Blackstrap Molasses

Dateline: 8 June 2006

I was on my hands and knees weeding around my garlic yesterday evening and James came walking out of the house towards me with a glass of some sort of beverage in his hand. It looked like—and I hoped it was—a glass of iced tea for me.

As he got closer, I asked him what he had. He told me it was milk with molasses. That didn’t sound very appealing to me, especially since I was expecting iced tea.

“Here. Try it. It’s good.” he said to me as he held the drink out. I took a tentative sip. It wasn’t bad. So I quaffed down some more. Seeing that, James quickly reached out to save what remained in the glass.

“I thought you brought it for me.” I said, just a little disappointed.

“I just wanted you to try it.” he said as he walked back to the house.

“How’d you come up with that idea?” I asked after him.

“I dunno.” he replied.

I grew up putting stuff like Ovaltine and Nestle’s Quick chocolate mix in my pasteurized, homogenized, store-bought milk. My son is putting unsulphered blackstrap molasses in raw milk from Esther Thornton’s cow. What a contrast.

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I did a little research on blackstrap molasses. It is what’s left after the third boiling of sugar cane when it is refined into crystallized white sugar. White sugar is downright bad for you but blackstrap molasses (unsulphered) is downright good for you. In fact, it’s considered something of a health food because it is packed with iron, calcium, copper, manganese, potassium, magnesium, and even selenium. You can get organic unsulphered molasses, which would be even better.

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It’s interesting to note that molasses (imported from the Caribbean) was a common & popular sweetener in the U.S. until the late 1800’s. These days, most of it goes into animal feed. Isn’t it ironic that we humans feed cattle the mineral-rich blackstrap while we consume the sugar, which has no nutritive value at all!