Speaker 1: So just to heads up, as with Part one, we're
Speaker 1: discussing dairy and we also make acknowledgments of animal rights concerns,
Speaker 1: and this week we discuss a bunch of vegan options
Speaker 1: in more depth to and this wonderful Cheese Experts focus
Speaker 1: isn't dairy farming as an industry, but rather the process
Speaker 1: of cheesemaking. And also in the future we have a
Speaker 1: plant based diet episode coming up, so enjoy. Oh hey,
Speaker 1: it's once again the monster who returns emails at four
Speaker 1: pm on a Friday. Sorry everyone, still ali ward, This
Speaker 1: is cheese. This is part two. So if you have
Speaker 1: come here first, you skip part one. I just simply
Speaker 1: cannot abide because you will get to know our esteemed
Speaker 1: guest and you will know cheese from a foundational level.
Speaker 1: So start there. Start a Part one. That's the beginning,
Speaker 1: that's how things go. Now in a moment, we're going
Speaker 1: to get to Part two, which is just wall to
Speaker 1: wall listener questions and weirder and creepier, tastier, gorgeous facts
Speaker 1: about things like cows on boats and vegan options for cheese.
Speaker 1: The most violent way to enjoy cheese, The Great Grilled
Speaker 1: Cheese sandwich debate, how to craft some curds at home.
Speaker 1: We talk about cheese pricing, squeakycurds, the Moon's composition, the
Speaker 1: ultimate charcuterie board. We also talk holes, crystals, maggots, oh my.
Speaker 1: But first, thank you to pay Trends via Patreon dot
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Speaker 1: everyone who's out there wearing ologies merch out in the
Speaker 1: wild so you can find each other. You can get
Speaker 1: it at ologiesmarch dot com for no dollars. Thank you
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Speaker 1: then as proof I highlight a fresh one, such as
Speaker 1: this one this week from ekwo four, who wrote that
Speaker 1: this podcast is smart, hilarious, weirdly comforting, and one hundred
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Speaker 1: what do you mean there's a live stream of a
Speaker 1: rattlesnake ten ten out of ten ekw zero zero four,
Speaker 1: thanks for that from me and from the Rattlesnakes. Enjoy
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Speaker 2: You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club
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Speaker 4: You're on the bus an hour from home in bumper
Speaker 4: to bumper traffic creeping forward a few inches at a time.
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Speaker 1: Okay, Onto Phromology Part two. Illegal Cheeses, The pasteurization conundrum.
Speaker 1: How to properly store cheese orange versus white cheddar WHDe
Speaker 1: cheese changes your brain chemistry and so much more. And
Speaker 1: heads up when you hear this guest say, great question.
Speaker 1: Just feel free to do a tiny imperceptible dance where
Speaker 1: you can take a sip of whatever beverage you've got
Speaker 1: going on Celebrated.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of.
Speaker 1: Really stellar answers to great questions with this professional food educator,
Speaker 1: certified cheese professional, and phromologists Kira Is James. Can I
Speaker 1: do a lightning round of listener questions?
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: The most questions we've ever gotten on any episode.
Speaker 5: That's awesome. People love cheese.
Speaker 1: They love cheese, and they have questions.
Speaker 5: My name is Ronnie.
Speaker 6: I live in LA and I was wondering what the
Speaker 6: deal is with the cheese that has the bugs in it.
Speaker 6: So if you could let me know why the cheese
Speaker 6: has bugs in it, that would be really great.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ronnie, thank you. You're not alone because her
Speaker 1: ladyship gen Doctor Lina Carpenter TV thirty three, Dory Baggat's husband,
Speaker 1: Seth dig Haley Kirby, Ingve Sylvia Treverio, Spencer Aldridge, and
Speaker 1: Mouse Paxton, who says, I'll try most things, but that's
Speaker 1: just too much for me. So that's a cheese. Even
Speaker 1: a mouse won't fuck with what is happening? And Ronnie
Speaker 1: not Ronnie pardon? So Ronnie and other folks want to
Speaker 1: know what's with the mite cheese? What's with the maggot cheese?
Speaker 1: What's happening?
Speaker 5: Yes, so maggot cheese is called katsu martsu.
Speaker 1: It means putrid cheese, and it's illegal from Sardinia.
Speaker 5: And what they're basically doing, it's not sold anywhere they
Speaker 5: make the cheese, but it's no longer allowed to be sold,
Speaker 5: but they're making the cheese the same way traditionally, and
Speaker 5: what they do is they leave the cheese out, so
Speaker 5: they go through the make process, they go through the
Speaker 5: aging process, and then the wheel of cheese is sit
Speaker 5: out on a counter and they basically allow a certain
Speaker 5: breed of flies to lay their eggs on the cheese
Speaker 5: and then the larvae eat away at the cheese and
Speaker 5: excrete afterwards. Oh and so that sort of process creates
Speaker 5: a certain texture and flavor profile that's very very specific
Speaker 5: and very very unique, but very well known also. So yes,
Speaker 5: I've never had it, but I've learned a lot about
Speaker 5: it just because people do often ask about it. So
Speaker 5: great question. Yeah, but it's the larvae that so it's
Speaker 5: not necessarily maggots, but it's the larvae that are consuming
Speaker 5: the cheese and creating the super supple texture.
Speaker 1: Does that leave holes in the cheese like little burrows?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's holes in the next sterior of the cheese because
Speaker 5: they're burring into the paste of the cheese. So there
Speaker 5: are definitely holes on the outside.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yes, this is a sheep's cheese. It's a peccerino,
Speaker 1: if you remember from part one, and it's infested with
Speaker 1: Piophilia case I or the cheese skipper also known as
Speaker 1: a ham skipper, and I'm gonna let you guess why.
Speaker 1: They also call it a ham skipper, so it likes ham.
Speaker 1: And some folks they smear this cheese while it's still wriggling,
Speaker 1: right on a piece of bread, and then the party
Speaker 1: just rages on down the hatch. And apparently, if the
Speaker 1: maggots are not still alive, it's not safe to eat.
Speaker 1: If the maggets are alive, it's also not safe to eat.
Speaker 1: But that's not the point. And I started with this
Speaker 1: cursory wiki search, but what I found on Wikipedia was
Speaker 1: so simple and so delicious, I'd like to serve you
Speaker 1: up some excerpts verbatim, okay quote. Some who eat the
Speaker 1: cheese prefer not to ingest the maggots. Those who do
Speaker 1: not wish to eat them place the cheese in a
Speaker 1: sealed paper bag. The maggots starved for oxygen, writhe, and
Speaker 1: jump in the bag, creating a pitter petter sound. When
Speaker 1: the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese
Speaker 1: can be eaten. Wikipedia continues. Because the larvae in the
Speaker 1: cheese can launch themselves distances of up to fifteen centimeters
Speaker 1: or six inches. When disturbed, diners hold their hands above
Speaker 1: the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping now. Additionally,
Speaker 1: the Guinness Book of World Records, which named Katzmartu as
Speaker 1: the most dangerous cheese in the world, notes that if
Speaker 1: you eat the maggots and they survive your teeth and
Speaker 1: your stomach, you could be rewarded with things like intestine
Speaker 1: allegiance and new wormy roommates. Down there, you can also
Speaker 1: enjoy vomiting, itchy butt and bloody diarrhea. Is it worth it? Apparently?
Speaker 1: It tastes intense, which is no surprise, also grassy, it's
Speaker 1: got a little spicy sting, and an aftertaste that I'm
Speaker 1: reading can last until the next day if you're lucky.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of bang for the buck. Now.
Speaker 1: In a twenty twenty one article in The Outline titled
Speaker 1: the Secret Resistance behind the World's most Dangerous Cheese, this
Speaker 1: article notes that if you go to Sardinia and you
Speaker 1: ask about this cheese, people will likely be annoyed because
Speaker 1: one is illegal, even though people still make and eat
Speaker 1: it there, and two because tourists ask about it all
Speaker 1: the time, probably like wanting to make a TikTok about it. Well,
Speaker 1: several people want to know. Jacob Stock, Matthew Walker, Storm Wickerbitch,
Speaker 1: Bonnie m Brutherbird, and Hendrix want to know, in Jacob's words,
Speaker 1: how do Swiss tree get its holes? Like, girl, is
Speaker 1: it breathing?
Speaker 5: Great question. They're actually called eyes and they're basically traps
Speaker 5: of gas. So during the fermentation process when the lactose
Speaker 5: is being turned into lactic acid in certain types of cheeses,
Speaker 5: there will be gas bubbles that are formed. They pop
Speaker 5: inside the cheese and that's what creates the holes inside
Speaker 5: the cheese. So it's actually the process of making cheese.
Speaker 5: Emmon Taller is one of the most famous ones. What
Speaker 5: we in America called Swiss cheese often is described as
Speaker 5: having holes in it. But that's the process of it,
Speaker 5: and it does create a certain flavor profile as well.
Speaker 5: It's not just random, it's very intentional.
Speaker 1: Okay, mntall is a proper way to address it.
Speaker 8: Though.
Speaker 5: Emmon Taller is one type of cheese it's becoming extinct
Speaker 5: in some ways, or trying to save the M and
Speaker 5: taller from going extinct. So it's definitely one that I
Speaker 5: call out very often. But It's just it's one that
Speaker 5: sort of when you see an image of a pe
Speaker 5: of cheese with holes in it, that's what it looks
Speaker 5: like to me.
Speaker 1: So there are many, many types of Swiss cheeses, but
Speaker 1: the holy, holy kind that you're imagining is yes, called
Speaker 1: an emmentaler. And according to the nineteen seventeen paper on
Speaker 1: the formation of eyes in emmental Cheese, there are three
Speaker 1: types of holes in this kind of Swiss cheese. The
Speaker 1: smallest are called Nisler holes, the eyes which are medium sized,
Speaker 1: and then there's the largest ones, called blow holes. And
Speaker 1: this nineteen seventeen paper stated very confidently that a rapid
Speaker 1: gas production makes the Nisler holes, and slower gas production
Speaker 1: must be responsible for the larger holes. Since the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen paper, scientists have known that the holes are caused
Speaker 1: by trapped gases. However, However, a couple decades ago, the
Speaker 1: holes started disappearing. What is this? Is this climate change?
Speaker 1: Is this unhappy cows? Did we go down the wrong
Speaker 1: path in a simulation? Is there some dark magic wielded
Speaker 1: by a lacked, intolerant warlock? What happened to the holes? Well,
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, some fresh knowledge bubbled of the surface
Speaker 1: in a paper titled Mechanism and Control of the Eye
Speaker 1: Formation in Cheese, and that reminded us that, yes, the
Speaker 1: ie formation in Swiss type cheese is mainly the result
Speaker 1: of acid fermentation, which creates a few substances including CO
Speaker 1: two gas bubbles. Now, usually formologists do these cheese ie
Speaker 1: exams by quote listening to the type of sound made
Speaker 1: while tapping with a special hammer on the surface of
Speaker 1: the cheese loaf. This study, however, this twenty fifteen study
Speaker 1: used ultrasounds and other medical imaging equipment to find out
Speaker 1: what causes the quantity and the size of the bubbles,
Speaker 1: and they found out its trace amounts of hay in
Speaker 1: the milk. So the eyes in m Intoller type cheeses
Speaker 1: were disappearing because the milk was being collected through more
Speaker 1: modern means, i e. Not someone in a sun dress
Speaker 1: in braids with an open pail, which would get specks
Speaker 1: of hay kind of dancing amid the way. So the
Speaker 1: paper concludes that it's likely that trace amounts of hay
Speaker 1: dust entering in raw milk have always been the natural
Speaker 1: source of the eye nuclei which trigger the start of
Speaker 1: eye formation in the cheese, and just recently this just
Speaker 1: was decided. There was all this fierce debate from traditionalists
Speaker 1: and industrialists, and Switzerland has decided to allow the addition
Speaker 1: of hay flour powder to its cheeses. That way they
Speaker 1: can keep harvesting the milk with modern equipment, but also
Speaker 1: add a little hay dust in there to get the
Speaker 1: bubbles back. And it's also worth noting that the holes
Speaker 1: in this type of cheese for a long time were
Speaker 1: considered bad and unsightly. They were a bug and not
Speaker 1: a feature. But over the centuries, this holy look of
Speaker 1: ementol cheese became representative of all cheese itself. So remember
Speaker 1: when you see an emintolerches just serving with those stunning eyes,
Speaker 1: Remember that that was once seed is bad and now
Speaker 1: it's iconic. What's the emoji for cheese? Yeah, bitch the
Speaker 1: emin taller? Okay, dead ass. Side note, we have a
Speaker 1: two part episode all about how they decide on emochiese
Speaker 1: and it's called Curiology. And July seventeenth is World Emoji
Speaker 1: Day because the little calendar emoji says July seventeenth. We'll
Speaker 1: link that in the show notes. But let's take a
Speaker 1: quick detour from dusty buckets to cheese that needs no cows.
Speaker 1: Dozens and dozens if you wanted to know so many
Speaker 1: people I don't even know if I can list all
Speaker 1: their names. Asked about vegan cheese Jerry Brown, first time
Speaker 1: question asker. I wanted to know does nut cheese use
Speaker 1: the same bacteria as dairy cheese and is that technically cheese?
Speaker 1: Lauren Cooper, This is going to be a divisive question.
Speaker 1: I want to know why does vegan cheese suck so much?
Speaker 1: Other people think it's it's good. I'm myself a diet
Speaker 1: cheese I think that melts great. If you've got a
Speaker 1: vegan pizza with diet cheese, I'm all for it.
Speaker 5: So I've lots of thoughts on vegan cheese. It's tataga
Speaker 5: that we talk about in the industry in some way,
Speaker 5: shape or form a lot. But to me, vegan cheese
Speaker 5: is not cheese. Okay, I think it's a vegan product.
Speaker 5: I think vegan cheese product might be a better way
Speaker 5: to name it, but it's not the same as cheese.
Speaker 5: There are vegan cheeses that use the same microorganisms to
Speaker 5: create the final product. There are vegan cheeses that go
Speaker 5: through fermentation, well not fermentation exactly, but where you can
Speaker 5: actually have a rind on the cheese where you have
Speaker 5: certain flair profiles in the cheese. Like they have blue
Speaker 5: vegan cheese, they have cheddar vegan cheeses. They're adding certain
Speaker 5: things to those products that are the same exact ingredients
Speaker 5: that you'd add to cheese. So in that respect, they're
Speaker 5: very similar. But there's no milk, and so for me,
Speaker 5: without having dairy milk included, it's not a fermented milk products,
Speaker 5: so therefore it's not cheese.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry. I think that it's delicious. I eat
Speaker 5: vegetarian often, and I've had many of the vegan cheeses
Speaker 5: on the market, and there are a few that I
Speaker 5: actually would eat again. So I definitely have no shade
Speaker 5: to them. To me, they're not considered cheese. I would
Speaker 5: say that they're their own separate category and should be
Speaker 5: treated as such.
Speaker 1: Do you think that nut milks and vegan cheese should
Speaker 1: go buy something else like cheese or milk? Like? Do
Speaker 1: you think that we need a distinguishing name for them.
Speaker 5: I always think things should be able to stand on
Speaker 5: their own. I think that having its own allows for
Speaker 5: to create its own perceptions. When you put the word
Speaker 5: milk or cheese within the name of the product, people
Speaker 5: are going to automatically associate the two together. And so
Speaker 5: when you eat vegan cheese and it doesn't taste like cheese,
Speaker 5: people get upset because they're expecting it to taste like cheese,
Speaker 5: just like oat milk. When you have oat milk and
Speaker 5: it doesn't taste like regular milk, people are like, this
Speaker 5: is gross. And it's like, well, it's not supposed to
Speaker 5: be the same thing. It's own product. So I think
Speaker 5: we kind of do a disservice by naming these things
Speaker 5: and putting them in the same categories, because it doesn't
Speaker 5: allow that product to shine fully on its own.
Speaker 1: It's like calling a bike a car. They're different and
Speaker 1: they serve different functions.
Speaker 5: That's a good point, like that, yes.
Speaker 1: It's a bike, leader it alone exactly. So vegan cheeses
Speaker 1: tend to rely on starches and fats combined instead of
Speaker 1: protein in fats as animal dairy does. But in the
Speaker 1: last few years there have been more and more and
Speaker 1: more options for plant based cheese. So if you tried
Speaker 1: it years ago, give it another try, right, Now, someone
Speaker 1: in a lab coat out there maybe you're listening, is
Speaker 1: making nachos that you will love in the future. And
Speaker 1: that person is probably using the empirical Schreiber multability test,
Speaker 1: which is an actual thing which puts samples of cheese
Speaker 1: in an oven on a ringed Petrie dish to see
Speaker 1: just what kind of spread each cheese has. And yeah,
Speaker 1: for me personally, I find Dia cheese Daiya Dia cheese.
Speaker 1: Those tend to be the stretchiest, meltius gooiest. I prefer
Speaker 1: them over regular shredded cheeses. I think that they're better.
Speaker 1: But other favorite brands I've seen on plant based forums
Speaker 1: are Chow Creamery and one called Miokos Mazzarella, which is
Speaker 1: like a liquid. It comes in a bottle. I guess
Speaker 1: just trust the process. Violife is said to make a
Speaker 1: good fata cheese and for blue cheese crumbles. I've heard
Speaker 1: good things about Follow your Heart. Now, if you have
Speaker 1: some plant based friends, or maybe some vegan curious ones
Speaker 1: or anyone, maybe you could have like a byo VC
Speaker 1: bring your own vegan cheese pizza party so everyone brings
Speaker 1: one and then you can sample a lot without spending
Speaker 1: too much on any one particular one. But if you're like,
Speaker 1: take me back to the cows. This next topic was
Speaker 1: asked by Lisa Gorman and Taylor, among others. Many people
Speaker 1: had shuddar questions Abby, Alice Ruben, Meghan Walker, Rebecca first
Speaker 1: time question asker, and Rachel Glaza first time question asker
Speaker 1: wanted to know. Abby asked, I love sharp cheddar? What
Speaker 1: makes it and other similar cheeses sharp? And why is
Speaker 1: it so much better than mild cheeses? And Meghan Walker
Speaker 1: wanted to know why is so much cheddar orange?
Speaker 5: Great questions. So, the word sharp is a tough one, Okay,
Speaker 5: We in the industry don't use the words sharp very
Speaker 5: often to describe things because it's it can mean so
Speaker 5: many different things. But in America we do brand cheddars
Speaker 5: using the words sharp and extra sharp, and there are
Speaker 5: actually rules behind it. So to be a sharp cheese
Speaker 5: in America, it's aged between six and eight months, and
Speaker 5: then to be an extra sharp cheese an extra sharp cheddar,
Speaker 5: it's aged at least twelve months. So, in thinking about
Speaker 5: it from a cheesemonger perspective, the older the cheddar is,
Speaker 5: the stronger the flavor will be. So you have less
Speaker 5: moisture more acidity. So oftentimes sharpness is associated with being
Speaker 5: acidic or like you know, hitting the back of your
Speaker 5: throat kind of thing. So the older the cheddar is,
Speaker 5: the more sharpness or the more intensity you'll find it has.
Speaker 5: Now cheddars, if they're orange, they've been dyed with natural
Speaker 5: ingredient called a nato. A nato is a seed. It's
Speaker 5: similar to tumeric in some ways in that it provides
Speaker 5: a lot of color but not a lot of flavor
Speaker 5: to foods, and so when you add a nato to cheese,
Speaker 5: it creates the orange color without adding any flavor. A
Speaker 5: lot of times a nato was throughout history added to
Speaker 5: create distinctions between cheese types so that you can identify
Speaker 5: it as a certain cheese, like, oh, that's what you
Speaker 5: call it because it's orange. Other cheeses are dyed orange naturally,
Speaker 5: like a gouda will be a dark orange just because
Speaker 5: of time during the aging process, it'll actually get darker
Speaker 5: in color. So a lot of times the darkness is natural.
Speaker 5: Cheddars and goudhas specifically have a lot of yellow tones
Speaker 5: in them, and that comes from what the animals are eating.
Speaker 5: So the more grass and animal eats, the more yellow
Speaker 5: the cheese will be. Oh for cow and sheep smoke cheeses.
Speaker 5: So oftentimes if you see a dark yellow cheese, you
Speaker 5: know that the animal has been eating grass. So that's
Speaker 5: one another factor. But yeah, they're dyed orange using a
Speaker 5: nato seed.
Speaker 1: And so white cheddar is just that without the anato.
Speaker 5: Yes, exactly. And that was something that really blew my
Speaker 5: mind when I learned it, because when I was little,
Speaker 5: I only ate orange cheese. I ate. I hated white cheese.
Speaker 5: I thought it tasted I thought it tasted different, and
Speaker 5: so to hear it now, I'm like, oh, got that wrong.
Speaker 1: My dad was that way when they started labeling red
Speaker 1: licorice like red vines fat free. My dad was like,
Speaker 1: they don't taste the same, but they had always been,
Speaker 1: but they just started putting that on the label or
Speaker 1: like Dad, so like, I don't know, something's wrong with them.
Speaker 1: And it's like in your head, but that sharp, sharp cheese.
Speaker 1: I thought, this is a great question. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: get this a lot. Marcy and may of Olivia Meyers
Speaker 1: Sureley lose an Ombo. First time question asker Maya, Josh
Speaker 1: kent Ley, Rachel Guthrie Michael Newman, Kate Radford, Bradley Ludwig
Speaker 1: and Jordan Irons wanted to know the crystals. Rachel asked
Speaker 1: what are the crystals? And sharper and harder cheeses? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how old does it have to be? And Maya is
Speaker 1: a first time question asker and a Wisconsin cheesehead and
Speaker 1: they say they just had a delightful piece of age
Speaker 1: Guda and wondered what makes those magical little crystals? Why
Speaker 1: are they the most delicious?
Speaker 5: Great question? Yes, definitely get this one often. So they're
Speaker 5: not actual crystals. They're crystallized protein, oftentimes amino acid. So
Speaker 5: the most common one that you'll see inside the cheeses
Speaker 5: be called terraceine crystals. So as the cheese ages and
Speaker 5: again loses that moisture, things begin to break down in
Speaker 5: a different way. So it's actually a form of the
Speaker 5: proteins breaking down and separating into these crystallized pieces, and
Speaker 5: so they've become little crunchy bites in your cheese. They
Speaker 5: often taste saltier, but that's just the concentrated flavor of
Speaker 5: the proteins. There's also crystals sometimes on the x tiar
Speaker 5: of cheeses, like block cheddars, we'll often have what we
Speaker 5: call calcium lactate, which is an amino acid that is
Speaker 5: formed on the outside of cheddars that has a little
Speaker 5: bit of a crystallized texture as well that some people love,
Speaker 5: some people don't like. But you can always just scrape
Speaker 5: it off for the calcium lactatee. But to get crystals,
Speaker 5: I mean, the cheese has to be aged, you know,
Speaker 5: six months or so. If you're making an age guda,
Speaker 5: they probably will take a few more months to get
Speaker 5: two crystallized textures. But cheddars you might have some crystals
Speaker 5: in like at like six months to eight months.
Speaker 1: So if you see little crunchy crystals in the cheese
Speaker 1: that you just bought, don't worry. You are just blessed.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting to think that your cheese could be
Speaker 1: older than like a baby that's walking, you know, or
Speaker 1: something like that. That's nice. A lot of people Claire Gabbon, Mallory, Alb, Kayla,
Speaker 1: rhann In, Humani, Alice, Reuben, and Jordan wanted to know,
Speaker 1: in Claire's words, why do some cheese melt and become
Speaker 1: liquid like mozzarella and some hold their shape like haloomy.
Speaker 5: Great question, so it has to do with the moisture
Speaker 5: and the acidity of the cheese. So if it's higher
Speaker 5: in moisture and low in acidity, h that's sort of
Speaker 5: the sweet spot for melting cheese. So in terms of
Speaker 5: what that means for you, the person who doesn't know
Speaker 5: what moisture or cidity levels are in cheese, look for
Speaker 5: things that are at that sort of malleable texture, sort
Speaker 5: of wiggily or you can like bendable or appliable that
Speaker 5: are super hard are not going to have a lot
Speaker 5: of moisture in them, so they're going to take a
Speaker 5: lot longer to melt. And things with high acidity like
Speaker 5: Pinier Hallomi that are on the other end of the
Speaker 5: spectrum are not going to melt. Their proteins are sort
Speaker 5: of set up in a different way, so the proteins
Speaker 5: are a lot tighter together when they're high in acid,
Speaker 5: and so that the proteins don't want to melt. They're
Speaker 5: gonna want to stick together and keep that strong bond
Speaker 5: they have. So asking cheesemonger is the best recommendation I
Speaker 5: can give. But if you're at the store looking for
Speaker 5: cheeses that melt, well, look for things that are sort
Speaker 5: of semi firm, or that you can bend, or that
Speaker 5: you can sort of press your finger into. Those cheese
Speaker 5: will melt really well.
Speaker 1: And in Part one you may remember that we covered
Speaker 1: sodium citrate added to American cheese to make it meltier
Speaker 1: and to stabilize the proteins and fats. And as long
Speaker 1: as we're here, did you know that parmesan cheese powder?
Speaker 1: I just found this out, the kind that you shake
Speaker 1: over spaghetti leftovers, the one with like the green top.
Speaker 1: It's called parmesan because outside the EU you can just
Speaker 1: call whatever whatever, even though it's not pure parmesan. Also,
Speaker 1: check the back of that cheese powder and you will
Speaker 1: probably see the ingredient cellulose fiber, which is just wood pulp.
Speaker 1: They just add sawdust in there to prevent caking, but
Speaker 1: also they do it to sell you some sawdust because
Speaker 1: it's probably cheaper than cheese. Now, if that is the
Speaker 1: only parmesan cheese that you've ever had, you're me until
Speaker 1: my late twenties. But it turns out that Parmesano reggiano
Speaker 1: is the actual cheese. It's worth the crumble. But back
Speaker 1: to those softer, meltier cheeses. Hang on to your lactose tabs.
Speaker 1: For a very contentious question here, Alice Ruben and Jason
Speaker 1: Frere wanted to know. Jason asked, what cheese should I
Speaker 1: use for the best grilled cheese sandwich or in your
Speaker 1: mind if you had your perfect grilled cheese. This can
Speaker 1: be absolutely subjective from your perspective. Best grilled cheese. Is
Speaker 1: it a sour dough? Is it a wee bread? Is
Speaker 1: it a rye? What's your dream grilled cheese?
Speaker 5: Hm, I do love sour dough. I would probably say
Speaker 5: sour dough bread, and I would go to the Alps,
Speaker 5: so I would probably get some young Greair or a
Speaker 5: young Comte. Comte is made in France, similar recipe to Greer,
Speaker 5: but a little bit sweeter. It is also Fontina is
Speaker 5: a great melter, so it would be a mix of
Speaker 5: a few cheeses for sure. I like to have diversity
Speaker 5: in my grilled cheese, so a couple of different cheeses.
Speaker 5: I use butter. I know you can use like mayo
Speaker 5: or things for your ex tear, but I just use
Speaker 5: butter on the outside of the bread. And then yeah,
Speaker 5: that would probably be my ideal cheese. I like the
Speaker 5: nuttiness of Alpine cheeses. They're super nutty and they have
Speaker 5: some sweetness, so those would be my choices.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 1: Just a side note. So America's test kitchen did the
Speaker 1: legwork of making mayo and butter and for good measure,
Speaker 1: olive oil grilled cheeses and the results were essentially buttery.
Speaker 1: Butter one tasted the most buttery, but it was harder
Speaker 1: to spread when the butter was cold. Full fat mayo
Speaker 1: spread the easiest, but had an acidic tang from the
Speaker 1: lemon juice, and olive oil tasted too much like olive oil.
Speaker 1: So it seems that whatever you grill it with it
Speaker 1: will taste like that. So there's science. Alice Reuben again
Speaker 1: and David wanted to know. Alice asked, why doesn't my
Speaker 1: homemade mac and cheese taste cheesy? And David wanted to know.
Speaker 1: They've made a cheese sauce that tasted very grainy. Best
Speaker 1: way to make a good mac and cheese that tastes
Speaker 1: cheesy and not just milky.
Speaker 5: Less milk or less cream. I mean, just focus on
Speaker 5: the cheese, using that as your base instead of adding
Speaker 5: like I know in my world, my mom adds a
Speaker 5: lot of milk to her mac and cheese, instead of
Speaker 5: just making a cheese sauce of some kind and then
Speaker 5: adding that to the noodles. That would be the I
Speaker 5: think the best solution to making it cheesy and a
Speaker 5: nice cheese pull. Having a mixture of cheese is also
Speaker 5: having some that have more pungency, like things that might
Speaker 5: seem too strong for mac and cheese might be just
Speaker 5: the thing because when it melts, the enzymes and proteins
Speaker 5: are breaking down, so the flavor changes a bit, so
Speaker 5: it might not be as pungent once you melt it
Speaker 5: into the cheese. And then having something mild, so having
Speaker 5: something on the stronger side like an aged Alpine style cheese,
Speaker 5: and then having something softer, you know, like a mozzarella
Speaker 5: or something on that you know, super super creamy.
Speaker 1: So something pungent like an Alpine cheese plus something soft
Speaker 1: and creamy and milder. So this is a two pronged
Speaker 1: approach at least and use less milk. Think of making
Speaker 1: a cheese sauce so your noodles don't soak in a bath.
Speaker 1: Your noodles get a moisturizer of cheese, but.
Speaker 5: Then you can also add parmesan. I mean adding a
Speaker 5: little bit of parmesan. Parmesan melts really well, even though
Speaker 5: it's a hard cheese. Adding a crust with more cheese
Speaker 5: on it is something else that I would recommend, always
Speaker 5: having some kind of like bread crumb or cheesy crust.
Speaker 5: For the grainy question, that's definitely to do with the
Speaker 5: type of cheese that you used. If it wasn't that
Speaker 5: sort of high moisture, low acid that I mentioned. If
Speaker 5: it was a harder cheese, you might have a more
Speaker 5: granular texture once it melts, So that could be the
Speaker 5: reason why if the cheese was too aged or not
Speaker 5: enough moisture, that can make your cheese, your mac and
Speaker 5: cheese grainy.
Speaker 1: So use a softer cheese, less acid, less age when
Speaker 1: you're whipping up a mac and cheese, and then call me,
Speaker 1: invite me over, give me a bib and the castrole dish,
Speaker 1: and then leave me alone with it, no looking at me,
Speaker 1: no talking. What about as long as on the topic
Speaker 1: of homemade Brian Scott Earl of Gramu can zach ever ate?
Speaker 1: Carol Young and Christy Adventure wanted to know. So Carol asked,
Speaker 1: is there an easy way to make cheese at home,
Speaker 1: and how can I start doing that?
Speaker 5: So you can buy cheese making kits, which is what
Speaker 5: I would recommend to do just searching cheese making kits.
Speaker 5: So I think there's a few different companies that have
Speaker 5: high ratings and they give you all the instructions. They
Speaker 5: give you all the ingredients that you'll need, so you
Speaker 5: can just follow along and you can make mozzarella, you
Speaker 5: can make ricotta using rennet. But also to make a
Speaker 5: fresh cheese like a farmer's cheese, just like at home
Speaker 5: quick cheese. All you need is some lemon juice, like
Speaker 5: we mentioned in the beginning, and you can make cheese.
Speaker 5: So you'd heat the milk to a certain temperature, you'd
Speaker 5: add the lemon juice to it, and then it will separate,
Speaker 5: it'll make a gel, and then you have to cut
Speaker 5: the curds, cut the solid mass that it's become and
Speaker 5: then you drain out the way and you have fresh cheese.
Speaker 5: Ha done, yes, And then add salt of course.
Speaker 1: Lunar crumpet and the one and only Arni Schmidtz and
Speaker 1: Cedie vapon moon is made of cheese. Opinions. Do you
Speaker 1: get that question a lot?
Speaker 5: Not too often? I've heard it before about the moon
Speaker 5: being made of cheese, but from my knowledge, it is
Speaker 5: not made of cheese.
Speaker 1: There you go, So that's thank you for answering that
Speaker 1: my expert opinion.
Speaker 5: Yes, we actually.
Speaker 1: Did interview a moon expert, the planetary geologist and a selenologist,
Speaker 1: the wonderful Raquel Nuno. And I'm going to play you
Speaker 1: a clip from her episode because every time I see
Speaker 1: the moon, I freak out now because of her, Because
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 9: One of the cool things that I think when I
Speaker 9: think about the moon and the impact that caused it
Speaker 9: was there was so much energy that collected from that
Speaker 9: original impact that formed the moon that the entire moon
Speaker 9: was just a magma ocean. So that's yeah, just imagine
Speaker 9: the whole moon. No, just magma. Yeah, so that's what
Speaker 9: that's the prevailed theory, and we have evidence from that.
Speaker 9: So it's just lava. The whole thing is just.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the moon was a lava ocean. It
Speaker 1: was a lava ocean. Here we are thinking it's cheese,
Speaker 1: but at one point it was habanero. Okay, So Becky,
Speaker 1: this sassy seagrass scientist, and Hanna b and Sinclair want
Speaker 1: to know Becky asked any basic tips or guidelines for
Speaker 1: how to tell if a delicious cheese should be exorbitantly
Speaker 1: expensive or if Whole Foods is just fooling us all
Speaker 1: like bang for your buck, because cheese can get pricey, Yes,
Speaker 1: but especially if you don't know what to get.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 5: Tips, there are certain cheeses that will be more expensive overall,
Speaker 5: sheep's milk cheeses are often more expensive. She produce less
Speaker 5: milk for a less period of time, and there are
Speaker 5: just less sheep on the planet. So when you just
Speaker 5: think about the availability of the milk and process that
Speaker 5: takes to create the cheese, the labor, and all those
Speaker 5: things that can raise the price. So anything made up
Speaker 5: sheep smolk is oftentimes more expensive. And then things that
Speaker 5: are aged longer can be more expensive. So if they're
Speaker 5: over a year old, that means that for over a year,
Speaker 5: some human somewhere was taking care of this cheese, and
Speaker 5: that human needs to be paid for for the work
Speaker 5: and the stoaree to the cheese, So all those things
Speaker 5: will add up over time. Smaller producers will also probably
Speaker 5: be some of the more expensive cheeses. Now, if you
Speaker 5: don't know your producers, you might not know that Blakesvielle
Speaker 5: Creamery is a small producer out of Wisconsin, but it is,
Speaker 5: and so therefore the cheese might be a different price
Speaker 5: than sort of some other larger producers just because of
Speaker 5: how supply and demand works in that respect. So educating
Speaker 5: yourself on where the cheese is coming from, you know,
Speaker 5: doing a quick Google search on your phone. If you're like,
Speaker 5: well this seems really expensive, check it out. See if
Speaker 5: it's something that you're interested in learning more about and trying.
Speaker 5: And then quantity. Oftentimes people buy cheese with their eyes
Speaker 5: and not with the reality that you are you really
Speaker 5: gonna eat all that cheese, And so if you buy
Speaker 5: a big hunk of it, it's going to be more
Speaker 5: expensive than a small piece. You might be nervous to
Speaker 5: talk to a manger. But if there's only a huge
Speaker 5: piece of cheese and you want half of it, just
Speaker 5: ask them to cut it in half for you, and
Speaker 5: they should be able to do that for you.
Speaker 1: See, then you get fifty percent off because you only bought.
Speaker 3: Half as much cheese exactly.
Speaker 1: I think. Also when you understand what goes into it,
Speaker 1: then you're like, this is worth the price because this
Speaker 1: person had to baby this cheese, which is great context
Speaker 1: for really appreciating something of quality.
Speaker 5: Or maybe they only have like fifty animals and they
Speaker 5: have that small herd of animals and only make twenty
Speaker 5: wheels of cheese a week and that's all they sell.
Speaker 5: You know, that's going to add to it too.
Speaker 1: Right, And on that topic, totercic Leson wanted to know,
Speaker 1: so all those different flas that are in cheeses, where
Speaker 1: do they come from? Is it something that cheesemakers add?
Speaker 1: Is it wild yeasts? Is it milk from different kinds
Speaker 1: of cows, goats or sheep? Do the animals lend a
Speaker 1: lot of that flavor profile?
Speaker 5: Great question and the answer is yes, So what the type
Speaker 5: of animal that it is, what they're eating all will
Speaker 5: impact the flavor of the cheese. There are certain breeds
Speaker 5: of cows that have more fat in their milk, there
Speaker 5: are certain breeds of goats that have more protein. You know,
Speaker 5: there's different characteristics and different breeds and so depending on
Speaker 5: what type of cheese you're looking to make, the breed
Speaker 5: will add to that experience if they're being conscious of
Speaker 5: that sort of attribute of the cheese.
Speaker 1: And just a side note, the sweet looking kind of
Speaker 1: tawny cows and the alps that look way better in
Speaker 1: a flower crown than anyone at the red fair. They're
Speaker 1: most likely an older breed of a brown Swiss cow,
Speaker 1: and they make a fair amount of milk. It's high
Speaker 1: and fat in protein. They're great for rich alpine cheeses. Now,
Speaker 1: the patchy black and white dairy cow is a cross
Speaker 1: breed and it yielded way more milk than other types
Speaker 1: of cows, and it really rose to popularity. In the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds. There was a guy named Winthrop Chenery
Speaker 1: from Massachusetts and he heard that a ship had a
Speaker 1: cow on board so the sailors could have milk. And
Speaker 1: Winthrop was like, whatever that is, I want one of them.
Speaker 1: Give me one of them cows. And now when you
Speaker 1: drive past black and white bovines, you point in say cows.
Speaker 1: And some people asked about ethics and cheese. Stacy cow
Speaker 1: Sam both first time question askers wanted to know Stacy asked.
Speaker 1: When they were in grad school, they took a dairy class.
Speaker 1: They visited dairies around western Pennsylvania and they were shocked
Speaker 1: at the differences. Some allowed calves to stay with mom,
Speaker 1: some were immediately taken away. What's the best way in
Speaker 1: terms of an animal's experience to enjoy cheese? Is it
Speaker 1: different animals?
Speaker 5: Is it different producers that that's a great question. It
Speaker 5: goes into again the story behind the cheese and how
Speaker 5: it's being made. There are positives and negatives to both
Speaker 5: situations where the animal stays with the mom or the
Speaker 5: animal leaves for cheesemaking. And if you are an artisan,
Speaker 5: specially produced cheesemaker, you know, looking to the environment carrying
Speaker 5: by your animals, then you're not removing the animal from
Speaker 5: the mom. You're waiting till the animals done nursing, and
Speaker 5: then the moms still lactating. So cals specifically will lactate
Speaker 5: for a year, whereas the calves won't consume the milk
Speaker 5: for the entire year they're moved to grass. And so
Speaker 5: then you have this excess milk that has nowhere to go,
Speaker 5: and so since it's so nutrous, you make cheese out
Speaker 5: of it. And that's sort of the beginnings of cheesemaking.
Speaker 5: In a nutshell, they had too much milk, so they
Speaker 5: started making cheese.
Speaker 1: For more on the history of cheese, you can listen
Speaker 1: to part one of this episode. That's the order they go.
Speaker 1: In a more esoteric question, Marisa Scott, Sheldon, Mallory Aby
Speaker 1: and Pink Puppy wanted to know. In Scott's words, we
Speaker 1: got to talk about the cheese rolling down the hill thing.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about this? A double Gloucester cheese? What
Speaker 1: is cheese rolling?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's one competition where they have one wheel of
Speaker 5: cheese and they roll it down the hill and people
Speaker 5: run after it and whoever gets to the cheese first,
Speaker 5: people fall, People roll all the way down this hill.
Speaker 10: Everyone's on their bomb at first. I've watched all the videos.
Speaker 10: Everyone's on their bomb when you know they're so scared
Speaker 10: at the top that's where they go wrong. Yes, that
Speaker 10: is your moment to strike, bearing in you know, have
Speaker 10: a right top where everyone's at the most skate, that's
Speaker 10: when you need to strike.
Speaker 1: That was English, and I don't know what he was saying,
Speaker 1: But that's okay because I will never do this. I
Speaker 1: thought this competition might be like a pastoral affair with
Speaker 1: a cheese wheel bounding through alpine flowers, maybe scattering lazy bumblebees.
Speaker 1: But this shit is able blood bath. This is this
Speaker 1: is not okay. So there's a place called Cooper's Hill
Speaker 1: in Gloucester, England, and it's a cliff. Let's be so
Speaker 1: for real right now. It is a cliff with grass.
Speaker 1: It is a two hundred yard off ramp into hell
Speaker 1: at a forty five degree average angle, but some estimates
Speaker 1: have the initial drop sixty degrees. That is so steep.
Speaker 1: Nearly every year, for what's estimated may have been hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, people who have no amigdalas vault themselves down
Speaker 1: to death grade in pursuit of a single wheel of
Speaker 1: double Gloucester cheese. And what I'm guessing is respect and
Speaker 1: lifelong orthopedic issues. I don't know what they're after, but
Speaker 1: I think that cheese costs like fifty bucks, so it's
Speaker 1: clearly not just the cheese. But when the cheese falls,
Speaker 1: when it's released and it starts to roll, everyone's lined
Speaker 1: up waiting to chase it. It looks like if you
Speaker 1: had a bunch of tiny people on a green bedspread
Speaker 1: and then you suddenly shook the bedspread. In all of
Speaker 1: those ty people somer salted violently or simply tumbled skull
Speaker 1: over ankle for nearly two football fields until a line
Speaker 1: of rugby dudes at the bottom caught their charging, bloodied,
Speaker 1: injured bodies. Whoever gets the wheel is not the spectacle.
Speaker 1: Someone gets the wheel, nobody cares. They are a footnote.
Speaker 1: But what we are here to see is a live
Speaker 1: human bodies flying like rag dolls and getting their bones disjointed.
Speaker 3: It would be.
Speaker 1: Impossible to calculate the number of concussions this event has produced.
Speaker 1: One guy this year, twenty twenty five, caught so much
Speaker 1: air doing a triple front flip at what's been estimated
Speaker 1: at sixty miles per hour. He landed with a bounce,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't tell if he was one or two people,
Speaker 1: because the limbs didn't make sense. No one's wearing helmets.
Speaker 1: At best. They might be wearing an inflatable dinosaur costume
Speaker 1: which pops the instant the cheese wheel. Rolls of spectators
Speaker 1: catch this stuff from every angle and it just simply
Speaker 1: does not feel real. Evidently it didn't feel real for
Speaker 1: that one guy this year, because by some miracle of cheese,
Speaker 1: that man survived, and he told people he was on
Speaker 1: mushrooms and he didn't feel a thing. Now, the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: for this event, and again another gem I just have
Speaker 1: to quote verbatim for you. Whoever is updating Wikipedia pages
Speaker 1: for cheese is really at the top of their game.
Speaker 1: But this says about this cheese competition that Canadian competitor
Speaker 1: Delaney Irving won the Ladies Race in twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: despite finishing unconscious and only learning of her victory in
Speaker 1: the medical enclosure. So the neighborhood around Cooper's Hill, it
Speaker 1: gets jammed with tourists, cell phones strained for a glimpse,
Speaker 1: and ambulances are clogging the streets to take people away
Speaker 1: every year. The lucky ones that don't ride away in
Speaker 1: the metavac chopper that's standing by. And this tells me
Speaker 1: two things. Okay, people love cheese and countries with nationalized
Speaker 1: healthcare systems produce braver individuals. Now, if this is giving
Speaker 1: you the itch to fling yourself down a mountain for
Speaker 1: the glory of the wheel, please first listen to our episodes.
Speaker 1: We have one on concussions and traumatic brain injury, as
Speaker 1: well as one about why your knees hurt and why
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to get surgery on them.
Speaker 5: Whoever gets their first wins the wheel of Cheese. But
Speaker 5: there are also competitions where you're rolling the cheese like
Speaker 5: the bowling ball to see how far it rolls. So
Speaker 5: there are all sorts of things, and this has to
Speaker 5: do with the make process right. It can't be wobbly.
Speaker 5: It can't be lopsided for these competitions. So if it
Speaker 5: does get pretty competitive, is.
Speaker 1: It covered in wax or does it just pick?
Speaker 5: Okay, Yes, these are covered in wax.
Speaker 1: Yes, I wasn't sure if they were like grass fed
Speaker 1: just by virtue of rolling down a lot. I almost
Speaker 1: didn't finish this episode on time because I watched too
Speaker 1: many glocester cheese competition ragged all people, even though it
Speaker 1: hurt me in the throat to even watch the videos.
Speaker 1: Also in part one, Kiara and I chatted about American cheese,
Speaker 1: how it's not a cheese and that it has the
Speaker 1: same anticoagulant sodium citrate usually as blood donations get to
Speaker 1: keep them from clumping. So let's revisit that a lot
Speaker 1: of people had questions about American cheese. Kiara and H
Speaker 1: wanted to know your opinions on it TV thirty three.
Speaker 1: Let's settle this once and for all. And I know
Speaker 1: we covered this a little bit in part one, but
Speaker 1: Sarah burg Culter I thought had a great question first time,
Speaker 1: ask her why is American cheese so good on burgers
Speaker 1: but so crappy everywhere else? What is it about American cheese?
Speaker 1: Why is it? Why is American cheese.
Speaker 5: Like American cheese like craft singles? We're talking here?
Speaker 1: How did it pop up into the cheese scene to say,
Speaker 1: I'm sort of cheese but not really cheese, but it's
Speaker 1: also good on some stuff.
Speaker 5: I mean, the history behind American cheese goes back to
Speaker 5: a time where there weren't refrigeration, or there weren't ways
Speaker 5: to store. Artists and cheese people were making cheese losing it,
Speaker 5: and so scientists figure out a way to mosify the
Speaker 5: cheese into this product and make its shelf stable. That
Speaker 5: was the first step to it, and then from there
Speaker 5: they began to create these other cheese products again, like
Speaker 5: vegan cheese. To me, it's not considered a cheese, it's
Speaker 5: a cheese product. It's its own thing. I eate it
Speaker 5: on burgers. I'll eat American cheese in certain situations because
Speaker 5: it tastes really good, it melts really well. It's great
Speaker 5: on a girl cheese, it's great anywhere it's melted. But
Speaker 5: it's very different than artisans, especially made cheeses that are
Speaker 5: similar in style to that make process.
Speaker 1: I agree with you that it's great on a grilled cheese.
Speaker 1: I think that vegan cheese is too melts in a
Speaker 1: way that is like, okay, it's really bouncy in a way,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like taffy, kind of
Speaker 1: a kind of fluffy. But speaking of American cheese, and
Speaker 1: speaking of America, Sophie A said, can we please talk
Speaker 1: about Reagan's cheese caves? I hope asked, please tell us
Speaker 1: about the cheese caves. Nicole Campbell, first time question asker,
Speaker 1: Is there really a vault of cheeses under the United States?
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this? I don't know where this
Speaker 1: story came from, but I was talking to my nail
Speaker 1: tech Shelby, who I love, and she was like, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing a cheese expert, and she said, that is
Speaker 1: so exciting. Are there cheese caves under the United States?
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't know what the fuck
Speaker 1: you're talking about, but I need to ask about this.
Speaker 1: What's going on.
Speaker 5: Yes, there is a cheese reserve. It's part of the
Speaker 5: government's way to make sure that we don't run out
Speaker 5: of food. So it's a reserve of cheeses that are
Speaker 5: used mostly for government funded programs for food insecurity. Oftentimes
Speaker 5: cheese is used in that respect, but it is a reserve.
Speaker 5: It's in I believe it's in Missouri.
Speaker 1: Someone asked about Missouri. Yeah, the cheese caves in Missouri.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to those in just a moment, but first,
Speaker 1: let's donate to a cause of the ologists choosing And
Speaker 1: this week Kira chose two each part of the Cheese
Speaker 1: Duo episode, and they are the Cheese Culture Coalition, which
Speaker 1: works to create a more equitable and inclusive cheese industry
Speaker 1: for Black, Indigenous, and people of color through education and
Speaker 1: grant programs and via Cheese Culturecoalition dot org you can
Speaker 1: find out more about their programs, you can donate, or
Speaker 1: you can even fill out a form to volunteer on
Speaker 1: their committees or their fundraisers. And the second donation is
Speaker 1: going to Team UPS Building Schools in Kenya, which Kira
Speaker 1: says is a great organization run by a dear friend
Speaker 1: of hers, and they work to ensure that Kenyan children
Speaker 1: receive the education they need and provide communities with easily accessible,
Speaker 1: clean and sustainable water resources and you can find out
Speaker 1: more about them or donate at go team up dot org.
Speaker 1: So thank you to sponsors of the show for making
Speaker 1: those donations possible.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's dig into government cave cheese as it
Speaker 1: was on the minds of patrons Mike Earl of Grammeleka
Speaker 1: and Laura Fitzgerald Any Horrible full Metal Niece, Sophia A Caitlintondale, Hope,
Speaker 1: Anna Elizabeth, Kayla, Nicole Campbell, London, Noel Britney Schafis, Timmy
Speaker 1: h and Elsa Sparks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's they're caves. They're man made caves and
Speaker 5: they have rosen rows of cheese. They're not the most
Speaker 5: artisan produced cheeses from the small producers, but they're large
Speaker 5: wheels that are there to serve the people who need it,
Speaker 5: and so yeah, it definitely exists.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I had definitely heard of government cheese, and
Speaker 1: I had friends whose families had it a lot growing up.
Speaker 1: Its sustained food insecure people for decades. And government cheese
Speaker 1: also an American culture sure has become a little bit
Speaker 1: of a shorthand for having to make ends meat. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know about the caves or the timeline. So
Speaker 1: the long story less long is that in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the Carter administration helped out the dairy farmers in a
Speaker 1: recession by buying up their milk when they made too much.
Speaker 1: That way, the market wouldn't be flooded with so much
Speaker 1: milk that the price is dropped and the farmers went broke.
Speaker 1: So the government bought a bunch of the milk. How
Speaker 1: do you store millions of dollars with the milk? You
Speaker 1: make processed, velvety, tasty cheese and then you put it
Speaker 1: in temperature controlled limestone quarries. So you have to sitting
Speaker 1: around perfect for stashing a bunch of cheese. So over
Speaker 1: the years, cheese has gone into storage in case of
Speaker 1: natural disasters or sudden food scarcity. There's this big stock
Speaker 1: of cheese. But then so much cheese started to pile
Speaker 1: up it. In the early nineteen eighties, President Ronald Reagan said,
Speaker 1: let's give some of this cheese away. And still there's
Speaker 1: this in and out of buying up excess dairy and
Speaker 1: keeping it a government cheese, and the government cheese gets
Speaker 1: handed out to nonprofits and food banks and folks on welfare,
Speaker 1: food assistants, and elderly populations. For now, at least it
Speaker 1: has been. And literally, as I typed this up, as
Speaker 1: I'm about to put this episode out, tonight news broke
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration has been sitting on a store
Speaker 1: of five hundred metric tons of food meant for starving
Speaker 1: children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but instead of distributing it
Speaker 1: to the starving children, the Trump administration has been doing
Speaker 1: nothing with it. And now it's about to expire this
Speaker 1: week and so they'll simply incinerate it. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if this is making America great again. As even Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: the guy who cut more than twenty two billion dollars
Speaker 1: from social welfare programs. Was like, let's give out some
Speaker 1: free cheese to people who need it, but no, we
Speaker 1: have now reached an era of we could feed starving children,
Speaker 1: but instead let's just burn the food and the children anyway. Cheese,
Speaker 1: so Daniel Schmanel, Lizzie Martinez, Sarah Donn and Eric Easton,
Speaker 1: Mike Karen h was Gonsnight, Debbie Powers a softly boiled egg.
Speaker 1: Eileen Wang and Chelsea and her dog Charlie and Felipe Jimenez,
Speaker 1: in their words, asked what's the weirdest but successful pairing
Speaker 1: you've tried with cheese? Some people asked about cheese pairings.
Speaker 1: Donnie need Him from New Zealand said best things to
Speaker 1: eat with cheese or more unusual but yummy. In New
Speaker 1: Zealand we do a thing called mouse traps, which is
Speaker 1: bread grilled, spread with marmite, which is a yeast extract,
Speaker 1: topped with cheese and grilled again. Brian Shenanigan said, pineapple
Speaker 1: and feta together are epic pizza toppings and you will
Speaker 1: thank me later for it. Eileen Wang Samwhi's cheese puff.
Speaker 1: Both asked thoughts on cheese and apple pie, any cheese
Speaker 1: pairings that you are staunchly against or that you are
Speaker 1: an advocate for.
Speaker 5: So I'm into complimentary or contrasting flavors, so I often
Speaker 5: am drawn to adding sweetness to cheese. Cheese is really
Speaker 5: salty and often acidic, so something with a little bit
Speaker 5: of sweetness as contrasting. So it kind of makes things exciting.
Speaker 5: It makes the experience you went back and forth between
Speaker 5: salty sweet salty sweet. So with that in mind, I
Speaker 5: look to things like honeys, jams, fruits, the things that
Speaker 5: you see on chracouri boards. They're not there, and by mistake,
Speaker 5: they're there because they go really well with cheese. So
Speaker 5: those are my go to, Like when I'm just snacking,
Speaker 5: oftentimes it's just honey and cheese. I love honey and
Speaker 5: it goes with all types of cheese, and there's all
Speaker 5: types of honey too. Unusual pairings for me. Chocolate isn't
Speaker 5: super unusual, but people haven't done it before. But chocolate
Speaker 5: and cheese go really well together, specifically dark chocolate and
Speaker 5: blue cheese. Oh what again, looking at the saltiness and
Speaker 5: cheese and the sweetness in the dark chocolate. But then
Speaker 5: there's bitterness in the dark chocolate, and salt mitigates the
Speaker 5: presence of bitterness and foods. So when you add the
Speaker 5: saltiness to the bitterness, it makes the dark chocolate and
Speaker 5: more fudgy, and it just creates this really fun experience
Speaker 5: where you're having like a fudge and cheese situation.
Speaker 1: What is that Norwegian? It's almost like browned and sweetened cheese.
Speaker 1: It's called like.
Speaker 5: Gaust or ghost maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a toast, like a gill toast or something.
Speaker 1: My friend Cilia is from Norway. She's an amazing chef,
Speaker 1: and she'll post pictures of it and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is or what it tastes like
Speaker 1: what I want it. It's like caramelized.
Speaker 5: Almost, yeah, I can't pronounce it, but it's like jost, yeah, gjetost.
Speaker 5: It's like they actually caramelize the milk to create the cheese,
Speaker 5: and so it tastes like caramel.
Speaker 1: Oh, god of it, that's so good. So yeah, hay
Speaker 1: toast is made with goat's milk, but it can also
Speaker 1: be called brunos. And ask a Norwegian or a manger
Speaker 1: how you two can enjoy caramel breakfast cheese. Franz said,
Speaker 1: in Switzerland they learned that you should always have either
Speaker 1: wine or tea with cheese, so you don't get a
Speaker 1: cheese baby, I eat a bloated tom. Of course, I
Speaker 1: follow this as much as possible because I love with
Speaker 1: tea and wine. But are there other beverages to pair?
Speaker 1: I mean, we're doing a wine episode, and I know
Speaker 1: that you also advocate for like sober cheese tastings, which
Speaker 1: I think is awesome, but pairings for beverages and.
Speaker 5: Cheese definitely so for wine and beer. The most traditional
Speaker 5: sort of way of thinking about parings are light with
Speaker 5: light and bold with bold. So if you have a light,
Speaker 5: fresher cheese, then a lighter wine should pair well with it.
Speaker 5: Looking too fresh cheeses or soft ripe and cheeses like
Speaker 5: a goat smoke cheese, and like a white wine like
Speaker 5: from France, like a sanset or a lighter grape, and
Speaker 5: then looking to bolder cheeses with boulder wines or beer,
Speaker 5: so blue cheeses, goudas, AIGs, cheddars, things that have more
Speaker 5: robust flavor profiles can handle bigger flavored beverages, so you
Speaker 5: can do a dark beer or red wine, someone that
Speaker 5: has more going on because they can hold their own
Speaker 5: against one another. Other beverages that go well with cheese.
Speaker 5: Kambucha is one that I go to. It's not your
Speaker 5: go to beverage, but the vinegar and the subtle sweetness
Speaker 5: actually pairs really nicely with cheeses. Oftentimes, ones that have
Speaker 5: more of a buttery texture to them could go really
Speaker 5: nicely with cheese. But I love pairing cheese with tea.
Speaker 5: I think that that is a great combination. I don't
Speaker 5: do it enough, but that's definitely like a hot tea
Speaker 5: and a cheese is very very They go really well together.
Speaker 1: And it probably melts in your mouth a little bit
Speaker 1: if your mouth is warm warm, Yes, exactly when you're
Speaker 1: eating like chocolate and a warm beverage, it just like melts.
Speaker 1: You taste it more. And I can't believe I forgot
Speaker 1: to ask this before, but Joshua, why Y is the
Speaker 1: first time question asker. I wanted to know if there's
Speaker 1: ever been a study to confirm or disprove the effect
Speaker 1: of pasteurization on the texture the taste of cheese. Is
Speaker 1: it real or is it just potentially lethal? Hippie drek,
Speaker 1: they asked, So in part one we did discuss that
Speaker 1: people say raw milk cheese has a highly superior curd
Speaker 1: texture by some accounts, but many patrons such as Fairy Jessa,
Speaker 1: Tracy Woodard, Aaron Wood, Andy Pepper, and David wanted to
Speaker 1: know the scoop. So let's jump into it. Raw cheese.
Speaker 1: Is it better or is it hype?
Speaker 5: Great question. There's been lots of discussions about pasteurization. I
Speaker 5: don't know if there's like scientific evidence around the flavor profile,
Speaker 5: but there are. You'll get two different camps in the
Speaker 5: cheese world where people are against pastorisation and just really
Speaker 5: focus on raw milk cheeses, and then you have people
Speaker 5: who accept pastorization as a way of being in the
Speaker 5: latter where pastorization is a way of being in some
Speaker 5: ways it helps control the risks of bad bacterias getting
Speaker 5: into our bodies. So when you pasteurize milk, you heat
Speaker 5: it to a certain temperature for a certain period of time,
Speaker 5: and that kills off the bacteria, both the good bacteria
Speaker 5: and the bad bacteria. So when you're looking at the
Speaker 5: camp of mangers and cheese professionals who only go with
Speaker 5: raw milk then they're looking at that from the perspective
Speaker 5: of it's killing off the good bacteria and therefore it's
Speaker 5: killing off the flavor. So the natural flavors and the
Speaker 5: cheese are being pasteurized or removed, and then when you
Speaker 5: pasteurize the milk you have to add everything back to it.
Speaker 5: You can still have a full flavored cheese when it's pasteurized.
Speaker 5: You're just adding the cultures and the bacterias back to
Speaker 5: the kurds after you've pasteurized the milk. So I don't
Speaker 5: think that there's a right or wrong way to be,
Speaker 5: but I think having a full understanding of what pasturization
Speaker 5: is is the best way forward. Because in America, we
Speaker 5: can't have anything aged under sixty days. That's raw milk.
Speaker 5: Anything that's made with raw milk has to be aged
Speaker 5: more than sixty days for us to consume it in America.
Speaker 5: And that's because the f thinks that on day sixty
Speaker 5: one everything is fixed. So there's some you know, I
Speaker 5: hear the hippie and I hear the government interaction, but
Speaker 5: there is some safety measures that are included with it.
Speaker 5: But some things are just not super accurate, and so
Speaker 5: the F day is a little bit outdated in the
Speaker 5: pasturization rules, and hopefully we'll get that changed soon, but
Speaker 5: for now, just kind of learn to accept it and
Speaker 5: learn to appreciate the cheese that are past drives for
Speaker 5: what they are.
Speaker 1: What could be living in your lunch, you ask? So,
Speaker 1: according to a twenty twenty four piece in Scientific American
Speaker 1: titled is raw Milk Cheese Safe to Eat? Milk can
Speaker 1: become contaminated with harmful microbes like Samonella, Listeria, and E.
Speaker 1: Coli that can survive the cheese production and aging process,
Speaker 1: which is why in pasteurization they blast that milk up
Speaker 1: to one hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit or just over
Speaker 1: seventy celsius to kill it off. But yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the tiny tasty organisms also perish, and so you get
Speaker 1: a cheese that's safer, it's more reliable, but it's maybe
Speaker 1: lacking in some of the bacterial chaos that some fromage
Speaker 1: of files really tend to prefer. But from stinky to fresh,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the squeakiest cheese. So Patron's Don w
Speaker 1: Sarah King Canadian Alia Meyers all echoed Sean O'shay's request
Speaker 1: to quote, tell me something about cheese curds. In their words,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I didn't ask the sooner Lily, Megan Moker,
Speaker 1: Aaron Danny Kirby, Lauren Cooper, Ashley Doing are a victor
Speaker 1: and several other people need to know. Lily ask why
Speaker 1: are fresh cheese curds the best? And what makes them squeak?
Speaker 5: What's up of that good question? So, to get to
Speaker 5: cheese curds, you're doing something very specific. You're not just
Speaker 5: separating the curves from the way and then cutting the
Speaker 5: curds into pieces, but then those pieces are allowed to
Speaker 5: sit and firm up, and so they they squeak. When
Speaker 5: you hold them sort of like move them around, they'll
Speaker 5: make like squeaky like rubbery kind of noises, and that
Speaker 5: tells you that they're fresh. The longer that they sit,
Speaker 5: the less likely that they'll make that noise, which is
Speaker 5: just a thing of freshness. It doesn't mean that you
Speaker 5: can't eat the curds anymore if they're they're not squeaking.
Speaker 5: But oftentimes people prefer squeaky curds over other curds, and
Speaker 5: oftentimes that's because they're more fresh.
Speaker 1: Ah, I've heard so many people from Wisconsin be like,
Speaker 1: if they don't squeak, I don't want it. And if
Speaker 1: you've never had a squeaky curd, you have not had
Speaker 1: the best curds. So it's like, I feel like I
Speaker 1: need to go to Wisconsin because I don't know I've
Speaker 1: had a squeaky curd. I can also ask my teasemonger
Speaker 1: if they can hook me up with the squeakiest curds.
Speaker 5: Because Wisconsin they're especially those producers will make curds like
Speaker 5: the same day and sell them and so you get
Speaker 5: them super fresh, like right from the creamery, and so
Speaker 5: they're yeah, they're super squeaky.
Speaker 1: Also, if that sound of the YouTube user empty race
Speaker 1: or fifty one open mouth squeaking cheese curds is making
Speaker 1: you want to find my location and harm me, please
Speaker 1: know I come in peace. And you have what's called missophonia,
Speaker 1: which is a very strong aversion to the sound of
Speaker 1: chewing or other noises, And yeah, we have a whole
Speaker 1: episode with a misophonia har and expert doctor Jane Gregory
Speaker 1: about distracting sounds and noise rage, and there are no
Speaker 1: chewing noises in that episode because I care and I promise,
Speaker 1: So if you have that congratulations, you're not alone. But yeah,
Speaker 1: fresh cheese curds they have protein and calcium structure, and
Speaker 1: it rubs on your tooth enamel and it sounds like
Speaker 1: you're chewing on a bike tire. Now, if you've never
Speaker 1: had that sensation and you need to, you can ask
Speaker 1: your cheesemonger to try to hook you up with the
Speaker 1: freshest stuff, or you can gather your family and all
Speaker 1: of your belongings and move to Wisconsin. The choice is yours. Also,
Speaker 1: speaking of your local manger, I spoke of my favor Rue,
Speaker 1: and if you ever pop in a milk farm in
Speaker 1: Eagle Rock in LA, you can tell them the ologies sencha.
Speaker 1: But speaking of Rue, I asked them what their favorite
Speaker 1: cheese is and they said, hmm. There are way too
Speaker 1: many beautiful cheeses in the world for me to pick
Speaker 1: a favorite. But here's my overly worthy thoughts on a
Speaker 1: great cheese to enjoy with some cherries or pluots during
Speaker 1: stone fruit season. So Rue says. Osu Arati is a
Speaker 1: style of firm sheep's milk cheese. And don't worry about
Speaker 1: spelling that. We linked it on our website. It starts
Speaker 1: with an oss don't worry about it, but it's made
Speaker 1: exclusively in the Pyrenees, and they wish that it had
Speaker 1: way better name recognition in the States, so again we'll
Speaker 1: link it. It's o ssau dash ir At y Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's one reason it doesn't have name recognition because
Speaker 1: what are those letters. Either way, Rue says that they
Speaker 1: usually try to recommend this one to people who know
Speaker 1: that they like manchego and they want to try something
Speaker 1: a little different because it's so good. And Rue says
Speaker 1: that O su Arati tastes like brown butter and toasted hazelnuts,
Speaker 1: but some wheels are very floral on the nose. Others
Speaker 1: have a really savory, meaty mommy thing going on. And
Speaker 1: they said it's a good snacking cheese and it's great
Speaker 1: melted in a caesadia or a burger. And at milk
Speaker 1: farm in La Rue says it sometimes when they're really lucky,
Speaker 1: they'll get a wheel of asu erati Steve and the
Speaker 1: Steve or Estiva. Not sure it means. Wheels are made
Speaker 1: in the summer months because the farmers take their herds
Speaker 1: up to the higher mountain pastures where they can kind
Speaker 1: of beat the heat, and they can chow down on
Speaker 1: tasty summer flora. Rue says, so that Esteve or Stibay
Speaker 1: wheels tend to be intensely herbal in a really fun way,
Speaker 1: but they're really rare to find. And with that story,
Speaker 1: Ru also introduced me to the word estiv meaning summer.
Speaker 1: And there's this rare derivative estivation which carries the same
Speaker 1: idea as summering. And Rue provided me with the example
Speaker 1: every year Elizabeth and I estivate in the Hamptons, said
Speaker 1: no one ever, Rue says, so, Rue, thank you for
Speaker 1: essentially emailing me back and aside for this episode that
Speaker 1: I didn't even have to write or research. So now
Speaker 1: I know I want to get some stone fruit, and
Speaker 1: I want to try some cheese. It tastes like brown
Speaker 1: butter and nuts and flowers and it's called osu errati.
Speaker 1: And also great confirmation that cheesemongers have wonderful stories and
Speaker 1: everyone should have a friend who's a cheesemonger.
Speaker 5: So yeah, ask your manger.
Speaker 1: I gotta ask my manger. So many people we're almost
Speaker 1: we have two questions left from is that okay?
Speaker 5: I am so sorry that this is the most don't apologize.
Speaker 1: I love Marathon. Oh my god. Okay, so many people asked,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I can list them all.
Speaker 1: Lauren Allegra asked, is it true that there's an addictive
Speaker 1: chemical in cheese or do I just use that as
Speaker 1: an excuse to eat more cheese?
Speaker 5: Another great question. So there are connections between eating cheese
Speaker 5: and the release of dopamine, so similarly to other activities,
Speaker 5: and you know, some positive, some negative, but oft times
Speaker 5: people say things like sheese is addictive, like you know,
Speaker 5: drugs or something, and that's because of really you want
Speaker 5: to eat cheese. It actually releases dopamine, which makes you happier.
Speaker 5: So that's why when people eat cheese, they're actually having
Speaker 5: a chemical reaction where their dopamine is released and they're
Speaker 5: feeling happier and more. Go lucky if you will.
Speaker 1: And yes, it's true. Any twenty twenty one paper titled
Speaker 1: Casomorphins and leander fins have diverse systemic effects spanning gut, brain,
Speaker 1: and internal organs explains that yes, the milk protein casein
Speaker 1: breaks down into casomorphins and those can stimulate dopamine in
Speaker 1: the brain, just like anything that makes you feel good.
Speaker 5: So now we just we can just use it as
Speaker 5: a positive excuse for eating more cheese, Like if you're
Speaker 5: in a bad mood, eat piece of cheese. Feeling depressed,
Speaker 5: eat piece of cheese.
Speaker 1: I think that technically makes you a psychiatrist.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, isn't it? I think so?
Speaker 1: Are you now, doctor James.
Speaker 5: I'm here to help you find your bliss with through
Speaker 5: ch Please.
Speaker 1: Well, last listener question. I think it's the one that's
Speaker 1: probably on everyone's minds. Mike, Kira and h Debbie Powers.
Speaker 1: First time question asker a softly boiled egg grass Eileen Waing,
Speaker 1: Chelsea and her dog Charlie. Debbie first time question asker
Speaker 1: wisconsinate cheese a fishionado. What are your best tips for
Speaker 1: a charcuterie board? You're going to build a charcuterie board.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've got in loss coming over for the first time.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've got a date happening, maybe it's your birthday.
Speaker 1: What are we going for?
Speaker 5: Definitely, So the big thing for me is diversity, So
Speaker 5: having a mixture of all the things. When I educator
Speaker 5: give suggestions, because I'm always asked by family and friends
Speaker 5: this question. So another great question. Look for different types
Speaker 5: of cheese, so look for those the styles we talked about,
Speaker 5: look for something soft and something hard. If it's for
Speaker 5: a small gathering, just two cheeses is fine, one soft,
Speaker 5: one hard. If it's for a bigger gathering and you
Speaker 5: get you know, four to five cheeses, then look for
Speaker 5: different textures, different colors, maybe one that has flavor or
Speaker 5: smoke added to it. And then from there look to
Speaker 5: how you'd pair it. So what do you want to
Speaker 5: eat with the cheese? And put that on the board.
Speaker 5: You can't really mess it up. But the rules of
Speaker 5: thumb are something crunchy, something sweet, something savory, something pickled.
Speaker 1: Oh, crunchy, sweet, savory, pickled, crunchy, sweet, savory, pickled.
Speaker 5: So having like olives, jam, crackers, and salami, you know,
Speaker 5: and you're good to go. Those are like the things
Speaker 5: that I look to. I don't have like set rules.
Speaker 5: I think that it can be whatever you want it
Speaker 5: to be. If it's for dessert, add some dessert items
Speaker 5: to the board. If it's for an appetizer, you know,
Speaker 5: have less than if it's for dinner. But you can't
Speaker 5: mess it up. And the biggest thing I would always
Speaker 5: recommend is ask your cheesemonger. If you don't have a
Speaker 5: cheese shop near you, Whole Foods. They have certified cheese professionals.
Speaker 5: They're actually one of the biggest supporters of the certification
Speaker 5: program that is offered, so a lot of their employees
Speaker 5: become certified. So if you don't see them back there,
Speaker 5: there's someone there. They can help you. So definitely just
Speaker 5: ask for support in that way or reach out to me.
Speaker 1: Own your Funk as well. Right, people can follow you
Speaker 1: and see when you're doing events.
Speaker 5: Yes, Own your Funk is my business name.
Speaker 1: Is there a hard thing about cheese? What is the
Speaker 1: hardest part of your job? And I will ask you
Speaker 1: your favorite, but your least favorite thing about cheese mongering
Speaker 1: or your least favorite cheese.
Speaker 5: I don't have a least favorite cheese. I never never
Speaker 5: could do that to a cheese. I think just the
Speaker 5: sanitization and the cleaning aspects of the industry. You know,
Speaker 5: cheese is alive and so it's very vulnerable and it
Speaker 5: needs a lot of TLC, especially if it's in your
Speaker 5: home refrigerator. You know, you have to take care of
Speaker 5: your cheeses people. If you don't, you have C mold
Speaker 5: on them. The same thing goes and when you work
Speaker 5: in a cheese shop. You have to take care of
Speaker 5: these cheeses every day and clean them and make sure
Speaker 5: every surface is always clean. And in between your cheese,
Speaker 5: you have to clean your surfaces, clean your knives. So
Speaker 5: there's lots of sanitation that goes into cheese as a profession.
Speaker 5: So that's probably the least favorite thing that I have
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 1: Is it true that you should store your cheeses in
Speaker 1: the paper that came in and not a ziplock? Is
Speaker 1: it better to let your cheese breathe so it doesn't
Speaker 1: get too moist.
Speaker 5: Definitely leave the cheese in the paper that it comes
Speaker 5: in and rewrap it if you can. If you get
Speaker 5: a piece of cheese that comes in plastic, then you
Speaker 5: might want to find new wrapping for that, in which
Speaker 5: case you can wrap it in. What I would suggest
Speaker 5: is wrapping in parchment paper and then putting that piece
Speaker 5: of cheese into a plastic bag. You don't have to
Speaker 5: steal the bag. You can just leave the bag opened.
Speaker 5: That just gives a little bit extra protection. But you
Speaker 5: still want to have some airflow just so because again
Speaker 5: the cheese is alive, you don't want to suffocate it
Speaker 5: when things are wrapped in plastic, they're actually being suffocated,
Speaker 5: so we do it for esthetic reasons more than the
Speaker 5: health of the cheese. So definitely want to get rid
Speaker 5: of the plastic if you can. And then number one
Speaker 5: will always be cheese paper. So if you want to
Speaker 5: buy a cheese paper, you can buy it online. Formaticum
Speaker 5: is a great company that you can buy cheese paper
Speaker 5: from other companies as well that you can find or
Speaker 5: beeswax is another one. So beeswax, the lines of beeswax
Speaker 5: so you can buy are great for cheese as well.
Speaker 1: Oh like cloths that are almost impregnated with treete. Oh
Speaker 1: and also great host gift. Definitely, if you've got to
Speaker 1: go to someone's house, you bring them some cheeses and
Speaker 1: some of those perses. I always am like, dude, what
Speaker 1: should I bring? And in some parts of the country
Speaker 1: it's like, of course you bring a host gift, and
Speaker 1: in others, like in California, people like, you know, it
Speaker 1: brought some beer, you know, like we're sweet, sweet idiots
Speaker 1: over here. But favorite thing about being a certified cheese
Speaker 1: professional an aphromologist.
Speaker 5: I think the network of people. I think my favorite
Speaker 5: thing is that I get to be and work with
Speaker 5: some amazing people and some amazing animals and farms, and
Speaker 5: I'm really passionate about the land and the agricultural aspects
Speaker 5: of the industry. So to be able to know that
Speaker 5: my contributions are going towards the betterment of farms and
Speaker 5: animals and people make it all worth it. And then
Speaker 5: I get to know them as my family and friends,
Speaker 5: and so that just intensifies the feeling of joy and
Speaker 5: the happiness I get to feel when I'm selling the
Speaker 5: cheeses or when I'm tasting cheese with people for the
Speaker 5: first time and they're like, Wow, this is amazing. That
Speaker 5: just puts me over the moon. Nothing makes me more
Speaker 5: happy than just sharing the love of cheese with others.
Speaker 1: It puts you over the cheese moon.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, the cheese.
Speaker 1: This has been a dream come true, dream come true.
Speaker 1: Best homologist in the biz.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And this couldn't not be a two parter. I mean
Speaker 1: it's rare that I go into it being like, do
Speaker 1: you have several hours to talk to me?
Speaker 5: That's what I do talk about you O day. So
Speaker 5: this is just a regular day in the.
Speaker 3: Office for me.
Speaker 5: I loved it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we asked a salt of the Earth Person
Speaker 1: two episodes worth of cheesy questions, and thank you so
Speaker 1: much Kira for being here not only this week, but
Speaker 1: last as well. Thank you for letting me interview you
Speaker 1: for nearly two hours. You can follow Kira and learn
Speaker 1: more about her work LinkedIn the show notes or at
Speaker 1: our website aliwar dot com, slash Ologies, slash Fromology, or
Speaker 1: you can follow her via ownyrfunk dot com. And donations
Speaker 1: went to the Cheese Culture Coalition and Team Ups building
Speaker 1: schools in Kenya, and we've got those linked in the
Speaker 1: show notes as well. We are at Ologies on Instagram
Speaker 1: and Blue Sky. I'm at Ali Ward on both. If
Speaker 1: you need any kid friendly episodes, you can check out
Speaker 1: Smologies anywhere you get podcasts. Ologies Merch is available at
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you patrons of the show for
Speaker 1: all of your great questions that you submitted via Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Ologies. Aaron Talbert admin's Orologies podcast based group.
Speaker 1: Aveleen Mallick makes our professional transcripts. Noel Dilworth arranges time
Speaker 1: as a scheduling producer. Susan Hale as our managing manger
Speaker 1: and director of all Thingsologies. Editors are Machcedes Maitland of
Speaker 1: Maitland Audio and lead editor of this One with a
Speaker 1: sharp brain but a mild manner is Jake Chafy. Nick
Speaker 1: Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around
Speaker 1: to the very very end of the episode, I tell
Speaker 1: you a secret and I will make this one short
Speaker 1: because I feel like my sides were long. But this
Speaker 1: is only You're only going to hear about this if
Speaker 1: you maybe live in La. But there is a bar
Speaker 1: called Shimsham. My friend Aubrey had her birthday party there
Speaker 1: and I went there and Number one, they have some
Speaker 1: sort of slushy situation with a beverage which is tasty.
Speaker 1: But the part that surprised me is Shimsham has a
Speaker 1: photo booth and it is some of the best lighting
Speaker 1: I have ever seen anyone in. I don't know what
Speaker 1: kind of magic their photo booth has. I don't know
Speaker 1: how their ring light is set up. I don't understand
Speaker 1: what's going on. But we were like, how does everyone
Speaker 1: look so glowing and flawless in this? And sure enough
Speaker 1: I looked it up and people are like, if you
Speaker 1: get yourself to Shimsham, make sure to take some glam
Speaker 1: shots in that photo booth. I don't know how they
Speaker 1: do it. Shipsham. If you're listening, email me what do
Speaker 1: you have going on? Okay, bye bye.
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