![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Californians
Nov. 8th, 2005 09:15 amDo I have to remind you to go vote, especially NO on 73 and 75? I didn't think so.
Nov. 8th, 2005
Old cheese- F is for Feta
Nov. 8th, 2005 02:18 pmI always think we carry too many fetas but people just keep buying them. Greek, French goat French sheep, Bulgarian, Danish, local goat, organic goat, organic cow, all of ‘em sell well.
Feta is a brined cheese. It’s so salty it sometimes comes in actually floating in its buoyant water. The brine can be incredibly vicious, burning the hands and arms of ill-prepared cheese workers. Gloves are needed, especially for the Bulgarian one, to avoid full-on rashes that can last for days. It’s also why most retailers rinse the cheese before selling it.
The Bulgarian, our best seller, recently changed from impressive, dented, quatra-lingual, metal tins to plastic containers. Aesthetically, I find this tragic but the cheese has become much more predictable, and the brine less toxic. Often distributors fetishize unpredictability as proof of non-industrial production. But there’s good and bad unpredictability. The old Bulgarian would alternate between perfectly good salty, sheepy, sharp, crumbly cheese and inedible, mommy-it-burns!, salt-crystalled, eggy wedges that tasted like poison. Unpredictability in a factory-made cheese is a very, very bad sign.
Plus it would often come in topped with a thick gelatinous puddle of seeped cheese and salt which we always referred to as "jizz’. Bulgarians also must be an unusually hirsute people based on the number of "arm" hairs we’ve found over the years. But it’s probably best not to think too long on that. Personally I welcome the Bulgarians into the 1960’s and applaud their use of space-age plastic.
Feta might be the most self-explanatory of all cheese. It’s simple, salty and milky, and anyone can figure out what to do with it. Whether or not we can continue to call it feta though is something of a debate. The Greeks have protested, and lost, repeatedly in the WTO that "feta" should only be used for Greek cheese and everyone else should have to call theirs "brined white cheese". Seems a little late for that. It’s like closing the milking room door after the sheep have left. Or something.
(Edit: the incredibly talented![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anarqueso used the phrase "Incredibly hirsute" to describe the Bulgarian cheesemakers in a post two years ago. She obviously deserves the credit for that phrase since no one had ever called Bulgarians "hirsute" previously. No, seriously, though we all shared the pain of the bulgarian feta cans, she did beat me to describing some of the above. However the brine gave me worse rashes so I believe I should be able to claim all of the above due to my personal anguish.)
Feta is a brined cheese. It’s so salty it sometimes comes in actually floating in its buoyant water. The brine can be incredibly vicious, burning the hands and arms of ill-prepared cheese workers. Gloves are needed, especially for the Bulgarian one, to avoid full-on rashes that can last for days. It’s also why most retailers rinse the cheese before selling it.
The Bulgarian, our best seller, recently changed from impressive, dented, quatra-lingual, metal tins to plastic containers. Aesthetically, I find this tragic but the cheese has become much more predictable, and the brine less toxic. Often distributors fetishize unpredictability as proof of non-industrial production. But there’s good and bad unpredictability. The old Bulgarian would alternate between perfectly good salty, sheepy, sharp, crumbly cheese and inedible, mommy-it-burns!, salt-crystalled, eggy wedges that tasted like poison. Unpredictability in a factory-made cheese is a very, very bad sign.
Plus it would often come in topped with a thick gelatinous puddle of seeped cheese and salt which we always referred to as "jizz’. Bulgarians also must be an unusually hirsute people based on the number of "arm" hairs we’ve found over the years. But it’s probably best not to think too long on that. Personally I welcome the Bulgarians into the 1960’s and applaud their use of space-age plastic.
Feta might be the most self-explanatory of all cheese. It’s simple, salty and milky, and anyone can figure out what to do with it. Whether or not we can continue to call it feta though is something of a debate. The Greeks have protested, and lost, repeatedly in the WTO that "feta" should only be used for Greek cheese and everyone else should have to call theirs "brined white cheese". Seems a little late for that. It’s like closing the milking room door after the sheep have left. Or something.
(Edit: the incredibly talented
anarqueso used the phrase "Incredibly hirsute" to describe the Bulgarian cheesemakers in a post two years ago. She obviously deserves the credit for that phrase since no one had ever called Bulgarians "hirsute" previously. No, seriously, though we all shared the pain of the bulgarian feta cans, she did beat me to describing some of the above. However the brine gave me worse rashes so I believe I should be able to claim all of the above due to my personal anguish.)