For Food For Thought unit one, our project was to create an autobiography of a food used in our culture's foods and describe how it was created, how it moved around the world, and how it came to be used by our families. I was most proud of my Prezi presentation because it very accurately shows cheese and its journey to Wales.
I started my life in a dried sheep’s stomach filled with milk—not a great start. An Arabian merchant accidentally created me when he was traveling in the desert. The lye from the lining of the sheep’s stomach that he was using for a drinking bottle mixed with the milk in the bottle and the hot sun and boom, I was born! The merchant, wanting to share my delicious creaminess sold me to one of his friends who traveled to China with his merchant train and I was soon being duplicated and cherished all over China and the Middle East.
Because I was being enjoyed all over Asia during the 200 A.D.s, merchants used the Silk Road to spread my discovery through to Greece which was the most advanced civilization at the time. The Greeks rejoiced over me, realizing the possibility for cheap, nutritious and delicious food. Greek traders decided to create different kinds of me with new ingredients and invented new recipes using goat and cow’s milk, which was more readily available to them than the previously more popular sheep’s milk. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, and then in turn conquered more of Europe, my delicious discovery was spread even farther. And soon all of the Middle East, Europe and Asia was enjoying me in all my salty, creamy deliciousness.Here on the left is my buddy Dmitri who invented the cheese grater. This made it possible for me to be melted and made me easier to eat. On the top right is me and a couple of my friends at the annual Milk Festival, also called Lupercalia, in Rome. The purpose of this festival was to celebrate the importance of milk and the animals that produce it. When cheese came to the first milk festival, the people were thrilled at the new form of their favorite drink. The last picture is of my cousins and their merchant friend Augustus. He was selling one of the new-fangled treats called saganaki which is a kind of cooked, slightly melted version of me.
One of my favorite places that I was brought to was Wales in Great Britain. My closest friends there are the Shaffers, a Welsh family who all grew up as coal miners and were very poor. Of course, mining is very hard work and they needed affordable sustenance, which they got through me. In fact, William Shaffer said his favorite part of the day was when he got to relax with some welch rarebit, a cheesy dish shown on the right.
So just how am I created? First, dairy farmers in England, Ireland and Wales, milk their sheep, cows or goats and then mix the milk with salt, lye and any other ingredients that they would like, such as dried fruit, spices or herbs. Then, after I am created, most places in England will send it to a company called Neal’s Yard Dairy. Neal’s Yard is unique because they age and ferment their cheese using the ancient process of caving. In this process, the large pieces of me are wrapped in thin cloth and set in hollowed out caves to age and ferment. I will absorb the minerals and healthy bacteria living in the cave through the thin cloth and make me healthier and have more taste. After I have aged the minimum of one month, I can be split up and sold in supermarkets, farmer’s markets and many other places all over the world—including Chicago.
So that’s it, my life story. Pretty gouda, huh?
I started my life in a dried sheep’s stomach filled with milk—not a great start. An Arabian merchant accidentally created me when he was traveling in the desert. The lye from the lining of the sheep’s stomach that he was using for a drinking bottle mixed with the milk in the bottle and the hot sun and boom, I was born! The merchant, wanting to share my delicious creaminess sold me to one of his friends who traveled to China with his merchant train and I was soon being duplicated and cherished all over China and the Middle East.
Because I was being enjoyed all over Asia during the 200 A.D.s, merchants used the Silk Road to spread my discovery through to Greece which was the most advanced civilization at the time. The Greeks rejoiced over me, realizing the possibility for cheap, nutritious and delicious food. Greek traders decided to create different kinds of me with new ingredients and invented new recipes using goat and cow’s milk, which was more readily available to them than the previously more popular sheep’s milk. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, and then in turn conquered more of Europe, my delicious discovery was spread even farther. And soon all of the Middle East, Europe and Asia was enjoying me in all my salty, creamy deliciousness.Here on the left is my buddy Dmitri who invented the cheese grater. This made it possible for me to be melted and made me easier to eat. On the top right is me and a couple of my friends at the annual Milk Festival, also called Lupercalia, in Rome. The purpose of this festival was to celebrate the importance of milk and the animals that produce it. When cheese came to the first milk festival, the people were thrilled at the new form of their favorite drink. The last picture is of my cousins and their merchant friend Augustus. He was selling one of the new-fangled treats called saganaki which is a kind of cooked, slightly melted version of me.
One of my favorite places that I was brought to was Wales in Great Britain. My closest friends there are the Shaffers, a Welsh family who all grew up as coal miners and were very poor. Of course, mining is very hard work and they needed affordable sustenance, which they got through me. In fact, William Shaffer said his favorite part of the day was when he got to relax with some welch rarebit, a cheesy dish shown on the right.
So just how am I created? First, dairy farmers in England, Ireland and Wales, milk their sheep, cows or goats and then mix the milk with salt, lye and any other ingredients that they would like, such as dried fruit, spices or herbs. Then, after I am created, most places in England will send it to a company called Neal’s Yard Dairy. Neal’s Yard is unique because they age and ferment their cheese using the ancient process of caving. In this process, the large pieces of me are wrapped in thin cloth and set in hollowed out caves to age and ferment. I will absorb the minerals and healthy bacteria living in the cave through the thin cloth and make me healthier and have more taste. After I have aged the minimum of one month, I can be split up and sold in supermarkets, farmer’s markets and many other places all over the world—including Chicago.
So that’s it, my life story. Pretty gouda, huh?
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