The Taste of Milk

There are those who like milk with their cookies. I prefer them straight up. What’s more, I don’t like milk.

I’ve always hated its taste. My brother loved it. There was nothing better than a glass of cold milk for him. Me? I wanted mine warm and with a small scoop of instant coffee to kill the milky taste before I could head out to face the second grade.

When I finished high school and moved to Bogotá for school, I graduated to brewed coffee with some milk and my life greatly improved. I've followed that course and now what I have is a shot of espresso with a dash of milk.

I will give it that. Milk is good with coffee and it’s also good for cooking. I generally buy a quart at a time. When it’s running low, I buy another one and keep it in the back of the fridge because there’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning and not having milk for my coffee.

But this week has been rough at work with year-end meetings with accountants and such.

Yesterday morning I noticed I the carton was almost gone. I used as little as possible and made a mental note to buy milk on the way back home. Unfortunately, by then I had lost the mental and which is how I found myself with only about a teaspoon of milk for my coffee this morning.

I stared at the meager line of white in the bottom of cup and felt that sinking feeling in the stomach that comes from knowing that no good will come of this day. And then, like dark clouds suddenly giving way to blue skies, I remembered there was some heavy cream in the fridge.

Heavy cream + water does not milk make (in fact, don’t try this at home, kids – it’s kind of disgusting), but it saved my morning. And in spite of what the following video is trying to suggest, I did just fine in school.