My Dog is Chelsea

[NOTE: Part I is about why I believe that milk is good for you. Also, today I came across this great piece about why UHT pasteurization not only makes milk taste icky—which is why organic milk often have flavor additives—it may actually be bad for you. See also this post on how to buy healthy milk.]

This is why I love milk and eggs:

My pantry looks a lot like this list. I have jars and jars of food in there to practically last me months: at least three kinds of flour, two kinds of cornmeal, polenta, popcorn, rolled oats, quinoa, barley, two kinds of lentils, walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, peanuts, enough dried beans to feed all of Portland, cocoa powder, semisweet chocolate, honey, three types of sugar, wheat berries, jasmine rice, brown rice, arborio rice (no kitchen is complete without arborio rice!), bulgar, pasta of all shapes. Et cetera.

But no matter, if I’m out of milk and eggs, I feel like I have no food.

With eggs, in particular, the food in my pantry can be transformed. I can make almost anything (as long as I also have a source of fat, of course): cakes, quick breads, pancakes, cookies, sauces. Not to mention fried eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, soft-boiled eggs, omelets, quiches and frittatas.

As far as I’m concerned, the egg is magical. It is a perfect chameleon: it’s an emulsifier, a thickener, a leavening agent, a whole protein. You can separate it into two parts, each with their own specific purpose in baking and cooking. With an egg, you can bread your fish, blend your salad dressing, bind your homemade veggie burger, rise your flourless chocolate cake.

(And look—there’s a reason most vegan baked goods pale in comparison to their lacto-ovo counterparts. It’s not the lack of dairy that makes the difference—it’s the missing eggs. I promise you that. You can substitute melted butter with canola oil in many recipes, but egg? Cornstarch-based egg replacer is just not the same. Though I do have a vegan blueberry muffin recipe that uses apple sauce and it is delicious.)

So eggs are practical and delicious and…
…they are also good for you, despite the cholesterol scare of a few years ago (remember egg white omelets? Yeah.). And it’s worth eating the whole thing—though the egg yolks contain all of the cholesterol in the egg, they also contain the vast majority of the nutrients, including fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids. A single egg also contains 6 grams of protein and only 5 grams of fat and 75 calories. That’s pretty freaking amazing.

Even the American Heart Association has dialed back its stance on egg yolk, saying now that one egg a day is OK if you don’t follow it up with a bug hunk of steak. (They recommend people with normal levels of bad cholesterol stay below 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day; an egg has 213.).

Though I can hardly say that I limit myself to an egg a day.

And, frankly, I prefer my eggs with a side of bacon.

Now THAT is the perfect meal.