Here's a really odd product shortage...

[K Frame]

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.

[RocketMan]

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.

[BobR]

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

[ConstitutionCowboy]

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

[RoadKingLarry]

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?

[Ben]

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.

[Ben]

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/

[RocketMan]

Where's the teats on an oat?

I have no idea.  Not sure I want to know.

[Bogie]

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?

[BobR]

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

[K Frame]

Whipping cream isn't available down here, either.

[French G.]

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." 

[Jim147]

My little general store removed an entire isle of shelves so the others look fuller.

[230RN]

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

[Bogie]

Remember returnable deposit containers? Could we be going back to that?

[Jim147]

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.

[Bogie]

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?

[charby]

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.

[RoadKingLarry]

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.

[K Frame]

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.

[Ben]

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.

[Bogie]

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...

[WLJ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7lRTOTpGmQ

[robear]

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.

[RocketMan]

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.