The Cheese

Recently Bree and I decided to try our hands at the fine art of making our own cheese. People brew their own beer, make their own wine, cure their own meat and change their own oil, so we wanted to see if we could be industrious and craft some cheese in our kitchen. I found it difficult to find the necessary supplies. Even in such a big city, it seems that there isn't a very big demand for the tools of the cheese makers trade. You'd think that there would be more than one or two places in town that sell rennet. Rennet by the way is a solution derived from the stomach lining of a calf. It is essentially made up of enzymes that promote the seperation of the curd from the whey. It's one of those things that makes me wonder how this particular property was ever discovered. Thousands of years ago, maybe some poor herdsman decided to store his milk for the day in a stomach he had lying around and was no doubt terribly alarmed at its consistency when he sat down under a tree to have lunch.

We have made four batches now, none of which were disasters. However, I can't say that any turned out exactly as we had hoped either. One of the easiest cheeses to practice with is mozzarella. It doesn't require pressing, aging or any exotic cultures. We also made a ziegerkase, which is a whey cheese that is pressed and aged in a wine and herb solution.

Since we find making cheese to be exciting and enjoyable we have included it as one of our many possible dreams to choose from on how we will make a living. So when we were in Wisconsin, we decided to visit a working cheese factory and see what we could learn. Widmer's, in the small town of Theresa, offers daily tours and is not too far from Milwaukee. So we made the drive up through the pleasant countryside of southeastern Wisconsin in time to make the 9:30 tour.

Like many old time Wisconsin Cheese factories, it is in a very small building with an attached living quarters upstairs. This wasn't set up to supply Wal-Marts all over the country. But they have been making Brick, Chedder and a couple of other cheeses for generations now and seem to do a great job of it. The bricks they use to press the cheese are still the original bricks they used when the factory was founded several decades ago. They had three large tubs (maybe 15 feet by 5 feet) going with a couple of workers occasionally stiring the contents with rakes.

I can't say we learned a great deal from the presentation. It was pretty elementary. A lot of people take their kids there for a morning activity. And the tour was free along with the samples, so it worked fine for us.

Afterwards we spent a couple hours walking around Theresa. We took took Rachel to the small park down by the river and pushed her in the swing. It was one of the more lonely feeling parks that I've ever been in, but it was very pleasant nevertheless. We later stopped for snacks at the confectioners shop in town. We had deep fried beer battered bratwurst and some deep fried brocally and cheese nuggets along with some mini potato pancakes. All good stuff, but stuff we would not eat every day. Besides, I have yet to see beer battered deep fried brats on any menu here in Denver.

We later met my mom and aunt Myra in Cedarburg for a real lunch at The Anvil Pub and Grill. Our table was on a lovely patio overlooking the river. I hadn't seen Myra in years so it was a great pleasure for me to visit with her. She is my deceased grandmother's older sister and she is a wealth of stories about the old days when they grew up in Clayton, Wisconsin which was very poor and rural at the time. I hope to have the opportunity to get together with her again soon.