Ground Nutmeg ½ - ¾ tsp
Fresh Milk ½ pint (1 cup)
Yellow food coloring to whatever yellow color you want.
If desired ½ to ¾ cup of Brandy works really well.
I don’t put any vanilla extract in it, I get that from the Ice Cream.
Booze and raw eggs, but it sure is good!
Let the ice cream melt (soupy), Beat the eggs with a mixer, add the ice cream and continue until mixed well. Add the milk, food coloring and nutmeg and mix some more. Add booze if desired and mix more, chill and drink or drink right away, all of your ingredients should have been cold.
Of course you can add more booze to taste.
bob
-
Dere ish ackshually bottle bourbon egg nogs in da likker departsment... I tink is someting like 40 proofs... Not too damn shabby, to tell you the truth... Not an every day, or even every month, beverage, but...
And y'all thought it weird that I am trying to make a honey bourbon... Now if I can jush keep it from sheparating...
-
And the half and half shortage continues. Not a drop in Central coastal Virginia.
They did have heavy whipping cream at the local groceraterium...
I ate breakfast out this morning and had to drink my coffee with whole milk... like a goddamned caveman.
-
And the half and half shortage continues. Not a drop in Central coastal Virginia.
They did have heavy whipping cream at the local groceraterium...
I ate breakfast out this morning and had to drink my coffee with whole milk... like a goddamned caveman.
>:D And I thought those marks on the ground was because you are a "knuckle-dragger". :rofl:
-
Prior to the 1960s/1970s most communities, or at least many, had creameries that bottled locally produced milk and milk products. The rise of the interstates made shipping milk long distances a lot more feasible, so large production concerns started pushing the smaller local dairies out of business.
The last local creamery I was familiar with was in Reedsville, Pennsylvania. It collected milk from local Amish farms and sold locally. I don't think they delivered to individual homes anymore, but they did deliver to local stores and they had a fantastic ice cream parlor.
Unfortunately those small dairies just didn't have the economies of scale that the big producers did, so virtually all of them are gone now.
Reminds me of something I once read about. Residents of New York City at one time got most of their milk from cows that were fed on mash that came out of breweries. Not very healthful, apparently. It took the development of the railroad industry to change that.
When the railroads finally entered the scene, [they] dramatically reduced the time it took to move dairy products to market making milk transport to the city viable....The railroad that would eventually become the Erie Railroad started developing a powerful presence in Orange County in 1841. It passed through Goshen, Middletown and Port Jervis and in 1842 carried the first shipment of Orange County milk to New York City....Charges for carrying Orange and Sussex milk were amongst the first sources of revenue for the railroads on which the milk was carried. In a very real sense, the milk business helped establish these railroad lines. The development of this milk trade roughly coincided with the growing reluctance of New Yorkers to drink city milk from cows fed on brewery swill and spent distillery mash.
[brackets and ellipses mine]
https://neversinkmuseum.org/articles/the-railroads-change-the-dairy-industry/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/swill-milk-scandal-new-york-city