Stir until the solids float free
I am part of the generation that stopped making and started buying food. My grandparents had no problem with a routine that involved baking bread, collecting milk and eggs, slaughtering the livestock for meals or laying up a supply of preserves. Then, about the time I was born, such things simply stopped. My mother made bread on occasion, and we did have a cow for a short time, but the rest of the routine that went with life in rural PEI was no longer necessary.
Instead, the store provided just about everything that made it to the supper table. I’ve dabbled; baking, cooking up a batch of good turnip and beef stew, laying down yogurt (one way to escape a winter of powdered milk). Some of the other staples of a good Maritime diet have only come from the store, though.
This evening, I watched the mechanics of cheese production. Now, the cheese factory was a standard installation on the Island up until the time I was born; then things were centralized and commercialized, and I’ve only known Cheddar as something wrapped in plastic. My mentor on Dirty Jobs showed that curd production in neither dirty nor difficult, and for a modest outlay of time and energy, you can have enough cheese to guarantee solid arteries in your old age.
Seriously, I had seen cheese made once, on a trip with students to Orwell Corner back in the early ’80s. Here was a small family sized business, laying down a large batch of unpasteurized milk, some culture and some rennet and then some skilled manual effort to produce hundreds of small cheese wheels. I’d like to do that! It is probably not a practical idea, but if anyone offers me a share in the local cheese co-op, I’m in.
In fact, ditto for yogurt, beer, bread, scrambled eggs (is that a commercial effort or a labour of love?). Time to bring the stirring back into the dietary program.
