In line to be milked

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Finally, some animals for Camera Critters meme.

Cows (many!)  walking into the milking parlor at the kibbutz in central Israel where I picked olives a few weeks ago.
Enlarge the photo and see one cow facing the wrong direction.
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Sign I once saw on a milk truck in America: "Everything we have we owe to udders."
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The land of milk and money

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Doesn't milk in a bag make you think of milk in an udder? 

Israeli consumers are being milked as the price of milk keeps going up.
A 1-liter bag of milk costs 5.30 shekels.*
At today's exchange rate that is $1.46.
Milk and some other basic dairy foods are under price regulation.

Bagged milk is put into its container, a corner is snipped off, and it's ready to pour.

However, the little choco bags have historically been opened by tearing off a little corner with your teeth and squeezing the sweet cold chocolate milk into your mouth.
When a kid can do that without getting choco stains all over his clothes, it is like an Israeli rite of passage.

We DO also have milk in cartons, but bags are cheaper and the milk tastes just as good.

I made aliyah to Israel in 1968 and remember the milk still came in glass bottles and was delivered to your doorstep,  but the bottles soon gave way to bags.
I blogged before about this, back in 2008 , when the prices were much lower.
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*UPDATE Oct. 2017:  Milk prices are lower now, at 5 shekels per one-liter bag.  Today that is $1.42 in American money.
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The land of milk and honey

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Israel is a leading dairy production country.
Glass milk bottles went out of use about 1960.
Now we have plastic bags.
In larger stores you can find a few cartons for sale but they are more expensive than bags.
Only the milk in bags is price-controlled.


A liter of bag milk costs 4.68 shekels.
At today's exchange rate (it changes everyday), that would be US$1.27.
The blue bag in its holder  is 3% fat, and the red is 1%.
 I go through almost a bag a day, the milk is so good!
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