Of Milk and Alcohol

In the first quarter of this year, milk prices dipped greatly, costing only 1AUD per litre. While that sparked a great debate amongst retailers, farmers, legislators and even union groups, consumers were secretly happy about it. With house brands reducing their prices by a third, milk has never been so affordable. Despite the fact that I'm pretty lactose intolerant, I hopped on to the bandwagon to purchase milk.

However, the milk purchases didn't last long. While my friends finish a carton of 2l milk within a day or two pretty effortlessly, I often find myself struggling to finish it before it expires. (I'm lactose intolerant, remember? I can only drink in small amounts without getting gastric discomfort.) After throwing a few cartons of unfinished milk, I decided that I should stop wasting money and food, or rather milk to be precise. For a couples of months, I hadn't purchase any milk.

That was until last week, when I went grocery shopping with my housemate's boyfriend. He wanted very badly to drink Russian White and hence, he bought a bottle of Absolute Vodka + a bottle of Kahlua while I bought a 3l carton of milk for the cocktail. Guess what? Less than a week after I purchased the milk, it's almost finishing. For the very first time in my household, we will finish a carton of milk before its expiry date, all because we made an addictive concoction out of it. While I drank it for one night, my housemate/s continued to drink for the next few days and voila, we've got an empty milk carton. Oh well, they probably think that they can make up for the negative effects of alcohol by drinking some milk. Haha.

By the way, I really like White Russian and it's really simple to mix.
Do try it!

If ya wondering why everyone else (other than consumers) are kicking a fuss out of the low prices of milk, check out the following links:

The Sydney Morning Herald: Price war could spell the end of fresh milk on supermarket shelves.
ABC News: Dairy farmers worried at supermarket milk price war