Making Milk Drinkable

I'm not a moo juice drinker. The taste hasn't appealed since...well, puberty, come to think of it...and I have trouble digesting it. I can eat aged cheeses just fine because the lactose is mostly eroded during the aging process. Yogurt can go either way. However, in the interest of eating a lower-fat diet, I've been feeling the pressure to try--just try!--to drink some low-fat milk.

The vegetarian temple cooking of India reveres milk, which, I presume, is likely why Hindus revere cows. I was thumbing through the back of my Vedic cooking Bible when I noticed a section on menu planning by season. The tome suggested enjoying a hot milk drink, like cardamom milk, with breakfast on winter mornings.

Cardamom milk. That sounded good.

I turned to the recipe, finding it embedded in a generous collection of recipes for hot milk drinks, all of which sounded good. I made the cardamom milk, admittedly a little bit of a project for someone half-awake, and drank it with breakfast yesterday. It was Absolutely Delicious--creamy, warm, slightly sweet, gently spiced, hint of coconut. It was also, rather to my surprise, a cinch to digest. I attribute this to the cooking of the milk, which perhaps breaks down some of the difficult components, and the addition of cardamom, a spice that aids in digestion.

This morning: hot banana-nutmeg milk!

UPDATE: The banana-nutmeg milk is sort of like drinking banana bread, or like banana eggnog. I prefer the cardamom-laced stuff, but this is tasty.