There are so many great things to eat and drink in this world. Yesterday I had groceries delivered and my order included a container of chocolate milk, one of my favorite beverage indulgences. I've had multiple mugs of it last night and this morning. My order also included cheeses, one good and one bad. The good -- muenster. Yum. The bad -- I thought I was getting a package of American cheese, but I got a package of "cheese product" which is not really cheese. Kraft should do a better job of showing this information on their package labels, or perhaps I should take blame since I didn't zoom in to see the small print. Anyway, I am enjoying the muenster, but I'm not sure what to do the the fake cheese.
I was ordering American cheese because I'm going to be tweaking a sloppy joe recipe this weekend, and I love having a slice of cheese on a sloppy joe. I never used to do this, but then I saw my sister do it once when I had her try my sloppy joe recipe, and so I tried it and I do it all the time now. (Thanks, Christi!)
Cheeses are great. They can truly be called one of the "great" things we have the opportunity to indulge in. This year at Christmas, I was given aged cheddar cheeses, two of them (from Elisa and Ben). One, in the photo above on the right, was a 10-year aged white cheddar. And the other, the one on the left in the photo above, is a 15-year aged cheddar.
15 years! It's an amazing thing that we can let a food sit for that long and it's not only still edible, but it's got amazing flavor and texture that have developed during those years. I'm not an expert in making cheeses, not even close. But I am happy that we have people that know how to make these wonderful cheeses, people that take the time to learn how to do it, and to somehow figure out that you can let cheese sit that long.
My aged cheeses are gone now, this far past Christmas when they showed up in my kitchen. But I will look ahead to the next time I have them.
Still shaking my head. 15 years! How did someone figure that out?!
Have a great weekend!
It's also really interesting because of the amount of foresight and social trust you need to keep the aging going on that long. Lots of companies don't survive 15 years; if it does, a company will probably change CEOs a couple of times in that time; government leadership will have changed a few times over and regulations could change dramatically; and so on.
ReplyDeleteIn Japan, some clays get aged (in very similar conditions to cheddar actually!) for 300 years - you start aging the clay with trust that people over a hundred years after you're dead will take responsibility for it and use it well. (And to your point but with clay, who could possibly have figured out that the clay would work so much better after 300 years that it would be worth it??)
Excellent comments.
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