Swedish Milk Cartons (and, sour milk!)

Swedish milk cartons have perplexed me for awhile now. Thanks to a helpful warning from my international buddy, I avoided the typical foreigner mistake of buying sour milk instead of regular milk, unlike at least two of the exchange students I know, but that didn't help with actually opening the milk. Instead of jugs, milk comes in cardboard cartons here. It doesn't open quite as easily as the small cartons we had in middle school, though. It clearly has a dotted line along which to tear, and instructions saying to do so, but just following the directions yields no results. The first time I was struggling with it one of the Swedes entered the kitchen, and I asked her how to open the carton, and she did it for me, but tonight I had another carton, and I didn't remember how exactly she did it, if I ever knew to begin with.

So instead I had water with dinner, and then turned to the Internet for help. Fortunately I found a post explaining exactly how to open the cartons. At least I hadn't tried opening the cartons with a knife like the author of that post, although I had considered scissors. Following these more complete instructions, I was successful! It does seem kind of like the carton might explode while opening it, but I lost little milk when the carton did open. Hopefully by the end of the semester I'll be a pro!

I'd imagine you're probably wondering why they sell sour milk in the store, so I'll explain that. Basically, it's not just that they sell spoiled regular milk as sour milk. I had sour milk at brunch a week and a half ago, and it's not the same thing. I don't know quite what is different, though. It isn't meant to be drank by itself, though - I had it with cereal at V-Dala's brunch, and I've heard it's also not bad with cinnamon and brown sugar, and I'm sure there are more uses. Unfortunately for foreigners, it's sold right alongside the regular milk in the stores, in the same sized cardboard cartons, and with "mjölk" in the name, just like regular milk. But sour milk is "fillmjölk". I buy "mellanmjölk", which is 1.5% milk. So it's not hard to see why someone who doesn't know Swedish might think "fillmjölk" is fat-free milk, or something like that. At any rate, it wasn't that bad with cereal - much better than spoiled milk would have been, but I don't plan to drink it by itself anytime soon.