A countryside breakfast: Mon petit déjeuner avec du lait

I drank coffee with milk at breakfast.

Perhaps, this seems like a small and unimportant fact to you. But for me it was a big deal.

I’m lactose intolerant. This isn’t a disaster, but means that if I want to drink coffee with milk I need to first take a lactase tablet. Lactase is the enzyme which my body no longer naturally produces. On a typical morning, I drink my coffee black and eat my toast without butter. I save my lactase tablets for occasionally eating bread and cheese, which, as this is France, accompanies both lunch and supper, or for eating any other food involving milk, such as a creamy coffee éclair from the bakery. For me, drinking coffee with milk for breakfast is a special treat.

Just before dinner, the night before, we went to the dairy farm. I said ‘hello’ to the cows and ‘bonjour’ to the dairy farmer, a friendly young man with a dark green apron. It was milking hour so the farmer was already quite busy. He took our milk pails and tapped off the fresh milk which was coming straight from the cows.

I was as excited as the three year old grandson who saw a red tractor. He really likes tractors.

When we arrived home, Grand-mère poured the milk into a huge saucepan and slowly heated it to the point where it expands to fill the pan. Very nervously, I watched over it. My instruction to shout when something happened. Just as it hit boiling, Grand-mère switched off the heat, put on the lid, and left it overnight to cool – this was my brief lesson in pasteurisation. By morning, the cream had risen to the top, ready to be scooped off into a separate jug.

And so I chose to drink milk with my coffee for breakfast, and it was heavenly.

farmfood