“Your generation is so lazy! I remember churning my own butter.”
“Kids these days wasting all their money on yogurt. You’d have more money if you ate plain granola like the rest of us.”
“You buy your milk from the store? When I was your age, I had to walk 5 miles in the snow, both ways, carrying a heavy bucket, to get milk from our lone Jersey for my morning bowl of cereal.”
Great Uncle Charles is known to exaggerate everything from his colonoscopy 10 years ago to the events leading to his opening his morning paper this morning. Most of his critiques make no sense, usually because he’s too young for his claims to be true. (Even though he’s under 80, he occasionally swears that phones didn’t exist until he was a young man. And, technically, he’s not even your uncle.) You know Great Uncle Charles. He’ll critique whatever he sees in the right mood. We all have an Uncle Charlie.
When he turns his critical eye to your kitchen, roll your eyes, and enjoy your food. Providing a larger variety of options available to you at the store, dairy is always adding new styles of yogurt and ice cream, new specialty products for those with active lifestyles, or even milk specifically for those dreaming of another glass without lactose intolerance’s appearance. It provides more ways to enjoy a good thing like milk.
Maybe that flavor of yogurt in your fridge didn’t exist even 5 years ago, but it does now and it’s delicious. And so what if your milk is ultra-pasteurized? What does that have to do with anything? It’s the same milk, just a new technique with a later “use by” date. Your best intentions of cooking-in more get superseded by takeout conveniently on your route home. You need that jug for a casserole, but you’ll make it tomorrow night instead… Or maybe the night after. It depends if you order anything for ½ Off Quesadilla Night.
Besides, for all his complaining, Charlie will happily devour anything you bring to family get-togethers once your back is turned. Why? Because, the truth is, for all his comments, Great Uncle Charles enjoys the new options in food. He loves his old favorites, but he wishes these new ones were around when he was that young kid getting a great workout before breakfast (don’t remind him that those childhood years were spent in town a block from the grocery store, never mind that his family didn’t even own a cow). Maybe someday you’ll do the same to your great-nephews and great-nieces as you slip their newest muffins into your pocket.
So go ahead, enjoy the ever-expanding dairy foods available to you. No one will judge once they remember that it has dairy’s great taste.