Hungry for Cheese?

Take a trip to I Love Cheese! for a cheese guide, recipes, and health facts about American-made cow's-milk cheeses. Yummy stuff!

Another website is Cheese Guide--All About Cheese! which has recipes, how-tos, and descriptions of some cheeses from around the world. This is one of the pages of the Reluctant Gourmet which has lots of cooking information.

Here's a website about making cheese. Called New England Cheesemaking Supply, they sell kits and books and such, but they also have a page of recipes for making some cheeses right on their website.

There's also a good site at Wisconsin Cheese and Dairy Product Information. They have a "cheesecyclopedia", tips for pairing cheeses with various foods and drinks, and recipes.

The Food Network also has a "Cheese Guide" that might be helpful to you. Gourmet Sleuth has recipes for making different kinds of cheese on this page. You can also check out Cheese.com for lots of information about specific cheeses. Wikipedia has an interesting article on "Cheese" as well.

Get out there and try some new kinds of cheese. Try some new recipes. And how about trying your hand at making cheese?

New Superfoods

I found an article at Science Daily about some new superfoods you can add to your diet for good health. Not that they are new foods per se, but science has discovered more about how healthful they are. The article is called "Try Adding These Superfoods to Your Thanksgiving Dinner This Year". It's a little late for Thanksgiving, but try them with your leftovers.

Kiwi is a delicious fruit with a strawberry-like flavor. Apparently, they are also extra healthy! The other foods mentioned are barley, cranberries, kefir (anyone know what this is?), and broccoli sprouts, which I'm not familiar with, but I like broccoli, so I'll probably like them.

I just made a trip over to Wikipedia. Here's what they have to say about Kefir:

Kefir (alternately keefir, kephir, kewra, talai, mudu kekiya, milkkefir, búlgaros) is a fermented milk drink that originated in the Caucasus region. It is prepared by inoculating cow, goat, or sheep's milk with kefir grains. Traditional kefir was made in skin bags that were hung near a doorway, and the bag was knocked by everyone passing through the doorway to help keep the milk and kefir grains well mixed.[1]

Kefir grains are a combination of bacteria and yeasts in a matrix of proteins, lipids, and sugars. This symbiotic matrix forms grains that resemble cauliflower. Today, kefir is becoming increasingly popular due to new research into its health benefits. Many different bacteria and yeasts are found in the kefir grains, which are a complex and highly variable community of micro-organisms.[2]

Traditional kefir is fermented at ambient temperatures, generally overnight. Fermentation of the lactose yields a sour, carbonated, slightly alcoholic beverage, with a consistency similar to thin yogurt[3].

I think I'll pass.

The Food Timeline

A fun and interesting website is The Food Timeline which starts at the very beginning (with water and ice) and travels through the centuries with links to click on for all sorts of cool information.

Down the left side of the screen is a column of "Beginnings" which tells when food items were invented/began to be used. The latest entry is Deep Fried Coca-Cola in 2006. You can click on various words to be taken to websites with more information about that item.

Down the right side of the screen is a column of "Recipes" which leads you to old cookbooks on the web and recipe websites. I've had fun looking into cookbooks from the 1800's. There are lots of others, of course.

Even if you aren't interested in trying some of the recipes, you'll have a lot of fun seeing when different items came into use and learning more about them. Kids can have fun with the site as well. You can have them look up things like Jello and TV dinners or foods from whatever era of history they are studying at the moment.

Scroll clear to the bottom of the screen for information about the website, links to other websites, and how to cite the site in case your kids want to do a report for school about something they found there.

This is one of my favorite websites and I think you'll enjoy it, too.

Gode Cookery

I've mentioned before my love of things medieval. There is a website called Gode Cookery that has tons of pictures and recipes that are adapted to the modern kitchen. Even if you don't try any of those recipes, you'll have fun exploring the site if you are at all interested in medieval times--or perhaps you will become interested in medieval times! Enjoy!