Tag Archives: Cheese

Would you eat cheese made from your wife’s breast milk?

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No, I wouldn’t. Wives are to be cherished, not treated like cows. I have five daughters and they were all breast-fed.

Breast milk is for babies, not food porn.

Daniel Angerer disagrees.

Gael Greene reported back in March how Angerer (sounds like a name Stephen Colbert made up) was serving customers cheese made from his wife’s breast milk.

Although the New York Health Department forbade the sale of Angerer’s breasty cheese, Greene secured and sampled some of the wares.

“Surprise. It’s not the flavor that shocks me—indeed, it is quite bland, slightly sweet, the mild taste overwhelmed by the accompanying apricot preserves and a sprinkle of paprika. It’s the unexpected texture that’s so off-putting. Strangely soft, bouncy, like panna cotta.”
 

Crazy things to do with cheese

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Amy likes to watch the Amazing Race, which is horrible for many reasons.

On one of the races, they did this cheese-carrying-down-a-hill thing, which seems like running with the bulls, but with cheddar.

They’ve been doing a similar thing in Gloucester, U.K. for the past 200 years in which competitors chase a 7lb wheel of Double Gloucester down a 200-yard incline (see video below). Fans held an unofficial contest and hundreds ignored warnings to attend this year’s event.

Police said there would be no dedicated medical help for casualties and the unofficial contest could jeopardize the chance of an event being held next year under a different format. The contest still attracted about 300 people from as far afield as Holland. (Holland’s really not that far away).

The next day, a ‘cheese wedding cake’ expert was hoping to smash the world record for the largest cheese sculpture with her half-ton cheddar crown.

Cordon Bleu trained chef Tanys Pullin, 46, spent 90 hours crafting it out of a 1,322lb block of Farmhouse Cheddar. She carved the sculpture in the shape of a crown to mark the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation on June 2.

To achieve the Guinness World Record the crown sculpture needed to weigh in excess of 290 kg (101lbs). Tanys’s effort is just awaiting the validation from Guinness adjudicators.

Rules state that the sculpture must be made from a single piece of cheese and is not allowed to be supported by an internal structure.

Cheese sandwiches for you, cafeteria food fighters

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Students at Atlantic City High School were served plain cheese sandwiches for two days as punishment for a cellphone-coordinated food fight that broke out in April.

One parent likened the American cheese between two dry slices of plain white bread to "a prison meal."

That’s not true. My prison food was much better than that.

Senior James Blake, in a statement that could be used to leave him behind and repeat his senior year, said,

"I know it’s food they were throwing around, but some people are allergic to cheese. I can see if they served peanut butter and jelly. But just cheese? It’s ridiculous."

Many schools do not serve peanut-based products because of allergies.

The punishment affects students in the lunch period when the fight broke out, not all three lunch periods.
 

Company will increase testing after caught with listeria-cheese

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Every time a company gets caught with their fingers in the food safety cookie jar, they make pledges to improve food safety procedures. What planet were they living on before? Had they never heard of outbreaks involving similar products? Taking preventative actions? Not making their customers barf?

I’ll stop looking at the world through beer goggles.

CTV News reports a small, organic cheese maker on B.C.’s Saltspring Island is continuing production after a big product recall this week, but with stricter safety measures in place.

Three varieties of Camembert manufactured by Moonstruck Organic Cheese were recalled Monday, after the B.C. Centre for Disease Control discovered the listeria bacteria in one wheel of cheese.

Moonstruck cheesemaker Julia Grace told CTV News that the company has vowed to bump up its safety procedures, and all cheese is now being independently tested before sale.

"It’s going to be a shake up but it’s going to make us a stronger company. Once you’ve had an experience like this, you tighten up your measures more ferociously just to make sure this never happens again," she said.

Quebec cheesemakers complain about inspection, want taxpayers to pay for it

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Being married to someone who teaches French can be useful when I run across a story that has listeria and fromage in it, but can’t make out anything else. Amy thought it was of interest so assigned it to her translation class.

In fall 2008, there was a couple of outbreaks of listeria in cheese in Quebec that led to 38 hospitalizations, of which 13 were pregnant and gave birth prematurely. Two adults died and there were 13 perinatal deaths.?

The Quebec government cracked down, especially on makers of cheese from raw milk.

Last week, Le Soleil reported the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ) is ready to take on the costs of analysis of all artisanal cheeses for one more year in order to ensure they contain no pathogens.

The screening and prevention project was put in place for one year in October 2008 at the end of the listeria crisis. Every month, MAPAQ inspectors visited cheesemakers in order to detect the Listeria monocytogenes, E. coli, Salmonella, and Staphyloccocus aureus. The goal is to reassure consumers of the quality of Québécois cheeses and to guide cheesemakers towards self-testing. The bill was estimated at $1 million.

The artisanal cheesemakers have denounced the omnipresence of inspectors in their premises since the beginning of the listeria crisis, judging that inspectors don’t know their reality and are proving to be excessively zealous.

Reasons not to buy seafood or cheese from a van down by the river

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U. S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped more than 100 pounds of soft Mexican cheese or queso fresco, hidden in false compartments of a vehicle trying to enter the United States across the Bridge of the Americas on Wednesday.

Associated Press notes federal officials permit travelers to import personal quantities of cheese — about 11 pounds per person.

Beetles brought deadly listeria to Prolactal cheese?

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Maybe I’m losing something in translation.

On Sunday, Prolactal of Austria said in a statement that its Quargel cheese, which has killed 8 or 10 people depending on the source, and has sickened dozens, was contaminated with listeria from using cultures “that do not give enough protection," whatever that means.

Today, the Styrian weekly newspaper Woche claimed the company said “a scarab or type of beetle (Dungkäfer or aphodius fimetarius) had been the carrier of the disease. Beetles had climbed through a window left open and contaminated machines used to make the cheese.”

So if making cheese, don’t leave the windows open.

Listeria-laden cheese from Austria kills 8, human error suspected

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Austria’s Linz-based company Prolactal said Sunday contamination of its cheese which caused eight people to die from listeriosis was due to human error during the manufacturing process.

In November 2009, preservatives supposed to prevent the development of listeria in cheese were accidentally replaced twice "by cultures that do not give enough protection", the company said in a statement.

The cheese was recalled on January 23. Eight have died in Austria and Germany from eating the contaminated dairy product.

Fromgirls promote French raw-milk cheese

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Traditional French cheese is apparently as much about scantily-clad young women as it is about camembert, roquefort and brie.

New figures show raw-milk cheeses from rural France, which until the Second World War accounted for nearly all consumption, now make up just seven per cent of those eaten.

The Association Fromages de Terroirs (AFT), which aims to protect France’s traditional cheese culture, is now trying to fight back with a series of posters of “Fromgirls”, displaying women working in the industry.

Veronique Richez-Lerouge, of the AFT, said,

“The French have forgotten what real cheese is like. Buying cheese has become like buying a box of washing powder.”

Globalisation and safety regulations introduced by the European Union have played a part. Pasteurisation – the germ killing process – has helped wipe out many raw-milk cheeses. Workers are also eating more quick snacks at lunchtime, rather than sitting down to meals in traditional restaurants, whose cheese trolleys helped to forge the French national identity.

Prolactal cheese with listeria kills seven, sickens dozens in Austria

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Twelve people have been hospitalised with listeria infections, nine of them having become ill after eating deadly Quargel cheese produced by Styrian firm Prolactal GmbH.

The Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) also reported today that a 57-year-old man became the seventh person to die from eating the tainted cheese. The previously known deaths — four Austrians and two Germans –occurred in 2009.

AGES said that all infections occurred before Prolactal’s tainted cheese was taken off supermarket shelves on January 23.

Health authorities have struggled to link the listeriosis deaths to Prolactal’s cheese, because the cases occurred only sporadically and the disease has a long incubation period.

A Prolactal spokesman said,

"A comprehensive investigation that will determine the cause of the contamination is our highest priority."

The firm said it had received more than 500 calls as of Wednesday last week on the hotline it set up for concerned consumers on 0800-201080.

The relatives of the six people who died are planning to sue Prolactal.

According to a Eurosurveillance report earlier in Feb., approximately 16 tons of Quargel per week are produced by the Austrian manufacturer. Fifty-three per cent of the product is exported to the German market and small amounts to the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. This cheese is made of curdled milk, which ripens after addition of starter cultures for one day at 28°C, and after being sprayed with Brevibacterium linens for another two days at 14°C. The shelf life after packing and marketing is two months.