First, a note that can maybe serve as yesterday's post: the morning after I wrote about my clockwork commute, the Angry Birds boy wasn't there. His sister was, but he wasn't. But today all was back to normal, phew!
Here in Finland, the milk section at the grocery store is huge, and if you're not careful (or if you don't speak Finnish super well, say), you could get lost among the laktoositon (dairy-free), piimä (buttermilk), loumu (organic), store-brand, and various -fat options. As for our family, we buy täys maito (whole) milk for Sterling, and rasvaton (skim) for the rest of us.
The other day, though, Jeremy came home with kevyt (light - maybe 1.5% fat?) milk, and he said it was because the rasvaton (skim) had started to taste like water to him. An investigation was in order.
And it turns out that we had recently accidentally been buying matio-juoma - milk "beverage." I haven't scrutinized the ingredients list, but my imagination tells me that this stuff is half water, half milk. It wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility - there are all kinds of weird milky beverages here, including half juice/half milk. I saw an ad for maito juoma once that toted it as having fewer calories than milk but more protein than water (duh).
To thicken the plot, there is the fact that as I was taking this picture, I realized something else: is arki maito automatically a maito juoma? "Arki matio" is "everyday milk," and a Finnish friend of ours told us it's fine to drink but that you wouldn't serve it to guests or drink it on (gasp!) Sundays or anything. Until now, I had thought that arki maito and maito juoma were two separate products. I'll be checking at the grocery store next time I go to see if they're actually one and the same, or if it's possible to drink arki maito that is nevertheless pure maito. These are the pressing questions of our day.
"Good Finnish fat-free everyday milk beverage" on the left; "fat-free milk" on the right.
