A: To get to the other Seattle alternative weekly!

Better than cow-based ice cream, according to several cow-eating people that I know. Especially the chocolate. It's fucking fantastic. And no lactose, no soy, no cholesterol, no connective tissue, no white sugar or corn syrup. . . but mainly, it's yummers.

I think mammery glands are actually modified sweat glands.

White blood cells are pus. Enjoy.

Marshmallows are, in fact, delicious.

I've got news for you, princess: you're not special. You and me and everything else on this planet are composed of the exact same shit. Some of it really is shit. Sit back and tell yourself that ice-cream really is pig hoof if it makes you feel superior or feeds your eating disorder, but spare us the vegan dogma. It's pathetic.

Milk from factory farmed animals -- that is, almost all milk -- comes, at least in part, from cows with mastitis. Udder infections. This puts pus (ie. white blood cells + bacteria = pus) and whole blood into the milk. Gross, but it'll be pasteurized. Won't hurt you.

It's the hormones and antibiotics that I'd worry about.

Let me reiterate that Coconut Bliss (see 11 and 21) is AWESOME. lol

It would be the vegetarians who pursue the ick factor on this one, folks who otherwise aren't against milking an animal for years but not killing it for its tasty flesh.

Another sort of person might be concerned about this news: those who are just sick of the continued dumbing down, decontenting, and industrialization of food at every turn. Real food gets rarer and rarer.

Besides, stuff like belongs in yummy sausages, heh heh.

Yes, coconut contains saturated fats. Some people think the shorter-chain saturated fats aren't as bad for you as the long-chain ones found in animal fats, but I'm not aware of research supporting that claim, and there is research contradicting it.

So, public service announcement: do not base your entire diet on ANY kind of frozen dessert. Kthx.

Ten bucks says that ice cream with gelatin isn't as good without, at least when it's still fresh.

Luckily, we in Seattle are made of stronger stuff than that.

If you're not living in a storage locker or a Porta-Potty, you can make ice cream at home.

Adding gelatin to full-fat dairy (like ice cream) is a departure from normal industrial food practices, far as I can tell.

As an aside, a fun trick you can play on vegans or vegetarians (which I used to do in college a lot) was tell them that you read in the newspaper that gelatin was now being added to fresh fruit to make it plumper. This is especially effective if they are biting into a plum or kiwi.

Don't knock it 'till you try it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4qCF-Nl1Wc

Although, on some level, I do have to sympathize a with Fnarf here. A friend of mine once shared with me the secret for the GREATEST EFFING MILKSHAKE OF ALL TIME, and it is absolutely dependent on ice crystals. Ready for this?

You need at least two, and at most three ingredients. Cheaporiffic vanilla ice cream (the kind that's almost freezerburned already when you buy it), Milk (preferably 2% or whole), and, optionally, Hershey's chocolate syrup.

First, put a couple scoops of ice cream into your glass. Next, add just a bit of milk. Now, take a spoon (and this is the critical part)... smash the ice cream together with the milk for a few moments. DO NOT stir heavily, just mash it about for a no more than ten seconds, until the ice cream is fairly well covered by the milk. (If you want chocolate, add in a bit of the syrup before mashing...don't worry that it won't be mixed perfectly, it's part of the charm).

Now you need to wait. This is key! Give it a minute, maybe two. At this point, provided you've used fattening milk and cheapo ice cream, ice crystals will begin to form. Big time.

When you're ready, try a spoonful. You'll have a mixture of crunchy ice crystals and lovely smooth ice cream. Enfuckingjoy. it is incredible.

Nearly all dairy farms in the U.S. do regular somatic cell testing (SCC) for the presence of mastitis and other bacteriological infections, and milk found to exceed the USDA standard (anything over 300,000/ml, IIRC) is disposed of before entering the food supply.

In fact, US dairy farmers dump about $2B worth of bad milk every year, or about 11% of the annual supply, so as you say, there's very little risk in developing a bateriological infection from drinking milk - unless you're getting raw, unpasteurized milk from farmer Brown up the lane or something.

And as others have pointed out, all animal milk - including human milk, BTW - includes some white cells; that's one of the things that makes milk such a good food source for infants and small children, because those white cells help to boost immune systems.

Most dairy farmers are foregoing use of hormones - at the rate of something like 95% nationally - not because there are any proven health hazards, but rather for the quite simple reason that the general public has demonstrated a strong aversion to its use.

Locally, Darigold, the region's largest milk producer (and a company I worked for for 6 1/2 years, so I do know a bit about this subject), has had a policy in-place since the introduction of rBGH that 0% of milk from cows given the hormone will go into the food-chain supply, and the compliance rate (the number of coop farmers declining to use hormones in their stock) is virtually 100%.

In addition, it's been noted that cows given rBGH/rBST tend to have higher incidents of mastitis and other health issues, requiring increased use of antibiotics (for which milk is also tested, BTW), so purchasing milk labeled "hormone free" actually increases the likelihood it will come from cows given fewer antibiotics.

As for gelatin in ice cream, if it's high milk-fat content, "premium-style" ice cream, it probably doesn't need the mouth-feel boost anyway. So, just continue to buy the good stuff, and you should be fine.

Ex Seattle-ite in India

I saw it at the Whole Foods in Portland over the weekend, so I'm assuming the ones here will have it, too. However, Madison Market has a local(ish) version of coconut ice cream that is equally delicious.

And don't even get me started about the scientific studies that prove most vegetables scream when you slaughter them for your salad.

Except the roots and shrooms for some reason.