Week 10 – Sharp White Cheddar, hosted by Christina standing in front of her fridge

Caution, boring post ahead.

This was one of those weeks where I got kind of lazy about making a cheese night happen. We had one scheduled, but when the date got moved I didn’t really bother trying to make one up. Luckily, late last Thursday, one of my co-workers sent out an email titled “Free cheese!’ – a girl that knows the way to my heart. As it turns out, my co-worker’s mother works for one of the distributors for Darigold and had an excess of sharp and medium cheddar. Even though I came onto the scene at 8:10 the next morning I almost missed out, there were only two left. Luckily, I got my hands on a block on sharp white cheddar, and let me just tell you, even if it’s not a ‘fancy’ cheese, it was the most excited about a cheese I’ve been in a while. No joke – I had the white cheddar with wheat crackers for dinner three night in a row, and not only did I not tire of it, but I found myself excitedly daydreaming about getting go to home and dig back in. For the more part I was a civilized human, cutting portions off and making myself a cheese plate, however, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a few late nights that I found myself standing in the refrigerator glow, gnawing off hunks of cheese at a time. Isn’t that one of the perks of living alone? If not, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Since I was too busy eating the cheese to stop and take a photo, here's a stock image of what it looked like. I'm embarrassed to tell you how many days it took me to get through this, but lets just say it was less than 7.

Founded in 1918, headquarters located in Seattle, United Dairymen's Association (now Darigold) is a co-op, farmer owned, by 500+ dairy farm members of the Northwest Dairy Association that serves the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, North Cal and Utah). The milk produced by the farm’s 1,300 members is manufactured into over 1,500 dairy products including milk, butter, sour cream, and cottage cheese. The name ‘Darigold’ was picked in a contest among the dairy farmers families in 1920, switched back to the name UDA in 1999, and then was rebranded Darigold again in 2006. There’s a long history regarding the United Dairymen's Association (UDA) and the Consolidated Dairy Products Company (CPD) (purchased by Darigold in 1930) but quite frankly, it’s a pretty dull read. If anyone truly wants to know the in's and out's of one dairy farm, feel free to read more about it here: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/darigold-inc-history/

There is something to be said about a simple cheddar cheese. It's just good. Like, holy-hell-food-shouldn't-taste-this-good good. Or like that wildly negligible click-bait article that's circled around, 'Cheese is like Crack!'. Tangent time! The study which these articles cite was about food addiction, meant to demonstrate people's poor eating habits. Cheese ranked in at a whopping 13, of 35 foods, with chocolate (yep), french fries (oh, absolutely) and pizza (fuck yes) at the top spots. So where does the crack come into play? Well, cheese, and all dairy, contain casomorphins- small fragments of protein that breakdown protein of milk, casein. These fragments can bind to receptors for opioid molecules in the brain. So, should we start planning my intervention now? Is it only a matter of time before I'm heating queso on a spoon with a lighter? Or before I need to be restrained as I scream "Just one more cheese curd!"? Well, no. The oversimplified answer is that your intestines are pretty far away from your brain, and its a pretty small amount.

I don't have some wild revelation about the sharp white cheddar to tell you about, I'm sure most of you are well versed in the flavor and thousands of ways it can be and prepared and eaten, what I can answer for you is the question that I had, what makes a white cheddar white? And what I found out is that the correct question should be, what makes a orange cheddar orange? Well, the spoiler alert answer is dye, but the story is interesting. Milk contains the same natural pigment that gives carrots their orange color, obtained from the fresh grass they graze on. In spring and summer, the cow's milk have a deep yellow-orange color, while in the fall and winter, when the cows eat hay, the milk is a much paler color. In the 17th century, cheesemakers realized they could profit by skimming the cream and selling it separately. Unfortunately, the cream hold the yellow-orange pigment, leaving lower-quality, 'skim', white cheese behind. Sneakily, they started to add a bit of dye to their white cheeses, tricking people into thinking they were getting the real deal. The more yellow the color of the cheese, the 'higher quality' the thus higher selling price. Centuries later, we are still dying our cheddars, getting their color from annatto seeds, a tree that grows in tropical regions of Central and South America. The seeds are ground into a red powder and used for coloring foods. The more you know!