Milk, cream and yoghurt in the fridge

At home the fridge opens a hundred times a day: tea, the children, “Mum, is there yoghurt?”. Milk does not live in the door. The door is warm from the slamming. The carton or bottle sits on a shelf, nearer the back wall, where the cold is even. I shut the cap at once. I check the smell not by the date on the side, but with my nose at the neck. The date is a hint. The nose is the truth.

Fresh milk smells of almost nothing, a little sweet. Sour milk gives itself away before the tea: the nose wrinkles by itself. I do not boil the doubtful stuff “just in case” and I do not stir it blind into batter. If I bake, I smell it separately. Cream for soup I treat the same: if it has stood longer than I thought, I shake it and smell. You cannot hide a rancid edge of cream with dill or pepper. Yoghurt without a crowd of pictures on the pack feels closer to me. I glance at the ingredients: milk, cultures. If sugar and a heap of fruit jam come first — that is already a dessert, and I call it that at home. For porridge I take the plain one. The fruit kind I sometimes put out for the children, but I can spoon the jam on myself — then I know how much sweet went in.

An opened yoghurt does not live a week in my fridge as “still fine”. Two or three days, a clean spoon every time, not the one that just stirred the borscht. A pink or green film on top — into the bin without a speech. Sour cream is the same story: a little water on top I can stir, if it smells clean; if it smells like a wet cellar — no. Here milk is often in plastic, and it behaves differently from what I remember in glass bottles. Not worse, not better — just different. I do not chase a “plant” carton only because there is a forest on the pack. If someone in the family likes that milk in coffee — let it stand next to ours. For porridge and pancakes I use ordinary cow’s milk, which I know by smell. The kettle clicks, tea into my mug, for the children cocoa or just milk in a glass if they ask. No scheme of “a glass a day, must”.

Who wants it, drinks. Who does not, eats cheese with bread or yoghurt with berries. The fridge should feed, not shame. Do you keep milk in the door or on the shelf — and do you throw it away by the date, or still by the smell?