Such a little flower with so many names

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I call it Dog Tooth Lily (Erythronium americanum), but you may call it Yellow Trout-Lily, or simply Trout-Lily, or Dog’s-Tooth Violet, or Eastern Trout-Lily, or Yellow Adder’s Tongue, or Adder’s Tongue, or  Fawn Lily, or Thousand Leaf, or Deer Tongue, or Yellow Snowdrop, or Yellow Adder’s Tongue Lily, or perhaps Yellow Fawn Lily. Nevertheless, it’s simply one of those beautiful flowers that screams “SPRING is here” while you are walking in the woods. dog tooth lily leaves only

There are perfectly good reasons for all those names. If you’re like me and love hiking in the woods, observing the daily changes, at first you see all these little single leaves that appear on the forest floor (ergo Thousand Leaf name). Each day, they get fuller and the green leaves start to develop brownish contrasting pigment that resembles the marking of a Brook Trout, a deer’s tongue or the camouflage coat of a fawn. On the other hand, perhaps another reason to associate it with Trout is that they start to appear the same time as trout season.  Adder’s tongue refers to the appearance of the emerging stamens of the flower, protruding like the tongue of a snake.

The name “dogtooth” refers to the tooth-like shape of the white underground bulb known as a corm, which looks like a dog’s canine tooth. The corms are edible raw and apparently taste like cucumber. This plant is not a violet nor related to violets, so why the name? Well, it’s simple guilt by association ~ since the leaves emerge in the spring at about the same time as the violet, the silly association was made.

Regardless of the name ~ it’s a welcome sight on hike through the woods.dog tooth flower

 

I like milk

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Yes, I like milk, more specifically cow’s milk. I do enjoy goat’s milk from time to time but I drink cow’s milk on a regular basis. There are people out there that feel humans are not designed to drink another animal’s milk, because it is created to nourish a specific baby animal. Nonetheless, I enjoy it and have never noticed any negative effects.

Okay, now I made my declaration – but what type of milk do I buy? I prefer whole milk. Why whole milk? I believe the world’s healthiest foods are whole foods — foods that have not been processed. The nutrients in whole foods have a natural synergy with one another — that is, they work best in and are most beneficial to the body when they are taken together. Therefore, when you pull some or all of the fat out of milk, you throw its nutritional profile out of whack. Basically, you discard some of the health benefits when you discard the fat.

I used to buy local organic raw milk in glass jars. This made the most sense to me; cows were fed a healthy diet, so there was no antibiotics, no rBST hormones, no heat that would kill the nutritional content in the milk, no BPA from the plastic leaching into the milk.  Another benefit to glass containers is that they tend to keep the milk fresher longer by the nature of a tighter seal and glass holds in the cold better. Unfortunately, Mathew stopped drinking it because there was too much cream in the milk. I tried skimming it off, but that was not good enough for him. I do not push Mathew to drink milk because I think he gets his protein, calcium and fat from other foods. Nonetheless, I know milk compliments a healthy diet. Therefore, when I needed to find another milk, three factors were important to me: local, no rBST hormones, and glass containers. Antibiotics are not an issue with milk, because it is tested and the farmers cannot sell milk from cows whose milk contains antibiotics.  I would love it if organic played a role in my decision, but to buy a local organic milk, I would have to eliminate one of my other three needs. Maybe you’ll have better luck in your area. Luckily, I do have a local distributor – Byrne Dairy. They sell their milk in a reusable glass bottle and do not give their cows rBST and get their milk from local dairies.

When shopping we have many choices. These are my choices, what are yours?