On milk.

When I was house-sitting in Ixelles the one thing that really struck me is how difficult it was to get fresh milk. Cafes, restaurants and supermarkets all had exclusively UHT milk. If you don't know the scale of milk/quality I'll lay it out for you: milk -fresh- is "unhomogenized" in Australia you need a special certificate to supply milk unhomogenized because it's supposed to be more stable when homogenized, which is just blending the milk with the cream. There's also pasteurization, which is mandatory here, which is an interesting process, developed by a frenchman to preserve wine (duh).

The scale is pretty simple, the more you do to milk (except chill it) the worse it will likely taste. And there on the far end of the scale, verging on spoiled milk, is UHT. Ultra heat-treated milk has an undefinable taste almost as though someone made milk from entirely non-milk-based parts and just hoped for the best. Anyway, it was worth it when I got to Scotland and unhomogenized fresh milk was standard.

In Australia I think it's a point of heavy contention. Our environment can't really support cattle on such a huge scale, and I can see that even countries like Belgium with rolling greens hills find it more economical to produce UHT. Always an avid futurist I think a lot about what we will have to sacrifice and change to make it through the storm we've brought upon outselves. I think I can handle whatever comes up, and make the right choices environmentally but; where am I going to get my milk?