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Facts

10 Amazing Facts About Cheese You Need to Know

10 Jul 2020 By admin

As a Taste of Home editor living in Wisconsin, it’s safe to say I’m a big fan of cheese. Fried cheese curds at a microbrewery, a generous sprinkling of pecorino Romano on a plate of spaghetti, or a wine and cheese night with the girls…I love it all. Recently I took a trip to Door County (that long peninsula in Wisconsin jutting into Lake Michigan), visiting cheese factories and sampling artisan cheeses from across America’s Dairyland. I picked up some pretty fascinating facts that changed the way I think about cheese. Read on!

1. Cheese was created over 4,000 years ago-by accident

As a Taste of Home editor living in Wisconsin, it’s safe to say I’m a big fan of cheese. Fried cheese curds at a microbrewery, a generous sprinkling of pecorino Romano on a plate of spaghetti, or a wine and cheese night with the girls…I love it all. Recently I took a trip to Door County (that long peninsula in Wisconsin jutting into Lake Michigan), visiting cheese factories and sampling artisan cheeses from across America’s Dairyland. I picked up some pretty fascinating facts that changed the way I think about cheese. Read on!

1. Cheese was created over 4,000 years ago-by accident

Amazingly, one of our favorite foods might never have been discovered if it weren’t for a mistake. Legend has it the first cheese was created accidentally, by storing milk in a container lined with an animal’s stomach. An enzyme from the stomach caused the milk to separate into liquid (whey) and solids (curd). The curd? That’s cheese. (Want to learn to make cheese at home?

Amazingly, one of our favorite foods might never have been discovered if it weren’t for a mistake. Legend has it the first cheese was created accidentally, by storing milk in a container lined with an animal’s stomach. An enzyme from the stomach caused the milk to separate into liquid (whey) and solids (curd). The curd? That’s cheese. (Want to learn to make cheese at home?

2. It takes 10 pounds of milk to make just 1 pound of cheese.

That’s right-and the best way to ensure that milk turns into delicious cheese is to make sure dairy cows eat a healthy diet. Cows eat about 90 pounds of feed every day and produce 2,604 gallons of milk per year. That can make a lot of cheese!

3. Over 25% of cheese in the U.S. is made in Wisconsin (the rest comes mostly from California, Idaho and New York). More than half the nation’s artisan cheese is made in Wisconsin.

Listen, there’s a reason we call ourselves cheeseheads. Not only does Wisconsin make a LOT of cheese, but our farmers make GOOD cheese. The Dairy State wins over half the prizes at the U.S. Championship Cheese Contest each year. (Yes, that’s a thing; yes, I want to go, too.) Wisco cheesemakers have won one-third of the honors at the World Championship Cheese Contest, a competition that’s been around since the 1950s.

4. Some cheeses are illegal in the United States.

Because of safety concerns related to bacteria, the FDA has banned certain cheeses from entering the United States. These include cheeses made with raw milk and aged under 60 days, including Brie de Meaux, Reblochon, Valencay, Epoisses, Roquefort and Camembert de Normandie. You’ll have to travel to France to indulge in these specialty cheeses. (Until then, you can just make really great French food right at home.)

5. Cheese caves are a real thing.

Storing cheese in caves, whether natural or man-made, helps to age them and imparts another level of flavor. Caves are cool and humid, which is exactly what cheese needs to age properly. European cheesemakers used natural caves before we had modern refrigeration. Today, American cheesemakers usually construct their own cheese caves, which allows them to regulate temperatures and humidity levels to the exact specifications a certain cheese needs. Pretty cool!

6. Mice don’t like cheese.

Despite popular belief, mice actually don’t like cheese. Given the choice, they prefer sweets and carbs. Sure, they’ll eat cheese if it’s the only thing around, as most animals would, but they don’t particularly love it. (Hey, we enjoy a good sweet ourselves.)

7. Lactose-intolerant people can eat cheese.

If you’re lactose intolerant, you don’t have to say goodbye to cheese forever! Just pick the right kinds. Aged cheeses have less lactose than fresh and usually can be enjoyed without discomfort. Think cheeses like Brie, Camembert, cheddar, Gouda, Muenster, Parmesan, provolone and Swiss. Not too shabby a cheese plate! (Did you know cheesy foods can also be light?)

8. There’s a reason certain cheese names are capitalized.

If a cheese is named after a city (or country-hello, American!), it’s capitalized. Examples include Asiago, Brie, Camembert, Gouda, Gruyere and Parmesan. (I’d love to live in the city of Parmesan!) Cheeses that aren’t capitalized include cheddar, feta, fontina, mozarella and provolone.

9. Curd sizes yield different types of cheese.

Large curds yield softer cheeses, such as ricotta and mascarpone. Small curds yield hard cheeses-think Parmesan and Romano.

10. There are 60 Master Cheesemakers in the United States…and every one of them lives in Wisconsin.

OK, so technically Wisconsin is the only state that has a Master Cheesemaker program. But still, this is a pretty big deal and a mighty intense process. Before entering the program, you need to have a cheesemaker’s license for 10 years-a process that requires 250 school hours and a six-month apprenticeship. And yes, Wisconsin is the only state to require cheesemakers to have a license. Maybe that’s why we think Wisconsin makes the best cheese in the United States.

7 Facts About Beef

29 Sep 2018 By admin

We bet you didn’t know all of these…  if not, consider sharing with a friend!

  • Just 6 grams of beef has all the protein you need all day.
  • The word “steak” comes from a derivative of the word “stick” – it used to be “steik” which meant meat on a stick.
  • You may know that cows have 4 stomachs, which is prettty cool, but they can also detect smells up to six miles away!
  • You know that red juice in meat? It’s actually not blood. Very little blood remains in muscle tissue of an animal. That red liquid is water mixed a protein called myoglobin.
  • Beef protein is a complete protein – meaning it has all of the essential amino acids you need to maintain and repair body tissue.
  • Cows don’t have top teeth in the front of their mouths. Since they’re herbivores they don’t need to chew things up that much.  The top of their mouth is a tough pad of skin called a dental pad. They do have molars in the back of their top jaw to help grind food up.
  • On average, a cow has about 40,000 jaw movements a day. Just chew on that for a while…

Fun Facts About Breakfast

29 Sep 2018 By admin

Breakfast habits

  • The average person sits down to breakfast at 7.31am during the week and 8.28 am at the weekend
  • The nation’s favourite breakfast is a cooked breakfast, followed by porridge, breakfast cereal and then toast
  • The breakfast foods we are most likely to eat during the week are wholegrain cereal (37%) followed by toast with spread (32%) and then porridge (27%)
  • The most popular place to eat breakfast is at home at the table, either alone or with other members of the household, followed by on the sofa
  • Taste, speed, filling, quick to prepare and health, are the most important factors when it comes to breakfast.
  • There is a growing trend for eating breakfast out of the home.

Breakfast skipping

  • A worrying quarter (25%) of people are skipping breakfast once or more during the week, with more than one in ten (13%) never eating it
  • Of women who skip breakfast, 29 per cent miss it because they are too busy getting ready
  • 14 per cent of female breakfast skippers say they don’t eat in the morning because they are trying to lose or watch their weight
  • Women are more likely to prioritise their hair and choosing clothes for the day than eating breakfast.

Quirky breakfast facts

  • The celebrity people in the UK would most like to have breakfast with is Holly Willoughby
  • The world’s first breakfast cereal was created in 1863 and needed soaking overnight to be chewable
  • The world record for the most people eating breakfast in bed is 289 and was set in Sydney, Australia on 2nd March in 2012. It involved 85 queen size beds containing four people each
  • The world’s largest breakfast on record involved 27,854 people and took place in Germany on 29 May 2005
  • The largest bowl of porridge weighs 865 kg and was achieved in Tula, Russia on 10 September 2011

14 Fun Facts About Chickens

29 Sep 2018 By admin

Why chickens? Well, I think we need a break from natural disasters, and chickens are a good distraction (how can the Chicken Dance not amuse?).

1 ) The chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, is a domestic subspecies of the red junglefowl, a member of the pheasant family that is native to Asia. Genetic studies have found that the grey junglefowl also contributed to the chicken’s evolution.

2 ) This bird was probably first domesticated for the purpose of cockfights, not as food.

3 ) Chickens aren’t completely flightless—they can get airborne enough to make it over a fence or into a tree.

4 ) These birds are omnivores. They’ll eat seeds and insects but also larger prey like small mice and lizards.

5 ) With 25 billion chickens in the world, there are more of them than any other bird species.

6 ) There are dozens of chicken breeds, such as the Dutch bantam, leghorn and Rhode Island red.

7 ) Baby chickens are chicks. Female chickens are pullets until they’re old enough to lay eggs and become hens. Male chickens are called roosters, cocks or cockerels, depending on the country you’re in.

8 ) A rooster announces to a flock of chickens that he’s found food with a “took, took, took.” But the hens don’t pay attention if they already know that there is food around.

9 ) Roosters perform a little dance called ‘tidbitting’ in which they make sounds (food calls) and move their head up and down, picking up and dropping a bit of food. Researchers have found that females prefer males that often perform tidbitting and have larger, brighter combs on top of their heads.

10) Scientists think that the rooster’s wattle–the dangly bit beneath his beak–helps him to gain a hen’s attention when he is tidbitting.

11 ) A female chicken will mate with many different males but if she decides, after the deed is done, that she doesn’t want a particular rooster’s offspring and can eject his sperm. This occurs most often when the male is lower in the pecking order.

12 ) The chicken was the first bird to have its genome sequenced, in 2004.

13 ) Avian influenza (a.k.a. bird flu) is extremely contagious and can make chickens very sick and kill them. The highly pathogenic form of the disease can kill off 90 to 100 percent of birds in a flock in just 48 hours.

14 ) And which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, all vertebrates have eggs, but the hardshelled variety first appeared among reptiles.

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