We Be Green!

Look! Milk in glass bottles, delivered to our door by a friendly farmer who feeds wildflowers to his cows and votes Democrat. How lovely!

Not only does it make me feel like a good resident of our fragile planet, but it also makes me lose myself in Irish reverie, thinking about the days when my roomies and I got milk delivered to our second-floor flat in Galway. We'd dump it all in hot tea, dip chocolate-covered Hobnobs, and gossip about who was shifting who. (Me: The alcoholic lead singer of a so-so campus rock band. My roommate: A nice boy with 200 head of sheep.)

Anyhoo, like good minions of Kingsolver, we've signed up with a dairy not too far away, and we've got a standing order for whole milk, salted butter and cage-free eggs. I told David it's like drinking melted ice cream. Yum, yum, yummy. The non-homogenized variety comes with cream on the top that clings to the sides of the bottle like an empty pint of Guinness.

Yesterday Lucy and I took our "farm milk" and made a bunch of little chocolate puddings. She happily cracked eggs, dumped milk, and hid chocolate chips in her upper lip -- "What's this?! You've got a lump!" I said, poking her chipmunk lips. She'd giggle and then give me a big ol' chocolate-smeary smile.

Delicious!

Oddly -- and irritatingly -- the original hippie member of our household has been remarkably uninterested in our nascent efforts to go green. Of my "small gestures," he says, "it's not enough to save the world." I'm starting to wonder if he just isn't mad that the very local Health Department, of which I am the director, refuses to reopen the Rat Restaurant in his compost heap.