You Get Used To It

The drink is rotten milk (technically sour yoghurt, but that doesn't seem like a very strong distinction to me) with water, heavily salted and blocks of ice.  It is drunk with a communal ladle.  It is the traditional hot weather drink here, like iced tea in some places or gin&tonic in others.  It is also used to make restless children go to sleep and it seems to work for that.  I got very, very drowsy shortly after my first experience.

Which makes me wonder about fermented milk. I have read of fermented mare's milk in Mongolia and Yak milk in Tibet... does lactose ferment to alcohol?  What form of alcohol?  Surely not ethanol.  Is there a sharia decision on fermented milk?

It tasted awful, the first time.  Evidently, most Americans don't take to it and drinking a whole bowl was worth a lot of cultural points.

I'm starting to like it.  What originally tasted like salty rotten milk has come to taste more like liquid sourdough.  And this all reminds me of the aguardiente/chichu stories from Ecuador... another time, maybe.

One note- Al Siebert in "The Survivor Personality" wrote that the single strongest correlation in survivors, the one that almost all had in common (disaster survivors, death camp and POW survivors, violence survivors) is that they would eat anything, try any food- not just in survival situations.  Even as kids they weren't afraid to try new foods.  Picky eaters are doomed.  Good to know.

Just rambling- I'm a little written out (finished the first draft of Citizen's Guide a few days ago) and most of the things that really intrigue me right now must be held under the Cone of Silence(tm).