Canadian Cuisine - Part 2: Dairy

Before we left Australia a friend told us about her traumatising experience buying milk in Whistler for the first time. Still struggling through the nasty effects of jet lag, she found the vast array of unfamiliar dairy options too much and became a bit emotional. While my Mother always told me "there's no use crying over spilt milk", I can certainly appreciate our friend's predicament.

At the very least, you have a choice between 0.1%, 1%, 2%, 3.25%, half & half or coffee cream. I knew that the percentage refers to the fat content of the milk, but I still found myself asking "which one is hilo?" on our inaugural shopping expedition. Fear not, after some careful research I have concluded the following:

0.1% = skim / non-fat milk
1% = semi-skim milk
2% = hilo milk
3.25% = whole milk
half & half = half milk and half cream
coffee cream = revolting

If you're starting to feel comfortable with all of that, hold on! Before you can purchase milk, you have one more decision to make. Would you like your milk in a carton, or a BAG? That's right, in Canada you can buy milk in plastic bags! You get three individual one-litre plastic bags inside another bigger bag with the milk label on the front. Then you buy a plastic milk jug which fits one of the smaller bags, so you can pour your milk easily. We tried this once for fun, but I can't say I'm a fan as it ends up being a bit messy. Oddly enough, sugar comes in a 1L paper milk carton. Who knew?

Now that I've blown your mind with milk, let's talk cheese.

Fortunately for us, we live very close to the St Lawrence Market, which has a great selection of real cheeses (amongst many other delicious things), so we're spoilt for choice. However, when you buy cheese from the supermarket, the first thing you notice is that most of it is ORANGE. 

I came across this phenomenon in the US last year, so luckily I was prepared for the initial shock. In the picture below, you can see some normal looking blocks of cheese in the top shelf, followed by the severely jaundiced 'American cheese' below. Wikipedia tells me that in the US it cannot legally be named "cheese", but instead must be labelled as "processed cheese" or "cheese product". Yum!

Apparently the orange colour comes from dyes that are added in the cheese making process. This practice ensures a uniform colour of cheese throughout the year, despite the seasonal colour variation caused by the cows' changing diet of grass in summer and hay in winter. This makes sense to me, but I still find the strong orange colour completely unappetising. What do you think?