rampy

[TRex]

I've been meaning to suggest this a few times and keep forgetting, so this time I saved a tab on a browser as a reminder. One of the meanings of ramp is

An American plant, Allium tricoccum, related to the onion; a wild leek.

Back before farming was so industrialised, cow's milk in springtime would sometimes taste funny to me. My father would taste it and declare it 'a bit rampy', i.e. the cows had got into some of these ramps which would affect the flavour of the milk.

Of course, cows aren't allowed into open pastures these days so it doesn't happen. But I think rampy ought to be permitted.

[nineoaks]

Dear TRex,

I loved your story: the description of your father tasting the milk and declaring it 'a bit rampy.' It conjured for me a delightful image of the cows out in the field, serenely wandering through the grass in the unhurried manner of cows everywhere. Thanks so much for the mental breath of fresh air.

Best Wishes,

nineoaks

[yelnats]

Of course, cows aren't allowed into open pastures these days

Is there nowhere in the US (or Canada) where the cows go to pasture?

In Oz and NZ there are out all year, with supplementary feeding in winter from spring cut hay.

[TRex]

Alas, it is mostly small-time farms which still allow cows to pasture. Factory farming keeps the cows indoors in tight spaces, eating food with antibiotics, milked by machine. Very modern. 

[Dragonman]

I have to correct you T Rex...milking cows are not fed antibiotics.In the UK if milk contains any trace of antibiotic it will be rejected...you cannot make cheese out of milk containing antibiotics.

Dragonman

[TRex]

But cows are regularly fed antibiotics in the U.S.A.
Unfortunately.

[Alan W]

I always feel bad about rejecting a word suggestion that's years old. But I fear rampy is below the obscurity threshold.

I appreciate that your father used the word, TRex, but did anyone else ever use it? Actually I did find one example. The Serious Eats website has an Extra-Rampy Ramp Risotto Recipe. A related post on the same site, Ramp Week: How To Make The Rampiest Risotto, explains:

The great thing about ramps is that unlike, say, garlic, they can give you all that awesome sweet onion-y flavor without leaving your breath smelling like garlic.

I mean, they do leave your breath smelling like ramps, but that's a much finer, rarer thing to smell like. People will literally* want you to breathe into their face after eating a bowl full of this extra-ramp-y ramp risotto. I've tested it out on both my dogs and have the data to prove it.

*Not literally. Or figuratively, even. They will not want you breathing in their face at all.

But even this ramp enthusiast seems to betray an uncertainty about the legitimacy of the word rampy, writing it sometimes as ramp-y.

Rampy is not in any dictionary as far as I can see, and is used so rarely that it could be classed as a nonce word. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be adding it to our list.

[TRex]

Yhanks, Alan.

[birdy]

I've seen plenty of wild garlic while visiting friends in England - very pungent indeed to walk through an area filled with it. I hadn't realized it was different from (one of) the American plants called wild garlic, and I assume the early settlers weren't either, since the two species share both that name and the name ramsons.