Sour milk

So ... why does milk sour?

Milk is good. Milk makes you grow big and strong. Bacteria also like to grow in milk but they are microscopic and don't grow big, they divide and multiply, like amoebae, and lava lamps. Strong though, bacteria that is, not amoeba, or lava lamps.

But I digress

I know that to grow, or rather, to divide and multiply, they need energy. Most of that they will get from the lactose in the milk (which is not quite as tasty as the sucrose that I enjoy, but bacteria can’t taste so they are not very discerning). They will use the lactose as an energy source and, in doing so will change it into lactic acid (which, of course) will make the milk taste sour. That’s not the point.

Grasshopper mind digresses even while digressing.

That’s not what I wanted to think about.

Rewind

My milk tastes sour, I throw it away and open another defrosted sachet (I don’t like frozen milk but that’s another story and not a very interesting one at that and I am trying to maintain some focus here). The new sachet is also tainted and, I suspect that the next sachet, defrosting in the fridge downstairs, is too.

There’s a niggle in the back of my mind about a superstition, just a little too far back to scratch. Something about … milk souring because you have spoken ill of someone or run over a black cat crossing your path under a ladder with a broken mirror or something.

This horrid situation at work smacks of sour milk … no that’s sour grapes isn’t it?

She has a face that would sour milk? No, that is not it …

Digress, digress.

Google hasn’t helped me.

I speak to elder daughter in the land of the long white clowned, she has wiccan wisdom but I am distracted (what a surprise) by my love of reaching out over the ether and hearing her voice, the whalesong of her man coaxing food into my chattering grand daughter.

So I failed to make use of that resource.

I am not comforted by my magpie mind’s suggestion that I be satisfied with the knowledge that many foods, which were valued when we were conscious enough to honour our sustenance, had superstitions associated with them to deter their waste and to teach children not to wander into the forest with a witchy looking woman unless they had a chicken bone and an Grimm brother handy.

My magpie mind, expert repository of inanity but steadfast in its refusal to hang onto today’s date or the fact that my tax return might please the receiver sometime soon, is smug and self satisfied (redundant and tautologous). If Google couldn’t find some wiccan wisdom to provide an “ah, of course ... how could I have forgotten” moment then how am I to satisfy you? Can only justify, scratch the mental tickle with the fact that that nugget of trivia is unimportant when bathed in the light of the magnificence of the senseless data resident in my current consciousness.

What the hell was it that I once heard about why milk sours?

To hell with this, I am off to buy fresh milk.