Let's Talk About Cheese

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Let's Talk About Cheese

By Mark Davis
Dec. 12, 2004

It seems whenever I go to the store for something quick to eat, mostly what I see invariably has the word "cheese" in it. Do you ever wonder about cheese? I wonder about cheese.

Well. Let's talk about cheese. I wonder where it comes from. No, no, no. I know where it comes from; there are about 400 cheeses that originate in France alone, something I probably don't want to talk about. A cheese for every day of the week, including backup cheeses for those days that are holidays. Do we really need ‘backup' cheeses? It seems to me that "cheese" contains the concept of ‘backup,' that backup is in some way intrinsic in the basic nature of cheese. But I digress.

I wonder how cheese originated. What set of circumstances bubbled around that first vat-o- something that caused cheese? I think that it stemmed from a need to preserve milk. That's just a guess, mind you, because as I look into this I find that a definitive origin of cheese doesn't exist. At least not where I've been able to find it. I keep finding phrases such as, "the origin of cheese is shrouded in mist." Isn't that just like a cheese? Shrouded in mist or wax or cheesecloth, in damp caves or clay pots, hidden from the sun in animal intestines or terra foetida or shrouded by the sun itself, directly and drying on plates to collect the cheese sweat, the cheesy exudate.

But I don't find when. When did we happen along to the neat idea of preserving milk?

Well, by most accounts, about 9000 years ago a lot of us were tired of being hunters so tried our hands at being graziers. Some of us noticed calves sucking away at their mother's teats, realized they're feeding, and lo and behold we make a connection: not only do butchered cattle provide food, but living, they also produce milk that we can drink as well.

Okay, so we have milk. But how do you go from milk to cheese? There had to be stages, developments, trials and errors. There had to be experiments. Things had to be done. Certainly, it seems some of us had a lot more leisure time on our hands than our history books allow for. And why was this leisure time spent on developing cheese?

To preserve the milk.

Really?

I ask because 9000 years ago some things had to be simpler. Yes, the world was a new and mysterious place to us, and because it was mostly new to us and so much of it a mystery, and a lethal mystery at that, we had to simplify matters.

Eating disorders, for instance. I doubt there were many. Eat this and you don't die, eat that and you do die, so it's recommended you don't eat this. And usually the food that was killing you was also doing something to your body to indicate your imminent death: you turned different colors or you convulsed, or things normally kept inside your body suddenly and with great surprise leapt out of your body. Once in a while someone may have eaten something that killed them quietly, but sooner or later someone else always made the connection.

So you'd think people back then must have had some idea that if something they ate made them spew, choke, convulse, swell, or drop an organ, they ought not to eat it again. And they probably got better at it; many of them probably reached a point where just through observation they could make a decision about whether to eat this or that.

"Looky here. Going to eat that worm, Bud?"

"Don't think so, Phil."

"Mind if I eat it?"

"Knock yourself out."

"Sure?"

"Go for it."

"Munch-slurp-smack, good worm....uh, hmmm, dang...smack, smack...no, no...no-no-no this...@#*!-upworm...a problem here...smack-smack- smack...don't eat...jeeez I didn't know that could come out lick-smack-smack..."

"Neither did I, Phil."

And so early-Bud makes an important observation. A particular worm caused a nasty and clenching death. New-Bud doesn't need to eat the worm to know this now, and in the future he will stay away from them.

Ever see someone's bodily reaction to spoiled milk? Because the first step in making a cheese is to somehow spoil the milk. And until you've got the art of spoiling down, the controlled rot, you have to start with milk that has spoiled. In fact, the first cheese experience must have been with rotten milk, one way or the other. And doesn't that seem just a bit strange? That a group of Phils were sitting around with no other way to spend their leisure time than to eat spoiled milk? Was it because of this leisure time, this time off from gathering and hunting, that they started eating spoiled milk because they had nothing else to eat?

"Hey, Bud."

"Phil-phil."

"What ya got in the basket?"

"Stuff."

"Food?"

"Yep."

"Like what?"

"Some nuts. Some raisins."

"Ohhh. Uh, can I have some? Kinda hungry, ha ha."

"Want some nuts?"

"Uh, hehe, no, they make me, ha ha, you know..."

"Yeah, seen it."

"Can I have some of those raisins?"

"No. Saving those for Sunday."

"Oh, well. See, Bud, the thing is, I've been working on this whole leisure time thing, and it just doesn't give me time to go out and get stuff."

"Tell you, Phil-phil. Betty forgot that basket of milk there on the rock, see it? Why don't you have that?"

"But it's kinda, hehe, splashed all over the rock, Bud. What am I supposed to do, lick it off? Ha ha ha."

"Guess so. See ya."

What then? How, then? Well, maybe it's no coincidence that as we developed farming we also developed alcohol production, and perhaps the fermentation of grains led eventually to the fermentation of milk. But this, too, is a little strange, yes? Just how drunk would you have to be to not only have the idea of applying this new grain-rot technique to milk, but to following through with it? To drinking the end product? I'm having a hard time picturing this group of drunken Phils, sitting around munching from their cast-off baskets of nuts while they wait for Betty's latest pot of rotten milk to cool so they can drink it — because they're out of the good stuff and just decided to give milk a try?

Besides, until you actually come to the end of the process, until you finally reach the point where the cheese binds, all you have is more rotten milk. More, as in: the milk rots, gets more rotten as time passes, more and more rotten as more and more time passes...Just how long does one wait while something rots before one sticks his finger in it and tastes it? Just how long have you watched your garbage rot, thinking, "Oh, that will get better."? Is this why, for example, it took us so long to figure out to put our dead in the ground, or otherwise away? Because we just let ‘em lie where they fell, watching them rot and rot and turn colors and get smushy and gassy and liquefy, all the time thinking, oh, well, this will get better? I just ask because somehow, yes you laugh, this is what we did with milk to get cheese.

Smack, smack.

Or it was the result of an accident? Many things we take for granted now began this way. Microwave ovens. Peanut butter cups. But cheese? An accident of what? Digestion? Just how skewed do you have to be to smack your lips around something else's intestinal accident?

Somewhere, back then, someone had the idea that if their intestines couldn't handle spoiled milk, then maybe something else's intestines could do a better job. Because a common way to make cheese, that is, to rot milk, is to run it through the intestinal tract of a calf. What was the thinking behind this? What were the circumstances that led to the thinking behind this?

"Phil-ape."

"Hey, Bud. And quit calling me that."

"You're getting a little hairy. And, uh, you smell a bit gamy."

"Still, it's rude."

"Whatever. Why you holding your stomach like that? Bad nut?"

"No. Spoiled milk. Give me a second. Hand me that basket there, hurry, ah, here it comes...abla- yhork pffft smack smack. Rats. No chunks. Looky here, Bud, you see any chunks?"

"Um. In the basket?"

"Yeah, in the basket. Not in that other stuff. I don't see any."

"Yeah, well. Look, Phil-ape, this leisure time, as you call it, is it doing you any good? I ask because..."

"Yes, yes. Looky, Bud, I'm working on something." "And that is?"

"Making hard milk."

"Ah. ‘Hard milk.' Why?"So we can carry it in baskets, Bud."

"Oh. You know what, Phil-ape?"

"What's that, Bud?"

"Well, I've seen you and the other Phils doing this...leisure time thing you're doing here for the last few days, and it doesn't seem that it's treating you guys well. How about this. Take that twice-rotted milk you got there and feed it to that cow over yonder. Have the cow yak it back up. You just sit there, fore or aft of the cow with your little basket, and if you catch yourself some ‘hard milk', why then, bonus! But at least something else is doing the Big Grimace and not you."

"That's a good idea, Bud."

"I was kidding, Phil-ape. No, really, uh, hang on, hey Phil-ape!"

And so it went, for some thousands of years, until we came across cheese. And then we perfected cheese. And we made different types of cheese by using different types of milk and rotting it in different ways: on cave walls, above ground or below, in a more humid environment or less humid, producing less mold or more, until today, when we have a cheese for every day of the week plus holidays. Backup cheeses. Alternate cheeses. A cheese for this wine, a cheese for that cracker; a certain cheese for this type of social event, another for that type of Happening. Such a plethora of cheese. No matter the cheese, be it handy-cheese or serious cheese, easy-cheese or coffee-table cheese, don't be confused. All one needs to do is go to the nearest mall and find the cheese shop, and there you'll find someone to help you select the proper basket of cheese for whatever your occasion.

But nobody knows the origin of cheese. It's still shrouded in mist, in mystery. It's everywhere all the time, it could be the most ubiquitous food in the world, but we don't know how or why it came about.

Cheese mocks us. People can't say the word "cheese" with a straight voice. If we want to say that something is bad or off-center or off- scent, we say it's "cheesy." But we all pretty much take the eating of it seriously. We eat a lot of cheese. Some of us, perhaps most of us, have had times in our lives where we crave it. But we don't know where it came from or how, or why, really. Nine thousand years to today.

"Can I help you, bud?""Sure, uh, Phil..."

"Philippe."

"Okay, then, Phil-epe. Need a good basket of cheese for my wife's whatever. Have something like that?"

"No problem, bud. Over here we've got some great cheese baskets. Just follow me..."

Which got me to wondering. Suppositories...

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About the author Mark Davis: I am currently working on two books: one is a fantasy adventure, and the second is a humorous look at call centers in America.

Email: teljaan@gmail.com

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