Having powdered milk by itself was pretty bad, but my mom would make it half and half. As I got older when someone would say "half and half" I wouldn't think "cream."
One memory I have is sneaking into the frig at night and taking a couple huge swigs of whole milk.
Worse was breakfasts of powdered milk on puffed rice cereal and no sugar allowed. The plain bagged puffed rice cereal with zero taste, not the one with the cute honey bear on the box. Don’t know why, but at age 7 we had a box of Carnation Instant Breakfast That was a good week! The vanilla didn’t cover up the powdered milk taste but the chocolate and strawberry sure did help. Sophomore year in high school, mother started to buy grocery store milk - Lucianne brand 49 cents a quart but guess she said something because shortly after was when the neighbor started supplying the real cow milk. Funny the things we remember.