Cheese, Beautiful Cheese - Be Mine Forever!

Cheese and butter are two of the oldest man-made dairy foods. Unlike butter, however, cheese is a durable food. That is, you can leave it exposed to air for longer periods of time. When covered, cheese will last even longer. For this reason cheese makes a great travel food; armies have used rations of cheese to supply their troops with nutritious protein when on the march.

To say that cheese revolutionized agriculture is not enough. Cheese is a hybrid food, starting out as a protein-rich milk harvested from an animal like a cow, horse, or goat and subsequently being used as a growth foundation for a bacterial culture. Cheese thus passes from animal husbandry to agriculture.

Cheeses range in natural colors from white to light orange. These colorations reveal when the cheeses were produced and about what time of year the milk-producing animals were harvested. The darker the cheese the more vitamin D and other rich nutrients it possesses. Before food dyes were added to cheeses the darker cheeses were more often preferred than lighter "winter cheeses".

We now use cheese to dress up many different kinds of foods inluding pizzas, hamburgers, hot dogs, and crackers (thin baked wafer crisps). But cheeses can still be enjoyed as primary foods. You may find cheeses offered in bulk at buffets and served as Hors d'oeuvres at parties and special events. Cheese-on-a-toothpick is a quick-and-easy recipe that anyone can make.

Cheeses are also used to make rich Mexican dips and French sauces. A healthy queso cheese dip recipe can be used to enhance most proteins and hard carbohydrates; sauces are popular with pastas and certain kinds of meats. Cheese, in fact, complements a wide variety of foods.

Many people learn to make cheese at home as a hobby or passing interest. There was a time, however, when nearly all of our ancestors had to make their own cheeses. As industrial society overtook our food production and distribution many ancient cheese-making recipes vanished. Now scientists will go to great lengths to analyze cheesy residues on ancient pottery in an attempt to determine how their owners made and served cheeses.

Because cheese is derived from milk, which in its natural state is one of nature's most nutritious foods, we will probably always include it in our diet. Cheese is just too useful a food to be discarded, unless we totally displace the natural resources we use to make cheese in the name of efficiency and reducing costs.

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