Tag Archives: cheese making

Lunch at the End of the Line: Cheese Making at the Edge of the Continent

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The ladies of the Qualicum Cheeseworks on Vancouver Island are gushers.

As the momma cows trudged out of the field into the barn, each udder, roughly the size of the plastic bladder inside a Costco box o’ wine, swung to and fro.  I’d been petting the new calves just a minute before, and they were charming, all nuzzle’y with dewy black eyes.  Their mommas were not.  They were massive and slobbery and their black eyes were more dull than dewy.

The crammed against each other at the base of a ramp, knew their routine, were probably eager for the relief of the milking room beyond the door at the top of the slope.  When the young man opened the door to that room—a 25’ X 25’ collection of gates and  hoses and foot-tall glass containers shaped like medicine capsules—ten mommas at a time eagerly waddled in, took their standard places at their individual feed troughs, and proceeded to thoroughly destroy the mix of oats, molasses, barley, and wheat that poured out of from chutes above. Continue reading →

Cheese-Making Part II: a Bowline, some Brine, and Abruzzese

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Cheese is without a doubt my favorite food, so I was psyched when Shannon took us to the cheese-making class.  Shannon listed her take-aways yesterday, but she overlooked a few things.

  1. Cheese (according to our teacher, whose expertise, while genuine, seemed possibly inflated) predates recorded history.  The first written record is in Egyptian Hieroglyphics and recounts a traveler who filled his drinking pouch, made of animal intestine, with milk.  The jostling on his journey, combined with the rennet living in the intestines, produced curd.  Patrick declares that such an individual had to be male because only a male would simply chug milk without sniffing it and only a male would, after tasting something rather questionable, immediately seek out his friends and force it upon them.
  2. The Arabic word for cheese is “mish.”  The Arabic word for apricot is “mish mish.”  The etymology involved here intrigues the hell out of me.  It makes me think of English Wensleydale all stuffed with dried fruits.
  3. Mozzarella, when newly made and still wet, is shockingly easy to tie in knots. I’m

    The bowline, as you might remember from your BSA Field Guide, is useful because while under a heavy load it neither slips nor binds.

    talking you can tie a loop and freely pull each end in opposite directions and the cheese slides together as easily as any kind of modern rope made of pulp and plastic fibers.  Here, I have demonstrated this fact by tying a bowline, one of the classic Boy Scout knots.  Yeah, man, I still know that stuff. Continue reading →