Fromology (CHEESE) Part 2 with Kyra James

is cheese. This is part two. So if you have come here first, you skip part one. I just simply cannot abide because you will get to know our esteemed guest and you will know cheese from a foundational level. So start there. Start a Part one. That's the beginning, that's how things go. Now in a moment, we're going to get to Part two, which is just wall to wall listener questions and weirder and creepier, tastier, gorgeous facts about things like cows on boats and vegan options for cheese.

The most violent way to enjoy cheese, The Great Grilled Cheese sandwich debate, how to craft some curds at home. We talk about cheese pricing, squeakycurds, the Moon's composition, the ultimate charcuterie board. We also talk holes, crystals, maggots, oh my. But first, thank you to pay Trends via Patreon dot com slash Ologies, who for a dollar a month can submit questions ahead of time for theologists. And thanks to everyone who's out there wearing ologies merch out in the

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excrete afterwards. Oh and so that sort of process creates a certain texture and flavor profile that's very very specific and very very unique, but very well known also. So yes, I've never had it, but I've learned a lot about it just because people do often ask about it. So great question. Yeah, but it's the larvae that so it's not necessarily maggots, but it's the larvae that are consuming the cheese and creating the super supple texture.

If the maggets are alive, it's also not safe to eat. But that's not the point. And I started with this cursory wiki search, but what I found on Wikipedia was so simple and so delicious, I'd like to serve you up some excerpts verbatim, okay quote. Some who eat the cheese prefer not to ingest the maggots. Those who do not wish to eat them place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots starved for oxygen, writhe, and

jump in the bag, creating a pitter petter sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten. Wikipedia continues. Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves distances of up to fifteen centimeters or six inches. When disturbed, diners hold their hands above

the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping now. Additionally, the Guinness Book of World Records, which named Katzmartu as the most dangerous cheese in the world, notes that if you eat the maggots and they survive your teeth and your stomach, you could be rewarded with things like intestine allegiance and new wormy roommates. Down there, you can also enjoy vomiting, itchy butt and bloody diarrhea. Is it worth it? Apparently?

It tastes intense, which is no surprise, also grassy, it's got a little spicy sting, and an aftertaste that I'm reading can last until the next day if you're lucky. So that's a lot of bang for the buck. Now.

In a twenty twenty one article in The Outline titled the Secret Resistance behind the World's most Dangerous Cheese, this article notes that if you go to Sardinia and you ask about this cheese, people will likely be annoyed because one is illegal, even though people still make and eat it there, and two because tourists ask about it all the time, probably like wanting to make a TikTok about it. Well,

several people want to know. Jacob Stock, Matthew Walker, Storm Wickerbitch, Bonnie m Brutherbird, and Hendrix want to know, in Jacob's words, how do Swiss tree get its holes? Like, girl, is it breathing?

having holes in it. But that's the process of it, and it does create a certain flavor profile as well. It's not just random, it's very intentional.

and then there's the largest ones, called blow holes. And this nineteen seventeen paper stated very confidently that a rapid gas production makes the Nisler holes, and slower gas production must be responsible for the larger holes. Since the nineteen seventeen paper, scientists have known that the holes are caused by trapped gases. However, However, a couple decades ago, the holes started disappearing. What is this? Is this climate change? Is this unhappy cows? Did we go down the wrong

path in a simulation? Is there some dark magic wielded by a lacked, intolerant warlock? What happened to the holes? Well, in twenty fifteen, some fresh knowledge bubbled of the surface in a paper titled Mechanism and Control of the Eye Formation in Cheese, and that reminded us that, yes, the ie formation in Swiss type cheese is mainly the result of acid fermentation, which creates a few substances including CO

two gas bubbles. Now, usually formologists do these cheese ie exams by quote listening to the type of sound made while tapping with a special hammer on the surface of the cheese loaf. This study, however, this twenty fifteen study used ultrasounds and other medical imaging equipment to find out what causes the quantity and the size of the bubbles, and they found out its trace amounts of hay in

the milk. So the eyes in m Intoller type cheeses were disappearing because the milk was being collected through more modern means, i e. Not someone in a sun dress in braids with an open pail, which would get specks of hay kind of dancing amid the way. So the paper concludes that it's likely that trace amounts of hay dust entering in raw milk have always been the natural source of the eye nuclei which trigger the start of eye formation in the cheese, and just recently this just

was decided. There was all this fierce debate from traditionalists and industrialists, and Switzerland has decided to allow the addition of hay flour powder to its cheeses. That way they can keep harvesting the milk with modern equipment, but also add a little hay dust in there to get the bubbles back. And it's also worth noting that the holes in this type of cheese for a long time were considered bad and unsightly. They were a bug and not a feature. But over the centuries, this holy look of

ementol cheese became representative of all cheese itself. So remember when you see an emintolerches just serving with those stunning eyes, Remember that that was once seed is bad and now it's iconic. What's the emoji for cheese? Yeah, bitch the emin taller? Okay, dead ass. Side note, we have a two part episode all about how they decide on emochiese and it's called Curiology. And July seventeenth is World Emoji Day because the little calendar emoji says July seventeenth. We'll

link that in the show notes. But let's take a quick detour from dusty buckets to cheese that needs no cows. Dozens and dozens if you wanted to know so many people I don't even know if I can list all their names. Asked about vegan cheese Jerry Brown, first time question asker. I wanted to know does nut cheese use the same bacteria as dairy cheese and is that technically cheese? Lauren Cooper, This is going to be a divisive question. I want to know why does vegan cheese suck so much?

Other people think it's it's good. I'm myself a diet cheese I think that melts great. If you've got a vegan pizza with diet cheese, I'm all for it.

create the final product. There are vegan cheeses that go through fermentation, well not fermentation exactly, but where you can actually have a rind on the cheese where you have certain flair profiles in the cheese. Like they have blue vegan cheese, they have cheddar vegan cheeses. They're adding certain things to those products that are the same exact ingredients that you'd add to cheese. So in that respect, they're

very similar. But there's no milk, and so for me, without having dairy milk included, it's not a fermented milk products, so therefore it's not cheese.

is gross. And it's like, well, it's not supposed to be the same thing. It's own product. So I think we kind of do a disservice by naming these things and putting them in the same categories, because it doesn't allow that product to shine fully on its own.

making nachos that you will love in the future. And that person is probably using the empirical Schreiber multability test, which is an actual thing which puts samples of cheese in an oven on a ringed Petrie dish to see just what kind of spread each cheese has. And yeah, for me personally, I find Dia cheese Daiya Dia cheese. Those tend to be the stretchiest, meltius gooiest. I prefer them over regular shredded cheeses. I think that they're better.

But other favorite brands I've seen on plant based forums are Chow Creamery and one called Miokos Mazzarella, which is like a liquid. It comes in a bottle. I guess just trust the process. Violife is said to make a good fata cheese and for blue cheese crumbles. I've heard

good things about Follow your Heart. Now, if you have some plant based friends, or maybe some vegan curious ones or anyone, maybe you could have like a byo VC bring your own vegan cheese pizza party so everyone brings one and then you can sample a lot without spending too much on any one particular one. But if you're like, take me back to the cows. This next topic was

asked by Lisa Gorman and Taylor, among others. Many people had shuddar questions Abby, Alice Ruben, Meghan Walker, Rebecca first time question asker, and Rachel Glaza first time question asker wanted to know. Abby asked, I love sharp cheddar? What makes it and other similar cheeses sharp? And why is it so much better than mild cheeses? And Meghan Walker wanted to know why is so much cheddar orange?

it's aged at least twelve months. So, in thinking about it from a cheesemonger perspective, the older the cheddar is, the stronger the flavor will be. So you have less moisture more acidity. So oftentimes sharpness is associated with being acidic or like you know, hitting the back of your throat kind of thing. So the older the cheddar is, the more sharpness or the more intensity you'll find it has. Now cheddars, if they're orange, they've been dyed with natural

ingredient called a nato. A nato is a seed. It's similar to tumeric in some ways in that it provides a lot of color but not a lot of flavor to foods, and so when you add a nato to cheese, it creates the orange color without adding any flavor. A lot of times a nato was throughout history added to create distinctions between cheese types so that you can identify it as a certain cheese, like, oh, that's what you

call it because it's orange. Other cheeses are dyed orange naturally, like a gouda will be a dark orange just because of time during the aging process, it'll actually get darker in color. So a lot of times the darkness is natural. Cheddars and goudhas specifically have a lot of yellow tones in them, and that comes from what the animals are eating. So the more grass and animal eats, the more yellow the cheese will be. Oh for cow and sheep smoke cheeses.

So oftentimes if you see a dark yellow cheese, you know that the animal has been eating grass. So that's one another factor. But yeah, they're dyed orange using a nato seed.

Sureley lose an Ombo. First time question asker Maya, Josh kent Ley, Rachel Guthrie Michael Newman, Kate Radford, Bradley Ludwig and Jordan Irons wanted to know the crystals. Rachel asked what are the crystals? And sharper and harder cheeses? Yeah, how old does it have to be? And Maya is a first time question asker and a Wisconsin cheesehead and they say they just had a delightful piece of age Guda and wondered what makes those magical little crystals? Why are they the most delicious?

so they've become little crunchy bites in your cheese. They often taste saltier, but that's just the concentrated flavor of the proteins. There's also crystals sometimes on the x tiar of cheeses, like block cheddars, we'll often have what we call calcium lactate, which is an amino acid that is formed on the outside of cheddars that has a little bit of a crystallized texture as well that some people love, some people don't like. But you can always just scrape

it off for the calcium lactatee. But to get crystals, I mean, the cheese has to be aged, you know, six months or so. If you're making an age guda, they probably will take a few more months to get two crystallized textures. But cheddars you might have some crystals in like at like six months to eight months.

the sweet spot for melting cheese. So in terms of what that means for you, the person who doesn't know what moisture or cidity levels are in cheese, look for things that are at that sort of malleable texture, sort of wiggily or you can like bendable or appliable that are super hard are not going to have a lot of moisture in them, so they're going to take a lot longer to melt. And things with high acidity like Pinier Hallomi that are on the other end of the

spectrum are not going to melt. Their proteins are sort of set up in a different way, so the proteins are a lot tighter together when they're high in acid, and so that the proteins don't want to melt. They're gonna want to stick together and keep that strong bond they have. So asking cheesemonger is the best recommendation I can give. But if you're at the store looking for cheeses that melt, well, look for things that are sort of semi firm, or that you can bend, or that

you can sort of press your finger into. Those cheese will melt really well.

call whatever whatever, even though it's not pure parmesan. Also, check the back of that cheese powder and you will probably see the ingredient cellulose fiber, which is just wood pulp. They just add sawdust in there to prevent caking, but also they do it to sell you some sawdust because it's probably cheaper than cheese. Now, if that is the only parmesan cheese that you've ever had, you're me until my late twenties. But it turns out that Parmesano reggiano

is the actual cheese. It's worth the crumble. But back to those softer, meltier cheeses. Hang on to your lactose tabs. For a very contentious question here, Alice Ruben and Jason Frere wanted to know. Jason asked, what cheese should I use for the best grilled cheese sandwich or in your mind if you had your perfect grilled cheese. This can be absolutely subjective from your perspective. Best grilled cheese. Is it a sour dough? Is it a wee bread? Is it a rye? What's your dream grilled cheese?

butter on the outside of the bread. And then yeah, that would probably be my ideal cheese. I like the nuttiness of Alpine cheeses. They're super nutty and they have some sweetness, so those would be my choices.

and David wanted to know. Alice asked, why doesn't my homemade mac and cheese taste cheesy? And David wanted to know. They've made a cheese sauce that tasted very grainy. Best way to make a good mac and cheese that tastes cheesy and not just milky.

nice cheese pull. Having a mixture of cheese is also having some that have more pungency, like things that might seem too strong for mac and cheese might be just the thing because when it melts, the enzymes and proteins are breaking down, so the flavor changes a bit, so it might not be as pungent once you melt it

into the cheese. And then having something mild, so having something on the stronger side like an aged Alpine style cheese, and then having something softer, you know, like a mozzarella or something on that you know, super super creamy.

sort of high moisture, low acid that I mentioned. If it was a harder cheese, you might have a more granular texture once it melts, So that could be the reason why if the cheese was too aged or not enough moisture, that can make your cheese, your mac and cheese grainy.

quick cheese. All you need is some lemon juice, like we mentioned in the beginning, and you can make cheese. So you'd heat the milk to a certain temperature, you'd add the lemon juice to it, and then it will separate, it'll make a gel, and then you have to cut the curds, cut the solid mass that it's become and then you drain out the way and you have fresh cheese. Ha done, yes, And then add salt of course.

are aged longer can be more expensive. So if they're over a year old, that means that for over a year, some human somewhere was taking care of this cheese, and that human needs to be paid for for the work and the stoaree to the cheese, So all those things will add up over time. Smaller producers will also probably

be some of the more expensive cheeses. Now, if you don't know your producers, you might not know that Blakesvielle Creamery is a small producer out of Wisconsin, but it is, and so therefore the cheese might be a different price than sort of some other larger producers just because of how supply and demand works in that respect. So educating yourself on where the cheese is coming from, you know, doing a quick Google search on your phone. If you're like,

well this seems really expensive, check it out. See if it's something that you're interested in learning more about and trying. And then quantity. Oftentimes people buy cheese with their eyes and not with the reality that you are you really gonna eat all that cheese, And so if you buy a big hunk of it, it's going to be more expensive than a small piece. You might be nervous to

talk to a manger. But if there's only a huge piece of cheese and you want half of it, just ask them to cut it in half for you, and they should be able to do that for you.

mid eighteen hundreds. There was a guy named Winthrop Chenery from Massachusetts and he heard that a ship had a cow on board so the sailors could have milk. And Winthrop was like, whatever that is, I want one of them. Give me one of them cows. And now when you drive past black and white bovines, you point in say cows. And some people asked about ethics and cheese. Stacy cow Sam both first time question askers wanted to know Stacy asked. When they were in grad school, they took a dairy class.

They visited dairies around western Pennsylvania and they were shocked at the differences. Some allowed calves to stay with mom, some were immediately taken away. What's the best way in terms of an animal's experience to enjoy cheese? Is it different animals?

then the moms still lactating. So cals specifically will lactate for a year, whereas the calves won't consume the milk for the entire year they're moved to grass. And so then you have this excess milk that has nowhere to go, and so since it's so nutrous, you make cheese out of it. And that's sort of the beginnings of cheesemaking. In a nutshell, they had too much milk, so they started making cheese.

It is a two hundred yard off ramp into hell at a forty five degree average angle, but some estimates have the initial drop sixty degrees. That is so steep. Nearly every year, for what's estimated may have been hundreds of years, people who have no amigdalas vault themselves down to death grade in pursuit of a single wheel of double Gloucester cheese. And what I'm guessing is respect and

lifelong orthopedic issues. I don't know what they're after, but I think that cheese costs like fifty bucks, so it's clearly not just the cheese. But when the cheese falls, when it's released and it starts to roll, everyone's lined up waiting to chase it. It looks like if you had a bunch of tiny people on a green bedspread

and then you suddenly shook the bedspread. In all of those ty people somer salted violently or simply tumbled skull over ankle for nearly two football fields until a line of rugby dudes at the bottom caught their charging, bloodied, injured bodies. Whoever gets the wheel is not the spectacle. Someone gets the wheel, nobody cares. They are a footnote. But what we are here to see is a live human bodies flying like rag dolls and getting their bones disjointed.

which pops the instant the cheese wheel. Rolls of spectators catch this stuff from every angle and it just simply does not feel real. Evidently it didn't feel real for that one guy this year, because by some miracle of cheese, that man survived, and he told people he was on mushrooms and he didn't feel a thing. Now, the Wikipedia for this event, and again another gem I just have to quote verbatim for you. Whoever is updating Wikipedia pages for cheese is really at the top of their game.

But this says about this cheese competition that Canadian competitor Delaney Irving won the Ladies Race in twenty twenty three despite finishing unconscious and only learning of her victory in the medical enclosure. So the neighborhood around Cooper's Hill, it gets jammed with tourists, cell phones strained for a glimpse, and ambulances are clogging the streets to take people away every year. The lucky ones that don't ride away in the metavac chopper that's standing by. And this tells me

two things. Okay, people love cheese and countries with nationalized healthcare systems produce braver individuals. Now, if this is giving you the itch to fling yourself down a mountain for the glory of the wheel, please first listen to our episodes. We have one on concussions and traumatic brain injury, as well as one about why your knees hurt and why you don't want to have to get surgery on them.

of people had questions about American cheese. Kiara and H wanted to know your opinions on it TV thirty three. Let's settle this once and for all. And I know we covered this a little bit in part one, but Sarah burg Culter I thought had a great question first time, ask her why is American cheese so good on burgers but so crappy everywhere else? What is it about American cheese? Why is it? Why is American cheese.

a cheese product. It's its own thing. I eate it on burgers. I'll eat American cheese in certain situations because it tastes really good, it melts really well. It's great on a girl cheese, it's great anywhere it's melted. But it's very different than artisans, especially made cheeses that are similar in style to that make process.

Have you heard of this? I don't know where this story came from, but I was talking to my nail tech Shelby, who I love, and she was like, I said, I'm interviewing a cheese expert, and she said, that is so exciting. Are there cheese caves under the United States? And I was like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but I need to ask about this. What's going on.

We're gonna get to those in just a moment, but first, let's donate to a cause of the ologists choosing And this week Kira chose two each part of the Cheese Duo episode, and they are the Cheese Culture Coalition, which works to create a more equitable and inclusive cheese industry for Black, Indigenous, and people of color through education and grant programs and via Cheese Culturecoalition dot org you can find out more about their programs, you can donate, or

you can even fill out a form to volunteer on their committees or their fundraisers. And the second donation is going to Team UPS Building Schools in Kenya, which Kira says is a great organization run by a dear friend of hers, and they work to ensure that Kenyan children receive the education they need and provide communities with easily accessible, clean and sustainable water resources and you can find out more about them or donate at go team up dot org.

So thank you to sponsors of the show for making those donations possible.

Every Little helps available at most stores, prices very in express.

I didn't know about the caves or the timeline. So the long story less long is that in the nineteen seventies, the Carter administration helped out the dairy farmers in a recession by buying up their milk when they made too much. That way, the market wouldn't be flooded with so much milk that the price is dropped and the farmers went broke. So the government bought a bunch of the milk. How

do you store millions of dollars with the milk? You make processed, velvety, tasty cheese and then you put it in temperature controlled limestone quarries. So you have to sitting around perfect for stashing a bunch of cheese. So over the years, cheese has gone into storage in case of natural disasters or sudden food scarcity. There's this big stock of cheese. But then so much cheese started to pile up it. In the early nineteen eighties, President Ronald Reagan said,

let's give some of this cheese away. And still there's this in and out of buying up excess dairy and keeping it a government cheese, and the government cheese gets handed out to nonprofits and food banks and folks on welfare, food assistants, and elderly populations. For now, at least it

has been. And literally, as I typed this up, as I'm about to put this episode out, tonight news broke that the Trump administration has been sitting on a store of five hundred metric tons of food meant for starving children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but instead of distributing it to the starving children, the Trump administration has been doing nothing with it. And now it's about to expire this week and so they'll simply incinerate it. I'm not sure

if this is making America great again. As even Ronald Reagan, the guy who cut more than twenty two billion dollars from social welfare programs. Was like, let's give out some free cheese to people who need it, but no, we have now reached an era of we could feed starving children, but instead let's just burn the food and the children anyway. Cheese, so Daniel Schmanel, Lizzie Martinez, Sarah Donn and Eric Easton, Mike Karen h was Gonsnight, Debbie Powers a softly boiled egg.

Eileen Wang and Chelsea and her dog Charlie and Felipe Jimenez, in their words, asked what's the weirdest but successful pairing you've tried with cheese? Some people asked about cheese pairings. Donnie need Him from New Zealand said best things to eat with cheese or more unusual but yummy. In New Zealand we do a thing called mouse traps, which is bread grilled, spread with marmite, which is a yeast extract,

topped with cheese and grilled again. Brian Shenanigan said, pineapple and feta together are epic pizza toppings and you will thank me later for it. Eileen Wang Samwhi's cheese puff. Both asked thoughts on cheese and apple pie, any cheese pairings that you are staunchly against or that you are an advocate for.

they're there because they go really well with cheese. So those are my go to, Like when I'm just snacking, oftentimes it's just honey and cheese. I love honey and it goes with all types of cheese, and there's all types of honey too. Unusual pairings for me. Chocolate isn't super unusual, but people haven't done it before. But chocolate and cheese go really well together, specifically dark chocolate and blue cheese. Oh what again, looking at the saltiness and

cheese and the sweetness in the dark chocolate. But then there's bitterness in the dark chocolate, and salt mitigates the presence of bitterness and foods. So when you add the saltiness to the bitterness, it makes the dark chocolate and more fudgy, and it just creates this really fun experience where you're having like a fudge and cheese situation.

I mean, we're doing a wine episode, and I know that you also advocate for like sober cheese tastings, which I think is awesome, but pairings for beverages and.

Looking too fresh cheeses or soft ripe and cheeses like a goat smoke cheese, and like a white wine like from France, like a sanset or a lighter grape, and then looking to bolder cheeses with boulder wines or beer, so blue cheeses, goudas, AIGs, cheddars, things that have more robust flavor profiles can handle bigger flavored beverages, so you can do a dark beer or red wine, someone that has more going on because they can hold their own

against one another. Other beverages that go well with cheese. Kambucha is one that I go to. It's not your go to beverage, but the vinegar and the subtle sweetness actually pairs really nicely with cheeses. Oftentimes, ones that have more of a buttery texture to them could go really nicely with cheese. But I love pairing cheese with tea. I think that that is a great combination. I don't do it enough, but that's definitely like a hot tea and a cheese is very very They go really well together.

it real or is it just potentially lethal? Hippie drek, they asked, So in part one we did discuss that people say raw milk cheese has a highly superior curd texture by some accounts, but many patrons such as Fairy Jessa, Tracy Woodard, Aaron Wood, Andy Pepper, and David wanted to know the scoop. So let's jump into it. Raw cheese. Is it better or is it hype?

into our bodies. So when you pasteurize milk, you heat it to a certain temperature for a certain period of time, and that kills off the bacteria, both the good bacteria and the bad bacteria. So when you're looking at the camp of mangers and cheese professionals who only go with raw milk then they're looking at that from the perspective of it's killing off the good bacteria and therefore it's

killing off the flavor. So the natural flavors and the cheese are being pasteurized or removed, and then when you pasteurize the milk you have to add everything back to it. You can still have a full flavored cheese when it's pasteurized. You're just adding the cultures and the bacterias back to the kurds after you've pasteurized the milk. So I don't think that there's a right or wrong way to be, but I think having a full understanding of what pasturization

is is the best way forward. Because in America, we can't have anything aged under sixty days. That's raw milk. Anything that's made with raw milk has to be aged more than sixty days for us to consume it in America. And that's because the f thinks that on day sixty one everything is fixed. So there's some you know, I hear the hippie and I hear the government interaction, but there is some safety measures that are included with it.

But some things are just not super accurate, and so the F day is a little bit outdated in the pasturization rules, and hopefully we'll get that changed soon, but for now, just kind of learn to accept it and learn to appreciate the cheese that are past drives for what they are.

seventy celsius to kill it off. But yeah, some of the tiny tasty organisms also perish, and so you get a cheese that's safer, it's more reliable, but it's maybe lacking in some of the bacterial chaos that some fromage of files really tend to prefer. But from stinky to fresh, let's talk about the squeakiest cheese. So Patron's Don w Sarah King Canadian Alia Meyers all echoed Sean O'shay's request

to quote, tell me something about cheese curds. In their words, I can't believe I didn't ask the sooner Lily, Megan Moker, Aaron Danny Kirby, Lauren Cooper, Ashley Doing are a victor and several other people need to know. Lily ask why are fresh cheese curds the best? And what makes them squeak?

just a thing of freshness. It doesn't mean that you can't eat the curds anymore if they're they're not squeaking. But oftentimes people prefer squeaky curds over other curds, and oftentimes that's because they're more fresh.

So if you have that congratulations, you're not alone. But yeah, fresh cheese curds they have protein and calcium structure, and it rubs on your tooth enamel and it sounds like you're chewing on a bike tire. Now, if you've never had that sensation and you need to, you can ask your cheesemonger to try to hook you up with the freshest stuff, or you can gather your family and all

of your belongings and move to Wisconsin. The choice is yours. Also, speaking of your local manger, I spoke of my favor Rue, and if you ever pop in a milk farm in Eagle Rock in LA, you can tell them the ologies sencha. But speaking of Rue, I asked them what their favorite cheese is and they said, hmm. There are way too many beautiful cheeses in the world for me to pick a favorite. But here's my overly worthy thoughts on a great cheese to enjoy with some cherries or pluots during

stone fruit season. So Rue says. Osu Arati is a style of firm sheep's milk cheese. And don't worry about spelling that. We linked it on our website. It starts with an oss don't worry about it, but it's made exclusively in the Pyrenees, and they wish that it had way better name recognition in the States, so again we'll link it. It's o ssau dash ir At y Okay, so that's one reason it doesn't have name recognition because

what are those letters. Either way, Rue says that they usually try to recommend this one to people who know that they like manchego and they want to try something a little different because it's so good. And Rue says that O su Arati tastes like brown butter and toasted hazelnuts, but some wheels are very floral on the nose. Others have a really savory, meaty mommy thing going on. And they said it's a good snacking cheese and it's great

melted in a caesadia or a burger. And at milk farm in La Rue says it sometimes when they're really lucky, they'll get a wheel of asu erati Steve and the Steve or Estiva. Not sure it means. Wheels are made in the summer months because the farmers take their herds up to the higher mountain pastures where they can kind of beat the heat, and they can chow down on tasty summer flora. Rue says, so that Esteve or Stibay wheels tend to be intensely herbal in a really fun way,

but they're really rare to find. And with that story, Ru also introduced me to the word estiv meaning summer. And there's this rare derivative estivation which carries the same idea as summering. And Rue provided me with the example every year Elizabeth and I estivate in the Hamptons, said no one ever, Rue says, so, Rue, thank you for essentially emailing me back and aside for this episode that I didn't even have to write or research. So now I know I want to get some stone fruit, and

I want to try some cheese. It tastes like brown butter and nuts and flowers and it's called osu errati. And also great confirmation that cheesemongers have wonderful stories and everyone should have a friend who's a cheesemonger.

So that's why when people eat cheese, they're actually having a chemical reaction where their dopamine is released and they're feeling happier and more. Go lucky if you will.

What are we going for?

one hard. If it's for a bigger gathering and you get you know, four to five cheeses, then look for different textures, different colors, maybe one that has flavor or smoke added to it. And then from there look to how you'd pair it. So what do you want to eat with the cheese? And put that on the board. You can't really mess it up. But the rules of thumb are something crunchy, something sweet, something savory, something pickled.

cheese shop near you, Whole Foods. They have certified cheese professionals. They're actually one of the biggest supporters of the certification program that is offered, so a lot of their employees become certified. So if you don't see them back there, there's someone there. They can help you. So definitely just ask for support in that way or reach out to me.

in a cheese shop. You have to take care of these cheeses every day and clean them and make sure every surface is always clean. And in between your cheese, you have to clean your surfaces, clean your knives. So there's lots of sanitation that goes into cheese as a profession. So that's probably the least favorite thing that I have to do.

That just gives a little bit extra protection. But you still want to have some airflow just so because again the cheese is alive, you don't want to suffocate it when things are wrapped in plastic, they're actually being suffocated, so we do it for esthetic reasons more than the health of the cheese. So definitely want to get rid of the plastic if you can. And then number one will always be cheese paper. So if you want to

buy a cheese paper, you can buy it online. Formaticum is a great company that you can buy cheese paper from other companies as well that you can find or beeswax is another one. So beeswax, the lines of beeswax so you can buy are great for cheese as well.

over here. But favorite thing about being a certified cheese professional an aphromologist.

animals and people make it all worth it. And then I get to know them as my family and friends, and so that just intensifies the feeling of joy and the happiness I get to feel when I'm selling the cheeses or when I'm tasting cheese with people for the first time and they're like, Wow, this is amazing. That just puts me over the moon. Nothing makes me more happy than just sharing the love of cheese with others.

you can follow her via ownyrfunk dot com. And donations went to the Cheese Culture Coalition and Team Ups building schools in Kenya, and we've got those linked in the show notes as well. We are at Ologies on Instagram and Blue Sky. I'm at Ali Ward on both. If you need any kid friendly episodes, you can check out Smologies anywhere you get podcasts. Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you patrons of the show for all of your great questions that you submitted via Patreon

dot com, slash Ologies. Aaron Talbert admin's Orologies podcast based group. Aveleen Mallick makes our professional transcripts. Noel Dilworth arranges time as a scheduling producer. Susan Hale as our managing manger and director of all Thingsologies. Editors are Machcedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and lead editor of this One with a sharp brain but a mild manner is Jake Chafy. Nick

Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around to the very very end of the episode, I tell you a secret and I will make this one short because I feel like my sides were long. But this is only You're only going to hear about this if you maybe live in La. But there is a bar called Shimsham. My friend Aubrey had her birthday party there and I went there and Number one, they have some sort of slushy situation with a beverage which is tasty.

But the part that surprised me is Shimsham has a photo booth and it is some of the best lighting I have ever seen anyone in. I don't know what kind of magic their photo booth has. I don't know how their ring light is set up. I don't understand what's going on. But we were like, how does everyone look so glowing and flawless in this? And sure enough I looked it up and people are like, if you get yourself to Shimsham, make sure to take some glam shots in that photo booth. I don't know how they

do it. Shipsham. If you're listening, email me what do you have going on? Okay, bye bye.