Instant Milk - Making Milk Better!

I just checked, and this stuff is still on the market. I don't know how. This is the kind of stuff you try once as an experiment. Maybe it seems like a good idea at first. You read information on the box about ratios of pennies and glasses of milk and you think you'd be a fool not to try some. Then you do.

As I recall, the flavor is okay. Milk is a pretty mild thing, and as long as you keep melamine out of the production equipment, how hard can it be to make it taste right?

Nope. The problem is the texture. Instant milk comes in the form of flakes, like detergent. Carnation calls them "magic crystals". Apparently, they're magically endowed with the power to remain solid when submerged, despite being allegedly water-soluble. Or, possibly their magic lies in their ability to make your kid love actual milk? That must be it. It makes proper milk seem dreamy in comparison. So, in that sense, it really does makes milk better.

I'm trying to think of more horrible ways to get milk into your belly than by dehydrating it and subsequently mixing it with real milk (read: "use it to ruin some perfectly good milk"). To have a less pleasant milk experience, you'd have to drink milk right from the teat of the cow, in warm foamy jets, while lying on your back on straw-covered planks of wood, "banging off of the tap", in the parlance of bar room drunkery.

When you drink instant milk, you can feel the fine lumpiness of the little fluid-suspended particles flowing past your lips, each one a joyful little corporate mascot shouting "Wheee! I'm unwholesome!" Your eyelids flutter and your forehead wrinkles, trying to get through the experience without making a face. You clamp down on your throat muscles, demanding control of a building gag reflex. "Something's wrong with this liquid you're asking me to accept. It's got some kind of sawdust in it." says your esophagus. "No. It's just milk. Swallow it and we can go back to watching Wild Kingdom." your brain insists. Somehow, you get past one mouthful, and you feel like a war hero. That glass is awful tall, though, and just wait till you get to the bottom.

At the bottom of the glass is the reward at the end of a hard-fought battle with yourself. It's the best of the best. Those dehydrated former milk pieces too tough and manly to either melt or float in the liquid can be found lying on the bottom of your glass, a chewy finale to your little meal ordeal. If you're smart, you stop drinking just in time to leave the lumpy slurry in your glass, watching it slide back down the side to gather at the bottom again as the glass tilts back to the vertical. Staring down at the milk sludge with the unsettled awe of a narrowly averted horror, you count yourself lucky. But, you probably don't know this the first time you drink Carnation Instant Milk. You probably eat the sludge, because this is your first time.

Buy one box and it'll last you a lifetime.