Rita Howell
News Editor
There we stood, staring through the glass door in the dairy section, searching in vain for Meadow Gold buttermilk.
The shelf had been empty on Saturday when Rupert did our grocery shopping. Surely by Monday afternoon, they’d be resupplied.
Beside me stood a boy, about 12, also searching for Meadow Gold buttermilk.
“My daddy’s gonna be mad if they don’t have it,” he said.
We accosted a stocker who sought the manager to see when more would be arriving.
“It’s been discontinued,” the manager said.
“Aaaaaaaagh,” I said.
“My daddy’s gonna be mad,” the boy said.
Let me be clear. I have never had any buttermilk as good as Meadow Gold Old Style Ultra Rich Cultured Whole Milk Buttermilk.
You can have your Bulgarian, Belgian, low fat, or fat free. I want all the fat I can get. In my buttermilk.
Not always have I been a consumer of buttermilk.
Daddy drank it when I was growing up, but my mother, sister and I never touched it.
“Yuck,” I said one day when Dr. Edward Steward suggested that I drink it, just a small glass every day.
His reasoning was sound. He’d just prescribed an antibiotic for me, and he knew that buttermilk would replace some of the good stuff that antibiotics kill as they attack the bad bugs. It would balance things, support overall good health.
“Don’t get the low fat kind, or the Bulgarian,” he cautioned. “Get the good stuff. Meadow Gold.”
He told me where to get it, the only store in town that carried it.
I bought it and proceeded to follow his advice. It smelled awful and tasted worse. I held my nose and drank a fourth of a cup.
Buttermilk is an acquired taste.
Eventually I didn’t have to hold my nose anymore. I began to really like the buttery creaminess, and look forward to a glass each morning.
Since then there has always been a gold and red carton of my chosen beverage in my refrigerator.
Until this week.
In desperation I tried what I knew would be an inferior product. It was. I will save it and use it to make cornbread, but I won’t drink it.
In an effort to get to the bottom of my dairy dilemma, I researched Meadow Gold on the Internet. The company has dairies in seven states. Colorado was the first listed, so I called the Englewood, Colo., production facility to inquire what the heck happened to my buttermilk.
The nice operator put me in touch with Sal in sales. I told him my saga. Turns out it hasn’t been discontinued, just renamed and repackaged. “Dairy Pure Old Style Buttermilk” comes in a blue and yellow carton.
But the manager at my grocery store gave me no hope of such a replacement.
“Do you still have the Meadow Gold carton?” Sal asked in a subsequent call. “It has a five-digit number on it that tells where it came from.”
I went home and dug it out of the garbage and called Sal back.
Turns out my buttermilk came from a dairy in Nashville.
“If your store could get Meadow Gold, they should be able to get the new one,” Sal told me.
I’m counting on it. I’ve realized this is a health issue.
I could come down with the plague tonight, but for years now I seem to have been inordinately healthy. I don’t want to mess with my buttermilk regimen.
In fact, I am convinced that Dr. Steward, after having spread among his patients the gospel of buttermilk (and that other Gospel, too, by the way) actually prescribed himself out of a job.
I had not needed his services in years. One day I walked by his Batesville office and noticed that he’d closed up shop and moved to DeSoto County, where apparently there are sickly people who don’t yet believe in buttermilk.