Milk

Milk in a bag. Apparently it’s a Canadian thing- or at least an Ottawan thing. They don’t sell milk in hard plastic jugs but in flexible plastic bags. Something about it being cheaper to change the size when the switched to the Metric System in the 70's. You can read all about it here.

All I know is, it seems quite strange. How do you store all of those milk bags? Are you supposed to just by them one at a time? If that's the case I'd be at the store at least twice a day with all the milk our boys go through.

Apparently there is a technique to bagged milk. You can't just go pouring a flexible bag of milk without it or you could end up with something like this on your counter:

Milk with a dash of Tea

After the above happened a few times I finally researched how to go about pouring bagged milk without it resulting in gigantic spills. Here's what I found: 

First you have to put the bag of milk into a pitcher specifically made for this purpose. Then you bang it down. If you don't there could be air trapped at the bottom and you end up with a milk spill. Next you cut off one of the corners, not too big, not too small. After that you have to make a small cut on the opposite corner. I have found that this step is crucial for avoiding major spills. Even still if it's a fresh bag you may have to hold it taught so it doesn't flop as you pour the first bit. It seems there's an entire art form as to how to pour milk from a bag. And I would have never known this had we not moved to Ottawa. I'm sure once we're back in the states I'll miss this quirky trait of our new town, but for now it's still a bit weird.