It comes in a can

How Condensed Milk is Made in Factory | Step by Step Process

WhatsApp is eavesdropping on us

I got home from work this evening and switched on my smart television to watch YouTube to understand the news of the past few days from the comedic genius of late-night show hosts.

There is no way the news can be taken in neat from the new channels with their rolling and interminable analysis of analyses and the postulations over bizarre prognostications, the chaos from the calico bunker on Pennsylvania Avenue already puts the earth’s rotation in a wobble, only humour keeps the stress at bay.

What showed up first on my list of suggestions to playback was titled, “How Condensed Milk is Made in Factory | Step by Step Process”, that was quite scary, yet an interesting first 7 minutes of information before moving on to the production of other mass manufactured goods.

Different milks for different folks

You would recall that last week I wrote about the sleight of hand that had opened and poured the milk I brought in without me noticing as I made tea and put in some sugar. My milk was all gone by Friday morning, indicating that someone or some people do prefer whole milk over semi-skimmed milk. Whole milk is unmistakable, it has a blue cap on the bottle, semi-skimmed milk has a green cap, and skimmed milk has a red cap.

Blog - Just milking the milk

Today, rather than suffer the privation of milk by the end of the week, I bought a larger bottle of milk, our office manager even offered to have the bottle marked as private in a public access fridge, I declined as I hoped there would be much left for us to use. If that optimistic expectation fails, I might take her up on that offer.

Condensed to irrelevance

I was relating the situation to Brian as we had our regular morning chat, first by audio as I walk to the office and then switching to video on WhatsApp when at my desk, when he talked of getting condensed milk. What an opportunity to relate one of the seminal moments of my boarding school experience.

I bought condensed milk with some bread and was walking towards the field in front of the staff room, and behold my tall and almost gangly aunt, my mother’s big sister of blessed memory, had come to visit. Seeing my goods, with such dismissive disdain, she said, Ọmọ fish and chip (child of fish and chip), which would never have been the staple of Nigerians studying abroad, but for the unacculturated deviance of their kids born there. It was as cutting and hurtful as being slapped across the face, even the condensed milk lost its sweet taste after that encounter.

Whatever Brian wanted condensed milk for which I cannot remember I have had again since that unfortunate meeting, he chose to excoriate me for having condensed milk with bread when he planned to get can of condensed milk, punch a hole or slit in the top of the can, and suck out the gooey stuff like a suckling child. Just the temerity of the accusation.

It comes in a can

Indeed, it comes in a can, and one other can I do have an affinity for is evaporated milk, which goes well on my custard and in caffeinated coffee that I have barely had for almost six months. That taste returned when I was in the Netherlands, for they have a version of evaporated milk called koffie melk, milk for coffee, and it works for filter coffee better than other types of milk.

Most of the common brands now come with a tab to rip off the lid, and the cost of those cans has doubled or tripled in the supermarkets nearby. Only one other supermarket retains a reasonable price with the cans indicating two opposite depressions to make holes for the milk to be poured out freely.

Koffie melk usually comes in a carton or a glass bottle, the pasteurised cow’s milk comes mainly in plastic containers except from long life milk in cartons, evaporated milk in tins, and well, condensed milk in hermetically sealed cans, you might need a chisel and hammer to get to the contents and who better to give all muscle to the can, than you know who.

Someone is eavesdropping with AI transcription

As for the YouTube video I was presented with, we only had a conversation on WhatsApp, I fear WhatsApp with its AI mechanisms was eavesdropping on our conversation and it presented the topic of our conversation to YouTube. It was no coincidence, and we never searched for anything regarding condensed milk during or after that conversation.

The history of condensed milk goes back to France in 1820, England in 1835 with sugar as a preservative, but the successful commercialisation of the process came in 1865 in the United States after the proprietor visited England.

Just milking the milk

Excuse me please

After settling down at my desk, I put a teabag of my decaffeinated Earl Grey tea in my mug and made it for the kitchen with half a litre of whole milk that I bought from Sainsbury’s on my way to the office.

People sometimes gather in the kitchen around the instant hot water faucet and the coffee machine, chatting and totally oblivious to others.

At times you must make your presence known, intrude in their space to make them aware that once they have had their drinks or beverages dispensed, they really should move on.

Swift of hand

I placed my bottle of milk on the counter and went to fill my mug with hot water, between doing that and adding sugar to my tea, one of the interlopers, instead of opening the fridge to use the public access semi-skimmed milk, had opened my bottle of milk and poured it in his tea.

When I reach for the bottle, I was surprised it was already open, the seal had been removed, and I do remember seeing the seal intact before I left my desk. What to do? Just ignore the situation and finish making your tea. But what an Artful Dodger he was.

The milks of taste

One of my colleagues later came to get some tea and waited for it to brew before pouring in some milk. I offered the whole milk, and we began the discussion about the difference in taste between fully skimmed, semi-skimmed, and whole milk. Then, we discussed the new range of designer milk substitutes made from oats, almonds, coconuts, or other sources. I have never liked goat’s milk, and I might just fall ill on camel’s milk.

As we talked about tastes, I recalled the explosion of taste I experienced on a visit to Prague, and I wondered if I had already written about it. Well, I had, and I did not want to repeat myself, so I excerpted the section and offered a link to the corresponding blog.

“For years, I had semi-skimmed milk with my cornflakes till I had breakfast in Prague with whole milk - the bouquet, the taste, the wonder of things unadulterated - I never went back to that tasteless half-milk stuff, it only contains 2% less fat than the real deal.” [Ich bin ein Berliner – March 2006] I cannot believe my proofreading skills were that bad in 2006. Anyway, the source blog is fixed.

Meanwhile, the thought alone of when they ran out of milk last week, and it was the milk I bought that kept things going until there was barely enough for my last cup of tea. It literally is a case of my sharing the milk of human kindness. I get what I need, others just take what they see.

Milking udder nonsense from cows with names

Roaming free with eggs

There isn’t a moment of indecision when one walks down the supermarket aisle looking for eggs and taking the free range variety.

Obviously, free range could be taken to mean the eggs would not sit in the egg-box when opened, but presumably we have been cajoled into thinking the eggs were laid by hens that roam free rather than those in battery cages.

Giving a cow a name

What would surprise me after recent studies is to find that my choices of milk have moved from the basic whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed to some more bizarre description like this was milked from cows with names [1].

Apparently, beyond the context of the holy cow, sme dairy cows have developed a personal relationship with their owners that they have been given names allowing them to produce more milk than would nameless bastard cows.

Cowed by silly names

Typically, the cow is given a name like Daisy in the UK, or Clara with a number in the Netherlands,they might even get names Milka, Crema or Skima to play on the context of names. But then, just imagine people who share their names with cows being called cow for the sake of being unfunny.

However, if a dairy farm has to name its cows, would the cows than have to take on surnames and would surnames denote ownership as was the case with human slaves rather than kinship depicting the brood of the bovine matriarch or the farm bull?

Stressing out on a name

And just as double-barrelled names depict illegitimate liaisons long forgotten what additional stress can be placed on a cow that realises that its name is borne of bad provenance rather than the consummate love of its owner and its healthy progeny?

Would it then be a stretch that named bulls would produce better beef or would the realisation that name-calling is healthy preparation for the abattoir be a weight loss regime on the part of the bull?

For instance, the sheep called Woollies might produce more wool and the crocodile called Snappy might produce more skin – Errr!

Udder nonsense

It goes without saying that there is a lot of useless science expended in stupid discoveries because I would not be surprised if commercial diary farms implement sound systems that whisper sweet nothings to the cows just for the sake of the milk.

At least, one can hope that those in China would call the cow Chin-Milk and completely kill that despicable act of adding melamine to milk to boost its protein content.

I could just hear someone say this is udder nonsense when in fact it is udderly true.

Source

[1] Cows with names produce more milk, scientists say - Telegraph

Bailout: The premise that stinking shit becomes durable gold

Our duty of care betrayed

I have agonised in private and silently wept with tears streaming down my eyes as I read and heard of how the vulnerable had been betrayed.

Harsh as it may sound, babies by reason of our humanity and bond of parental love do not have to expect because they do not know, that we owe them a duty of care.

We as highly developed social animals just know that our babies’ needs are to be met and sometimes at great cost. We tend to believe that our governments have accepted and engaged in the duty of ensuring that health and safety rules and regulations are strictly adhered to, enforced without laxity and infringements punished severely.

In no place is this need for confidence expected, required and implicitly demanded than in food safety – except in places where a government has malevolently decided to commit genocide by allowing poisons and harmful substances to be ingested as food, it should be a given that our food is safe.

Profiteering on the lives of the helpless

Not being a parent, even I had a pain in my heart and it ached so painfully when I read that the protein content of baby formula had been boosted by adding a false-positive indicator – melamine [1].

I had to read up on that stuff and found it could be used in fabrics, plastics and fire retardants – it was definitely not, I repeat, definitely NOT for food or consumption even though it was partly soluble in water.

Some smart guy must have deduced that the test for protein content was poorly constructed since it only tested for the presence of nitrogen; so diluting the milk and adding melamine was a sure way to boost assumed protein content and make great profits no matter whose ox was gored [2].

They killed the babies

Sadly, it has been 4 dead babies and 54,000 infants sick, babies developing kidney stones some resulting in renal failure and parents literally helpless with desperate anxiety seeking respite for their child as well as being unsure of what now to feed their baby.

This is in China where the one-child policy [3] is still in force and this is not to say that the loss of one child can be assuaged by the presence of another – one cannot begin to understand the unspeakable torture and pain the babies and the parents are going through.

Fundamentally, this episode of deliberate poisoning of food for profits is more far reaching than the localities in which the outrageously malevolent middle-men of the dairy market plied their devilish trade.

To my mind, hell is too cold to receive their evil and wicked souls – it is no doubt the best place to send them to, but before they are sent off, they have a price to pay and none of them have enough in money, means or their own very lives to pay for their heinous unforgivable crimes.

Confidence, trust, integrity and reputation

As far out as Asia, Europe and Africa [4], food products from China are undergoing stringent scrutiny to outright bans [5] and worse is yet to come because we now have a collapse in confidence that standards not are being adhered to, such that we do not trust those products to be harmless, since there is clearly no integrity in their standards and this has completely sullied the reputation of doing business in China; it will no doubt adversely affect all other products from China.

The highlighted words in the previous paragraph cannot be quantified in any measure but they are the basis on which any transaction can be comfortably conducted in our world.

The loss of any of these is priceless; there is probably nothing that can done to regain them without a very costly expenditure, a great act of contrition, meaningful restitution, a sense of justice meted out to offenders and the long passage of time.

It applies to all people, their activities, businesses, organisations, companies, governments and life – it allows relationships to be built and partnerships to thrive; the absence of any would lead to strife and possibly the loss of lives.

The bailout is just as bad

In the same vein we see the $700 billion bailout [6] of banks in the United States where the Treasury is seeking funding to buy toxic assets off banks so that they can return to the business of banking and ease the credit crunch.

Much as we have heard so much about the lack of confidence; the fact is, the problems were brought on by untrustworthy practices in granting sub-prime mortgages where the debts were given ratings of integrity when in fact they were borne of disreputable transactions.

It is now clear that the banks were engaged in practices that would put the ordinary man behind bars for years, but as banks they are about to be absolved of their misdeeds by having the public buy off their toxic assets.

Stinking shit becomes gold

The US Treasury would have us believe that these toxic assets have short half-lives and in time they would appreciate in value and can be sold off for profit offering a net gain to the tax payer.

At the risk of sounding crude, the bailout is supposed to turn horribly stinking shit into durable gold, over time – I would like to see the alchemist that would conduct that experiment. The assets have become irradiated with the toxicity of dishonest, disreputable provenance, they cannot be treated with a bailout to give them respectability - who is buying this shit?

You cannot afford to lose it

I have this much to say, when confidence is lost and people have no trust in each other such that they cannot vouch for the integrity of the other and stake anything on the reputation of another – there is no price that can buy back trust, restore confidence, confer integrity and enhance reputations as much as not losing it in the first place.

With hindsight, it is just too obvious that nobody can afford to lose the confidence of others, create an atmosphere of distrust, convey a lack of integrity and become disreputable – the price is just too high.

What is clear to all is the price of these losses is looking like $700 billion and that is a hefty price to pay for millions of little white lies that secured paltry mortgages around America encouraging the world to think they could invest in the reputation of liars and their accomplices (the banks) as a worthwhile business venture.

Address trust or pay more still

I would contend that the price to regain trust would be a lot higher than $700 billion and if those people who instigated, tolerated, condoned, encouraged and abetted the lying are still in position to play with money, we have another gaping black hole of lies to swallow up more money without restoring confidence and buying back the foundation of good business dealings – trust.

Unfortunately, no one is addressing that simple fact, it is the loss of simple old-fashioned virtues that has created this big problem and until that clear truth is spelt out and the criminals are made to pay for their lies and dishonest activities – we might well prepare for a depression because I see $7 trillion going into this bailout and things getting no better.

Sources

[1] Melamine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Melamine use "rampant" in China feed business - Yahoo! News

[3] One-child policy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] FACTBOX: Africa, Asia, Europe: bans and recalls on China milk | International | Reuters

[5] Medical News Today News Article - Europe Bans Chinese Baby Foods Containing Milk

[6] Financial crisis: Good points and bad points of US bail-out - Telegraph