Say Cheese

The interesting thing about the Blogsphere is you never know what you might come across from the sublime to the ridiculous; it is all there. One particularly sublime site, especially if you like bakery, (actually more art than baked goods), is Jintastique. She is a pastry artist in Wisconsin and made some adorable Truffle Mice. I jokingly commented that being from Wisconsin the mice could use some truffle cheese to eat. This in turn reminded me how much I love cheese, pretty much a prerequisite to being a Wisconsinite. I believe there is even a law that states your ass will be booted across the border into Illinois if you don’t eat you cheese – if there isn’t, there should be. I can’t think of anything worse then being banished to the land of the FIBs (another Blog, another time).

I grew up on cheese. My father loved it ergo we were going to damn sure eat it. Liver fell under the same rule, but I’ll tell you eating cheese is much more pleasant then eating slimy nasty cow innards (with the possible exception of French cheese, read on for more). Our family had a travel trailer and we journeyed extensively in Wisconsin. Every trip to a new spot in Wisconsin involved a search for the local cheese factory. Different areas are known for their specialties, but the holy grail of our search was aged Brick Cheese. Age Brick is not for the faint of heart, in fact some folks use it for buzzard repellent. Mild or medium Brick, however, is very good. It is creamy with a hint of olives.

My father would make regular pilgrimages to the Beechwood, WI cheese factory and score his prized aged Brick. My brother could always tell my father had made the trip the instant he swung the door of the refrigerator open. Aged Brick has a distinctive and penetrating smell, though nowhere near as stinky and nasty as the runny dog crap the French make.

From what I understand, making Brick is a lengthy, complex process so many cheese factories have switched to making the less labor intensive Monterey Jack. Jack is ok, but it is no Brick. The factories also offer Swiss, Cheddar, smoked cheese, and many other variations. Most dairies participate in a co-op program so they have access to many types of fresh cheese. OK, most of the cheese has been aged for some time, so fresh probably isn’t the best word I could have used, but it is as close to the cow as the average consumer is going to get. Take curds for example.

Curds are a product of one of the first stages of cheese production. Cheddar curds are small lumps of proto-cheese and taste delicious, emitting a squeaking sound as you bite into them. The squeak is a sign they are fresh. You can find cheese curds in the market from time to time, languishing forlornly in a plastic resealable bag with the Mega-Dairy’s logo plastered all over it. These curds will not squeak - they are the antithesis of what the Curd experience should be. Sometimes going out of your way pays off, and the quest to find cheese is one of them.

There are some cottage industry cheeses, though the cheeses made that way aren’t necessarily cottage cheese. Farmer’s Cheese can be one of these homemade treats. You can even make cheese out of yogurt at home – it’s not too bad. Then there are the stinky runny French cheeses. I have tried them to be fair and have tasted a wide selection, in France even, but I think most of them are nasty slimy globs found growing on the bottom of some French cesspool. I have a theory that those “gourmet cheeses” play to snob appeal. The old “I am wealthy and therefore better than you - I will prove it to you by eating this stinky crap that I can afford to eat you can’t” kind of things. Caviar falls into this category, unless you enjoy eating what we usually use for bait. The moral is that not everything from Europe is better than domestic products and anything that has the word Gourmet in front of it is really going to suck. In fact, putting the word gourmet on a product is tantamount to putting the skull and crossbones on insecticide – it is a warning neither is fit to eat.

Long story even longer, while cheese might not be king in Wisconsin (I think that title belongs to either the Packers or any type of alcoholic beverage) it is still a vital element in Wisconsin Society. Hell, we even have “America’s Dairyland” on our license plates, even though that just isn’t true. There are states with a bigger dairy industry, but “America’s Gravel pit” or “The Pea State” don’t exactly roll off the tongue so America’s Dairyland it is. Besides Alice in Dairyland, the presiding Royalty at the Wisconsin State Fair would come off kind of butch as the “Sand and Gravel Queen”. Now it is up to you, get off your ass, head for Wisconsin and eat some damn cheese. Screw California.