CHEEEEEEEEEEESE; a review of cheese

As of late, I have been eating slices of cheddar cheese left and right. You know, those kinds that come prepackaged, with the supermarket's generic brand on it. You know, not the bad generic brand, the slightly better generic brand. I am living it up.

Anyway, all this cheese consumption has really got me thinking about how much I love cheese. Which got me thinking about how I would love to write a post about how much I loved cheese. I have finally found a way to justify writing a review of cheese in general, by starting a series of...

GENE'S REVIEWS OF BASIC FOODS

Do you see how I busted out the Times New Roman for this? I'm serious.

This week, I will review

CHEESE

pure, unadulterated cheese

CHEESE. What better name could there be for cheese? Cheese is just so cheesy, it's just, cheese. How could something, that in all rights be incredibly disgusting, be so delicious? I mean, it smells like the worst smelling foot you can really imagine smelling. It kind of tastes like it to. Cheese tastes like feet.

Really consider what cheese is. Basically, it's curdled milk. It's the curd. Acid or vinegar is introduced to a bunch of milk, to really encourage souring and curdling. The liquid whey is removed, so you have a bunch of curds that can be sculpted together into a soft gel.

You can stretch the curd gel, creating cheeses like mozzarella and provolone. These are some amazing cheeses. Mozzarella is given to us Americans mostly in the form of pizza, or string cheese. String cheese, as I am sure you are well aware, is amazing.

a riveting report on the manufacturing of string cheese

You can cheddar your curds as well; the curd is mixed for a longer period of time, and the cut curd is then piled and compacted, to reduce the amount of whey.

You can wash your curds in warm water, creating softer, milder cheeses like Gouda. You can barely process your curds at all, creating cheese like cottage cheese or feta cheese. These curds are often salted.

The more whey left in the curds, the blander the cheese; the more whey that is removed from the curds, the tangier, more fermented and sharp the end result cheese will be. You can ripen curds, using special bacteria to curdle your milk, which will spread throughout the cheese, giving it the ultimate, horrifically delicious taste.

And there is also processed cheese. This is where you take normal cheese and mix it with emulsifiers and non-fermented dairy products to create a grotesque bastardization of cheese. This usually appears in  a perfect square, wastefully and individually wrapped in plastic. I still enjoy this cheese in certain applications.

this is typical of the united states

So, cheese by all rights, should be disgusting. In fact, I am pretty sure that if I was not reared on cheese, and tried it for the first time as an adult, I would be repulsed. Thankfully, that is not the case. I love cheese. I love it melted on things, I love it cold on sandwiches, I love it on crackers, and I love it as a standalone food item.

One time, while being ravenously hungry, I bought a block of cheese to consume outright. I will tell you, you can chomp through about a third of a block of cheddar cheese before it becomes way too overwhelming.

I don't really know what else to say about cheese. This is certainly the most I have ever written about cheese. Read more about cheese at Wikipedia. Enjoy the video, which features the IntelleCurd, a large robot that can produce a lot of cheese in one day.

this video makes me want to cry for the end of the world

And stay tuned! My next review of a basic food will be about applesauce.