But, it hasn’t been that long ago that I heard my mother say, “Ugh, this milk is blinky,” after taste-testing the quality of the favorite beverage of my youth.
Okay, it has been that long ago. Mom’s been dead twenty-years, and it’s been a lot longer than that since I was a youth.
Yesterday, blinky resurfaced. I have tried to identify something I ate Saturday that would have made me sick. For the most part, others ate the same things I ate, except for the milk. Within a half-hour after eating a bowl of frosted flakes and milk (about two hours after dining), while enjoying a cup of coffee, I was no longer well. The indigestion I was experiencing worsened and my chewable Gaviscon tablets didn’t help.
Starting around midnight and lasting until after 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning, I stuck my face in the commode three times, trying to remove the last remaining contents of my stomach. It was not a pretty sight, and it was certainly not a pretty sound. My torso remains sore, even now, from the wretchedness I put it through.
Last night, I thought I’d treat myself to another bowl of frosted flakes and milk. The first spoonful had a flavor similar to that of raisin bran or grape nuts. My first thought was the cereal might have picked up a smell from the pantry, but there were no fruits in the pantry. A second tasting assured me something was wrong and that the sugared cereal might be camouflaging the problem.
Having emptied the milk container into my cereal, I dug the container out of the garbage to check the date. It was good through Monday. I removed the cap and smelled the inside of the container. It was beyond the blinky stage, though it may have been blinky two nights before when I was sick.
Earlier in the week, in an effort to consolidate shopping trips, I had bought a food item at Wal-Mart instead of swinging by the local Piggly Wiggly as I would normally have done. That food item was Great Value 2% Milk. Whenever, I buy 2% milk at the “Pig,” I can count on it being drinkable at least a week beyond the expiration date. Apparently Wal-Mart and the “Pig” use different suppliers.
Needless to say, the bowl of milk and cereal went down the garbage disposal unit. I believe the blinky milk was the source of my trouble, and I’m thankful my taste buds caught the bad milk before I ingested much of it. While I’ve not wanted to eat any more foods like I ate last Saturday, including coffee, I’m slowly working my way back to normalcy.
I don’t blame Wal-Mart for the bad milk, but I doubt I’ll purchase anymore milk at Wal-Mart even if would save me a trip to the grocery store. Anyway, today’s milk shouldn’t go blinky before its expiration date.
