How can you govern a country when there are 246 types of cheese?”

Cheese 1: A solid food made from the pressed curd of milk
Cheese 2: noun. slang Often meaning an important person

Did you know how the first cheese was made? Of course you don’t because it wasn’t recorded but this is what I think happened.
Its known that wandering nomads in the dessert (who were undoubtedly wearing homemade leather sandals and had sheep because they were the first domesticated animals (which makes me want sheep even more)) put some milk in a container made from the stomach lining of a sheep (which is what rennet was made out of due to the placement of the digestive enzymes) and then went walkabout in their ubber cool homemade sandals – swish swish swash swash- sometime later they had a coagulated milk.
They probably poured the milk into a cup that had a hole in it and accidentally drained out they whey and then decided to cook and then salt the curd. They then probably forgot about it. Being nomads they probably wandered around for months and then came back to their cheese. They were probably hungry (from all that walking) and decided -what the hey!- Ill take a nipple. Since it was from sheep milk it probably had a nice creaminess balanced out with the complexities aging in the dessert gave it and VOILA! The first cheese was made.
The end

That is a delightful story you will hear if you are one of the 25 people that signed up for my cheese class!
There is still room if you would like to hear more……. Better be quick about it though because it is Oct 22- it will be quite the cozy class and very hands on.

So last week I visited DPI who are a very large distributor. They have a national distributor network and the Tualatin branch has thirteen big trucks leave every morning. So I felt a little like Dorothy in her ruby red slippers following the yellow brick road to the Emerald city to meet the Wizard of Oz. The only exception being that instead of going back to Kansas I wanted my cheese to be distributed to a wider range of market places. When I walked up to the doors I was actually shocked to see that they were relatively normal size and was a little weirded out when I walked in and the lady at the front desk already knew who I was. I sat in a room with five other people firing questions rapidly at me. Talking about my cheese is definitely one topic of ease for me and I am happy to report that I did indeed walk away with a new client packet. Now we wait until I tell you the huge list of locations that carry my product.

Weird cheese making or weird cheese makers?
I recently discovered that there is a facility in Sweden that has three milk producing Moose. These Moose milk yields 300 kilograms of cheese a year in which the producers sell for $1,000 per a kilogram. Moose milk can have up to 10.5% butter fat and 21.5% solids! The milk is also said to help recover from diseases which is why a Russian sanatorium serves this delectable beverage to its residents. I have added cheese made from Moose milk to my birthday wish list, and have added a visit to their farm on my to-do list (to undoubtedly be done on my day off aka never).

I have a farmers market in my back yard! Whoopeee! So fun! The Hood River Harvest Fest is going on for the next three days. I have a primo location to the right of the entrance and have a lovely cheery yellow awning up so I am hard to miss. I also have hay bales! and some lovely squash from Sug Gold farm gracing my booth (there my neighborsI)! We will of course be at Hollywood and PSU Saturday and Hillsdale and King on Sunday in addition to the Harvest Fest.


Cheese is milk’s leap toward immortality.
Be well, eat more cheese and put more butter on your toast because winter is coming!

Much love,
Cheese Czarina!!!!!