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Mmmmmm…..a dollop of Daisy. Lay’s potato chips dipped in it, strawberries dipped in it and rolled in brown sugar, potatos bathed in it….*drool*

I don’t think the spoilage is any different than other sour creams, so just do what you always do.

I should count my blessings; they don’t sell sour cream in the UK. The americans-in-britain website I hang out on, they’re always discussing alternatives for recipes.

Hee! I too am a lover of the cream of sourness. You really shouldn’t have let the container tell you what to do though. Next thing you know the other dairy products are going to start pushing you around too. To guard against developing a reputation of weakness you should open the next carton of milk on the wrong or “illegal” side. That’ll show ’em.

On another dairy front – my Mom told me that she read about a study on butter. Apparently it’s ok after all. The study showed no link between butter and heart disease, and it may also have some benefit – something about helping the body get more nutrients from vegetables or whatever. I bought butter for the first time in ages this weekend and packed my butter bell.

Doubt and fear is to be avoided. Dairy products can sense your fear.

You know, about all the studies that say “eat this” and “don’t eat that”… guess what? We’re STILL all gonna die. Not a downer, but plain fact, so why ruin life being afraid of every little coffin nail you might be tacking on?

Violent dairy food poisoning on the other hand…

I’m not helping, am I?

Violent dairy food poisoning on the other hand…

Or violent intestinal revolt if one can’t digest it.

they don’t sell sour cream in the UK

Why not? There is nothing similar? What is wrong with them peoples?

I grew up eating margarine, because my dad was a health freak (I wonder how foolish he felt when we found out how bad margarine is for you? He never said). I was an adult before I tasted real butter. I thought, “holy SHIT! Is this what it’s supposed to taste like?!?”

I have prayed at the altar of Land o’ Lakes ever since.

I don’t know. They’re insane.

On the other hand, we don’t sell clotted cream…which is about the most devine and beeyootiful dairy product on Gaia’s green earth.

Also, you can stand a spoon up in their double cream. Which isn’t very good for coffee, really. I try to talk Uncle B into the thinner stuff, but “single cream” = “cheap shit” to him.

I gotta find a LoL box and show you guys what our secretary showed me soon after I started here. If I’d done it, it would have been harassment. Lemme find a box…

Yes, butter lubes the world.

Could I really hear tiny spores landing on the surface with a soft, ripe shush, like early snow?

Eww. The imagery…

And what Enas said on butter. I’m to the point that I don’t believe anything anyone says about healthy eating, especially the media and health experts. I figure I’m gonna die anyway – might as well die stuffed. Atkins and every other dietitian and Dr. Of Foodology can blow me.

With a shushing spore-like sound, too, by God!

What is wrong with them peoples?

They’re on the wrong side of the Atlantic, is what’s wrong.

Just kidding!

Mom loves butter. Which makes sense. A staple in Pakistan is butter on toast or butter on rusk (sort of like hard cake), either or both eaten with tea or after having dunked it into tea. I don’t drink tea, so I don’t know what it’s like, but it’s very popular.

But the butter in Pakistan is different. All foreign brands – Scandinavian and English. Lurpak and Nurpak and Blue Ribbon or Blue Bond and whatnot. No margarine there.

Recently, we bought some “Jewish” butter (cholov Yiroel) and it was fantastic. Just like the butter in Pakistan. The real stuff. We were all hooked.

There’s nothing like real butter.

Musli, do they eat ghee in Pakistan? I used to turn American butter into ghee myself…wonderful to cook with. And you can sure tell who makes a real premium butter…supermarket butter yielded about half the ghee as LoL, once the water was all cooked out.

They used to eat ghee. In some places, it’s still used extensively. Indeed, that’s what Mom and Dad were raised on. But then oil became available and was far easier to use (and healthier, according to what experts said). So, slowly oil replaced ghee. Many of us are far more familiar with Dalda (who introduced hydrogenated vegetable oil, which replaced ghee) than with any sort of ghee. I’m sure there was an element of class or advancement involved: ghee became something those villagers used while the sophistocated urbanites used oil (which the English and Scandinavians and other civilized people used).

From what I have noticed, Indians use ghee much more than Pakistanis these days. Even in America: no one cooks with ghee any more in my entire extended family. Most people don’t even know how. In a Pakistani store, there is hardly any ghee for sale. In Indian stores, there is a lot of ghee for sale. (But then, Hindus use ghee as fuel for their wicks, used in worship rites.)

Mom once made a dish with ghee and none of us really liked it. Even she found it strange and different.

It’s Blue Band butter! Owned by Unilever Pakistan, which used to own Dalda.

Dalda is truly ubiquitous in Pakistan.

I suspect it may turn out to be like the margarine/butter thing. When I was reading up on ghee, there were lots of articles about the health properties. There’s some apparently decent research that ghee is good for you.

What I like about it is that you can heat it quite high, it tastes a lot like butter (duh) but you can store it for a very long time at room temperature (if you’re careful not to dip wet utensils into it). And don’t even get me started on coconut oil!

I *so* don’t think they have the nature of fats worked out. Remember back when they didn’t know there was good cholesterol and bad cholesterol? Like that.

Yeah, you know where I’m headed here. LARD SHALL RISE AGAIN!

LARD SHALL RISE AGAIN!

Amen to that, sister! Long live pork fat!

(and bacon, and smoked ribs, and pulled pork, and ham, and ham hocks, and pork chops, and… uh.)

I’m more than half serious, too. I think animal fats are going to see a re-evaluation at some point.

We know hydrogenated fats were pushed on us for years, and they turn out to be wicked evil fats. A search on ghee and coconut oil will turn up more stuff about fats that were vilified in a way that may be completely unfair.

Oh!…where did I read?…early in the 20th C, a doctor in Boston worked out an early method of measuring hardening of the arteries. It was a bit of a flop because, at the time, the condition was so rare nobody gave a shit.

And what sorts of fats did they live on?

Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

A wonderful, magical animal.

So true, it’s painful.

Butter. Wunnerful butter, do you know it’s exemplary
in Omega 3’s? And eggs, another wunnerful health food.
There is no margerine (real or otherwise)
in this house.
Have you tried creamed goats cheese? Yum.

Or just plain honey/butter? Or a compound butter?

I’m going to go eat a stick of it right now.

LARD SHALL RISE AGAIN!

Sniff. In some quarters, its never gone away.

And ghee is terrific stuff as well. One of the bad things about being a bachelor, though, is that it takes forever to collect enough fowl fat to make schmaltz. (Yes, I know I’m not a bachelor anymore, but still…)

Oh, and my daughter loves Daisy sour cream. Of course, she doesn’t bother to read the label.

EW1… I consider myself very culinarily articulate, but more so in the direction of Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese. I can get by in others. What is this “schmaltz”? Goose fat?

Yep. Nothing worse than preachy cream.

LemurKing:

Goose fat?

Trying not to delve to terribly deeply into the laws of kashruth (kosherness), I’ll just point out that kosher cooking fats were somewhat difficult to come by in the Russian Pale amongst Jewish peasants.

So fowl fats rendered are one such source, with geese being one of the fattier and more suitable sources.

Now of course, there are many suitable vegetable fats readily available~but like the use of shortening instead of lard, some dishes just aren’t the same really.

You’ve been there since I have, Weaz, but I distinctly remember buying little plastic cups of sour cream at Sainsbury’s.

What does clotted cream taste like? Is it sweet? Are you supposed to eat it straight or is it supposed to be mixed into something?
I’d try to google it, but I’m too tired.

What does clotted cream taste like?

I had a vacation in Merry Ol’ in the late 80’s and I had High Tea once at a tea shop. I had scones with clotted cream and it was the most delicious thing I tasted the entire time I was there. It is so incredibly rich and thick. The closest thing I think you could come up with here is whipping heavy cream with a stick of butter, and even then that’s not quite the right flavor.

Still, I’m not sure giving up sour cream is worth the trade.

Nothing improves the flavour of dishes like lard. Goobs and goobs of pork-fat, drpping from your chin as you ladle chips into your mouth as fast as possible…

Although, I do have a soft spot for sour cream, which does improve many many snacks also…

Clotted cream is heavy cream from the West Country (that’s Devon, not Texas) that is lightly heated in shallow pans and left to sit for a bit. All the butterfat rises to the top in a buttery crust, with thick creamy clots underneath. It has a thick, gooey texture — I can’t think of anything with a similar texture to compare it to — and it tastes like cream, but sweeter and butterier. You put it on scones or fruit or something. It really is spectacular.

They sell crème fraîche in the UK now. It’s a very lightly soured cream, so it’s still liquid. You can cook with it, but it isn’t great on baked potatoes. It’s like clabbered milk (which I’ve never actually had).

Goose grease. They sell it in the supermarket in the UK for roasting your potatoes at Christmas. It’s HELLA expensive. Cheaper to buy the goose (which we’ve done a couple of years, but I really prefer turkey).

Pups, that’s got to be the world’s only Cream appearance with a laugh track. I wonder what the TV program was…

Apologies for absence – Mr IBM let me down again (thank Kerist for my ancient warhorse Compaq)!

Anyway, the Weasel is being silly. Of course we sell sour cream in the UK. I don’t buy it because I hate the vile stuff (Ooh, here’s a good idea – let’s take something that tastes wonderful, then ruin it!). Her Ladyship doesn’t buy it here because she wanders round supermarkets looking for the exit.

Weasels don’t do shopping, apparently 😉

Weasels don’t do shopping, apparently

Neither do Lady Sarahs, but that’s another story.

It’s HELLA expensive. Cheaper to buy the goose (which we’ve done a couple of years, but I really prefer turkey).

Much as I like goose, I ain’t paying $4/lb, which is really about $28/lb for the actual meat on bird, when I can get 2 fresh Christmas turkeys for $14 total! (Okay, the turkeys were marked down to a flat rate Christmas Eve, but still.)

I fear for the goose industry on this side of the pond, as the price rises the market diminishes and it won’t be long before there is no market at all.

And I don’t have a big enough yard to raise ducks & geese. 🙁

North American Weasels are opportunistic shoppers. When forced to shop in an organized fashion they often migrate over to the booze isle, where they will stay until distracted by something shiny.

One does wonder what folks were thinking when they named it “sour cream”. Why don’t we call cheese “old, diseased milk solids”?

They could have called sour cream “courage putty”, or sumpin interesting.

So … Mrs EW1(SG) don’t do no shopping? Does she like sour cream?

MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….. Old, diseased milk solids!

Yep. There are few things finer than eating a nice smelly piece of moldy, diseased milk solid. Some carefully chosen spoiled grape juice does add to the pleasure, though.

One word:

Bleu.

Does she like sour cream?

Nope. And the Kiddo doesn’t eat pasta. None.

I am landed among heathens, I am.

/Although, the Kiddo loves sour cream…”Daisy” being her favourite brand! Like I said, she don’t read the labels.

And the Mrs. does like cottage cheese, as long as its from Germany! See a lot of that around here, I tell ya’.

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