It's the cheese

[Drunk Monk]

[Greg]

Yes, sir. Ms. Villa and her cheese are very popular.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I was just about to send this to you, DM

[thatguy]

Nite cheese?

--tg

[thatguy]

Happy cheese comes from happy milk:

https://cheesemaking.com/pages/good-milk

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

[thatguy]

The edible Monterey article touting the new cheese maker shop in Carmel village came out in June. Since we were near, we went by to check it out. They were closed. The sign on the door read:

Carmel Valley Creamery

BUSINESS HOURS
MONDAY - CLOSED
TUESDAY - CLOSED
WEDNESDAY - CLOSED
THIRSDAY - CLOSED
FRIDAY - CLOSED
SATURDAY - 7:30AM TO 2:30PM
SUNDAY - 7:30AM TO 2:30PM

COFFEE, PASTRIE & BREAD, CHEESE, AND MORE!

Nice to see the four food groups represented, but with those hours, I don't know how they will stay in business. They closed 30min before we got there. When I went up to the door to check the hours, it opened and Sophie the owner, with the cutest French accent introduced herself and said they would be open on Labor Day as well so come on back...

I remembered the post about good cheese and good milk, so I asked what dairy they use and she said it's Schoch! 

So yay, but currently, it isn't much of a cheese shop...

--tg

---

PS: I also saw a post that the Toasted restaurant is up for sale. They are going to stay open until it sells, but it won't be around much longer. They sold their lunch truck a few years ago and are going to move on to other things...

Sad...

[Drunk Monk]

So yay, but currently, it isn't much of a cheese shop...

--tg

But do they have Venezuelan Beaver Cheese?

Looks like I must go back to Paris - see https://musee-fromage-paris.com

[thatguy]

Everlasting night cheese spread

https://gizmodo.com/archaeologists-find-...2000502973

Archaeologists Find World’s Oldest Cheese Smeared on Mummies in China

The odd discovery provides new insights into ancient dairy practices and the origin of kefir.
Isaac Schultz
Published September 25, 2024
The ancient kefir cheeses found at the Xiaohe cemetery. Photo: Yimin Yang

The Guinness Book needs to update its records: the oldest cheese in the world has been found smeared on the heads and necks of 3,600-year-old mummies in China’s Tarim Basin, surpassing the age of a cheese identified in the tomb of an Ancient Egyptian mayor by several hundred years.

The cheese-covered mummies are in the Xiaohe Cemetery, part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The remains—confoundingly buried in boat coffins surrounded by miles of sand dunes—date from 2,000 BCE to around 200 CE.

The cheese on the mummies is kefir cheese, which is made by using yeast and probiotic bacteria to separate curd and whey. Researchers discovered the cheese on the mummies a couple decades ago, and suspected it was a fermented dairy product, but weren’t exactly sure. Now, they’re more confident, as the work describing the extraction of ancient cow and goat DNA from the cheese was published today in Cell.

“This is the oldest known cheese sample ever discovered in the world,” said Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, in a Cell release.

The team also recovered the DNA of microorganisms in the dairy sample—bacterial and fungal species that persist in modern kefir grains. The team was able to take this information and track how ancient kefir cheeses differed in bacterial makeup from modern ones.
A mummy from the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. Photo: Wenying Li

“The results offered new insights into our knowledge of the lifestyle, techno-cultural exchanges, human-microbial interaction of the past populations, and opened a new door for us to explore through microbial genomes how microbiomes interfaced with human biology and culture to influence human health, behavior, and quality of life,” Fu told Gizmodo in an email.

Today, there are two main groups of the Lactobacillus bacteria that come from Russia and Tibet respectively, according to the release. The team found that the DNA in the cemetery cheese is more similar to that of the Tibetan bacterial culture, indicating that kefir cheese did not only come from the North Caucasus mountains in Russia.

“Our observation suggests kefir culture has been maintained in Northwestern China’s Xinjiang region since the Bronze Age,” Fu said.

The cheesy research is the latest insight into the Xiaohe mummies, who continue to surprise scientists even after three millennia. The mummies don’t resemble modern locals to the area, which led various groups of researchers to posit the ancient individuals were from the Black Sea region, or the Iranian Plateau. A 2021 paper found that the Xiaohe mummies were direct descendants of the Ancient North Eurasians, a human population that was widespread during the Pleistocene and whose genetics now persist in some modern populations’ genomes.

Genetic studies of the mummies—and indeed, of the cheesy pastes smeared across them—are revealing a more complex portrait of the unique population.

—tg

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

It ain’t easy being cheesy.

[Drunk Monk]

New funeral goals.

[thatguy]

That's a lot of cheddar!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/travel/fr...index.html

Fraudsters scam famed London cheese company out of $390,000 of cheddar



London CNN  — 
Scammers have stolen more than 24 tons of artisanal cheese from one of Britain’s most famous dairy companies.

London-based Neal’s Yard Dairy revealed it had been the victim of the unusual heist in a post on Instagram last week, where it shared some “difficult news.”
“Neal’s Yard Dairy has been the victim of a theft resulting in the loss of over 22 tonnes (24.25 tons) of clothbound Cheddar,” the post said.

The company said it had been approached by a “fraudulent buyer posing as a legitimate wholesale distributor for a major French retailer.”

The firm – which sells top-quality British and Irish cheeses to stores and restaurants around the world – only found out it had been scammed when it was too late. The cheeses – which were sourced from three different artisanal makers – had been handed over to the fraudsters.

The post continued: “Over 950 wheels of Hafod, Westcombe, and Pitchfork Cheddar were delivered before the fraud was discovered. Despite the significant financial blow, we have honoured our commitment to our small-scale suppliers and paid all three artisan cheesemakers in full.”

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has appealed to his millions of social media followers to keep an eye out for the stolen goods, which he said has cost the firm £300,000 ($390,000).

Oliver said in a video posted on Instagram: “You’re going to think I’m joking but I’m not - there’s been a great cheese robbery.

“Some of the best cheddar cheese in the world has been stolen,” he added.

Describing the theft as a “real shame,” Oliver went on to say: “If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it is probably some wrong’uns.”

Questioning what the thieves might do with “lorryloads of posh cheese,” he said: “Are they going to unpeel it from the cloth, and cut it and grate it and get rid of it in the fast food industry, in the commercial industry? I don’t know – it seems like a really weird thing to nick.”

Tom Calver from Westcombe Dairy – one of the companies that supplied the stolen cheese to Neal’s Yard Dairy – said on Instagram that the crime had been “quite difficult to fathom.”

In a video recorded in front of rows of empty shelves in the dairy, Calver said: “We’re one of three cheesemakers that fulfilled this order to these guys who basically impersonated a wholesaler/customer for quite a large retailer over in France.

“It was a hoax – it was theft, it was fraud.”

Another of the cheesemakers, Trethowan Brothers, which supplied the Pitchfork Cheddar, wrote: “Please keep your ears and eyes peeled for good cheese going cheap and please please also support @nealsyarddairy. Despite this devastating loss, they have been absolutely incredible and have fully (and swiftly) paid us cheesemakers.”
Neal’s Yard Dairy said it is “working with law enforcement authorities to identify the perpetrators of this fraud.”

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told CNN in an email that they were informed of the theft on October 21. The statement added: “Enquiries are ongoing into the circumstances. There has been no arrest.”

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

Morena covered in nacho cheese?

[thatguy]

https://kottke.org/24/11/cheese-crime

Cheese Crime
People like stealing fontina fortunes worth of cheese because it’s easy to sell on the black market and is hard to track. The mascarpone market probably doesn’t even have to be super dark for creamy criminals to launder their pinched cheese through conventional cheddar channels thus allowing the roquefort rapscallions to bathe forever in ill-gotten ricotta riches. Cheese is the most stolen food in the world, so let’s read about some cheese crime, shall we? (Unrelated, cheese fire.)

England, 2024: An arrest was made recently in the case of massive cheese theft suffered by Neal’s Yard Dairy who lost 950 wheels of cheese weighing a total of 48,500 pounds.

Canada, 2024: “B.C. RCMP revealed they’d recently foiled an attempted cheese heist at a Whole Foods in North Vancouver. They’d been on patrol Sept. 29 when they found a cart full of cheese outside the grocery store. A suspect fled on foot, leaving $12,800 worth of cheese behind.”
2015, Italy: “The well-equipped gang of 11 individuals was successfully able to steal some 2,039 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano over the course of roughly two years.”

2015, France: “Under the cover of darkness, a gang of cheese thieves cut through a barbed-wire fence and used a crowbar to break into a Napiot dairy near the Swiss border. They made off with 100 wheels of hard, aged Comté cheese. Dairy farmers there are now considering installing security cameras.”
2017, Wisconsin (3 of them!): “Why would someone steal a truck stocked with thousands of pounds of yellow cheddar? Police and industry experts say it’s all about resale value. The cheese from Marshfield had an estimated retail value of $90,000. The other two stolen loads were worth $70,000 and $46,000 respectively.”

2013, More Wisconsin: “An Illinois man is being charged with trying to steal 42,000 pounds of Muenster cheese from a Wisconsin creamery. Last year we had news of the “mozzarella mafia,” which was smuggling American cheese into Canada and selling it for a third of the price.”
International! “CBC News has learned from numerous police sources that charges are expected soon against a few officers who are alleged to have been involved in the movement of caseloads of cheese from the U.S. to sell to Canadian pizzerias and restaurants.”

This could go on and on. By the way, did you know cheese.com has a whole list with nothin’ on it but different cheeses? You could just look at different cheeses ALL DAY!

Whaddya in for?

--tg

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Cheese Crime.