After three years of being coffee free, I am back to the daily grind. I take my coffee like my dessert, sweet and creamy.
I sent Scott to the grocery store to get some cream as we had run out of the organic cream from our food co-op. He brought back the only cream they had left at the store.
SEALTEST CREAM INGREDIENTS: Milk, cream, mono and diglycerides (aka hydrogenated oils), disodium phosphate, sodium citrate (if the cream were medicine it would have a side effects list), carrageenan (I would eat it unadulterated, but I doubt this stuff is natural). Problems here: (1) the first ingredient in the cream is milk. (2) Multiple additional ingredients of dubious spelling and effect.
ORGANIC MEADOW CREAM INGREDIENTS: Cream.
To those of you who shout “but the price!” since we buy our cream from the co-op and refuse to pay top dollar (for most things in addition to food) it costs the same as the “cream” from the store.
EAT FOOD, NOT FOOD PRODUCTS!
HERE HERE!! But…it would just take so darn long looking up every ingredient I didnt know of right?! How did you learn it all so fast?
When did food just stop being that food. Rather than a collection of chemicals. I’m fortunate enough to live with a biochemist who can translate most labels for me. If I can’t pronounce it I won’t eat it.
Took about 5 minutes and Google, Sarah! Bless Google.
Karen, that is very fortunte, I bet he’s a wealth of knowledge!
Eww, I don’t want to put that in anything. That is just nasty.
Hey Ash, do you have a copy of the Consumers Dictionary of Food Additives…? I picked this up at the thrift one day, I have a 1970′s copy, and its a handy thing to have kicking about the kitchen. I’d like to update to the modern edition soon.
Unfortunately for us, we don’t have a store near us that sells good stuff. We have a whole foods 45 minutes away, and they are EXPENSIVE. I wish we had a co-op.
Where do you live Kristina?
(*Edit to add, we are 2.75 hours away from the nearest Whole Foods.)
Carrageenan actually comes from seaweed and is sadly probably one of the most natural ingredients on that list! I bet it has a longer shelf-life compared to good ole cream (compared to when it was “manufactured”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrageenan
In it’s natural form carrageenan is OK, as I said I would eat it. But I would doubt (given the “manufactured”-ness of the cream product) that this particular stuff was treated very naturally.
Carla I do not, but I will certainly put it on my radar! THanks for the tip!
yuck! that’s all i have to say about that.
Freaky stuff. Just out of curiosity, did you drink the sealtest cream in your coffee or wait to purchase a real brand?
P.S. Happy belated birthday
It’s possible, but I highly doubt it was synthetic carrageenan. It’s just way easier, faster, and cheaper to source compounds naturally than to try to make them. But anyways, it’s a moot point given the situation, and I don’t blame you for not going for it! It always freaks me out when I see these long ingredient lists for things that should be straightforward foods.
The ingredients in Neilson’s Dairy Half and Half: Milk, cream, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, carrageenan, dextrose. No surprise about the milk, it’s called “half and half” for a reason. And looking at the rest of the creams they sell, did Scott buy table cream for your coffee?? Oy, that would be creamy indeed.
I always buy half and half at the grocery store for coffee, and I just buy whatever dairy’s available. At the Sealtest website, the ingredient list is the same, minus the dextrose. The scary cream stuff is the flavoured ones, I looked at them the other day, even considered them momentarily and then my brain kicked in and said no way Jose.
Ashley – I’m not saying it’s synthetic carrageenan, but you still have to process this stuff to get it into the product. I would doubt I’d find it appealing.
Caitlin – Scott bought the store brand egg nog, ingredients are RIDICULOUS. But hell, it is delicious. We bought one carton and if the roads open, our good stuff will come on the co-op delivery truck today!
Ashley, hi! I’m a Minneapolis photographer who knew of you through SG (been on there for seven years now – I still think the Avec Vouss set you did with Phil Warner was one of SG’s best). I’ve been an organic co-op vegan for 22 years. Over all those years, my brother has had a little 6-acre farm north of the cities where we grew all sorts of goodies. In my meat-eating days, we raised free-range chickens on his property (nothing tasted quite like a bird that had been roaming the yard just an hour or two earlier!) I recently watched the film “Food, Inc.” and while discussing it with friends I mentioned the whole back-to-the-land thing, my brother’s place, and it reminded me of this site of yours. ‘Good to know you’re still thriving! (P.S. what a shame about your hubby’s vasectomy! Mine went perfectly 15 years ago, but I looked just like those photos you posted, after a blood vessel broke after my appendix surgery many years ago… black & blue and sore!) All good thoughts to you and the family!!
I live in Monroe, NY. Farm country. Lots of dairy’s but no place (that I can find) to buy local, whole dairy products. If you have magical googling skills, hook a sister up!
holy moly!
http://www.coopdirectory.org!
so excellent. Hungry Hollow co-op is on my way home from work! Gonna stop by today!
whoa. stopped at said co-op. Local cream, as a benchmark, is $7/pint. Not so much a co-op as a tiny, ridiculously expensive organic store.
This little Scottish countrygirl got the shock of her life when she went into the foodshops in Canada, it is actually CRAZY how much procsessedfood there was. Yes we get processed food in the uk but things like miracle whip? more than a bit scary.
Kristina, try searching for a Buying Club, which is what our “co-op” is. If we had a store, we’d have to charge a mark up, which is what that store would be doing. THey couldn’t sell it to you for less, you have to bypass the middle man. Have you inquired at the farmers markets and stuff if they know anyone who will sell from farm?
Minnie, ya Miracle Whip is “an edible oil product.” YUM!
Caitlin – the “Half&Half” from Organic Meadow is only cream, no milk.
I only use cream for baking/cooking occasionally (I drink my coffee black), but I had the same label shock a few years ago and won’t touch anything but the single-ingredient kind now.
I just moved to Ottawa, and we’re lucky enough to have a bit more of a selection here, including this to-die-for local eggnog that’s only $1 more than the carton crap, is made entirely of cream, eggs, and sugar (and nog), and comes in a glass jar. They of course have regular cream year-round, but this eggnog is ambrosial. Great, now I want some but the store’s closed.
I have looked at several recipes for eggnog (as Shannon’s completely addicted to the stuff) and most of them call for pretend ingredients like pudding mix. Seriously, pudding mix! Check this out:
http://eatingwelllivingthin.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/its-just-not-the-holidays-without-eggnog-this-one-is-no-sugar-added/
No sugar added! Weeee!
Kristina: Have you looked into a CSA farm? go to http://www.localharvest.com and find one in your area… its a great tool!
sorry its localharvest.org !
the grocery store is a very scary place in general for me. i work as a nanny and have done years of babysitting and i am blown away by the crap people feed their children. that weird yellow cheese that comes in individually wrapped plastic sleeves and neon colored macaroni and cheese, uncrustables which are like pp&j sandwiches in a pie like shape filled with something that is suppose to be pp&j but you could probably bury it in the ground, dig it up six months later and eat it. ewwwww. i could go on and on. i feel ya sister!
Hey mallory! Yeah, we have CSA’s. We have our own organic garden though. I’m primarily looking for local meat/dairy. You’d think that living on the edge of dairy country would make it easier.
@Quinn – a few years ago, my best friend’s parents’ house burned down. As in, to the studs, was a pile of ashes, burned down.
They found what was left of the fridge, and in amongst the completely charred, once-frozen meat and such, were these bright orange squares. The “fat free American cheese” looked as good as new. Creepy!
@ krissa-
OH MY GOOD GOD ABOVE!!!! that is insane but i believe it no doubt.
Jealous of those with CSA’s and other things like that. So far I haven’t found anything around here that comes close. Closest store that sells real food is at least an hour away. The farm where we get our raw cow’s milk (and cream) is an hour away too. But so worth it. There is nothing like fresh cream. A spoon for my coffee, a spoon for me, a spoon for my coffee, a spoon for me, and then another spoon for me just to make sure it’s still good. LOL
@kristina wow that stinks … my CSA offers dairy and meat products in the fall for a separate purchase
hey Ashley,
What brought you back to coffee if you care to share?
And I get so, so, so bummed when the co-op is out of one of the products, I specifically go there for. It happened to me with bread this past Saturday. Only one broken epi left.
Ugh. I am deathly allergic to carrageenan. And it is in everything.
Yet nobody as every heard of it- I guess people don’t read labels very often.
I have to carry an epi-pen with me everywhere and read every ingredient in the foods I eat. I’ve gotten used to it though and it has made me eat healthier (reading the ingredient list in hot dogs kind of puts you off them) so I guess I’m a little grateful!