There are serious problems in the world today. For example, at the grocery store I was recently confronted with this dire turn of fate’s merciless wheel.
There is, it seems, a nationwide shortage of…
CREAM CHEESE.
Good grief… it’s like… like.. shopping at Moscow’s GUM in 1979! Like Jimmy Carter’s gas lines!
This casearian lacuna was apparently brought about by a perfect storm: a supply chain breakdown (“Let’s Go Brandon!”) and a debilitating cyberattack (also probably Biden’s fault… or the Jesuits… or, given their proclivities, both) last October on Wisconsin based Scheiber Foods, which makes stuff from locally abundant milk.
So, bad is this problem that Kraft literally offered to PAY people NOT to use cream cheese desserts over the holidays.
What, I want to know, is the status of the Strategic Cream Cheese Reserve? Was there no plan? We have bagels to schmear!
When the going gets tough, the turophile gets going. It’s time to make our own cream cheese, which involves the addition of salt and a bacterial culture to milk.
To start the project I’ll try to hunt up some lacteous caprine coagulant today after my rounds of Fight Club (weekly chess meeting), and give it a go.
Affinage to follow.
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We had the problem here in mich. right before Christmas Ok, i’ll just get some Brie, and wine for now and then… pow… it was in the stores.
So strange how differently each of the areas of the country are affected by shortages. This time, we have an abundance of cream cheese at a (low) price I haven’t seen for a long time.
Let them eat ricotta cheesecake!
That’s what we picked up for Christmas, and it was fabulous
Same situation where I live, which seems to be resolved for now. As in your picture, the vegan stuff wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves.
@Clare
Who wants to eat coagulated plant based emulsions and declare it’s cheese?
People right there have affirmed reality. Cheese is from milk not plants!
xavier
We had no problems with getting dairy in Southern Oregon. But anyway, you shouldn’t be eating commercial dairy at all. It really does kill.
We do have a remarkable company called Rogue Creamery here in Central Point, Oregon. They are home to the WORLD award for best cheese recently, and for many other years. The Rogue River Blue in particular. Their cows are very specially raised in state of the art facilities (only a few in the country) with beautiful pastures, hence no bad hormones in their milk. Really a destination resort for our area.
The key is not to panic
Take yogurt, stir in a teaspoon of salt. Put in cheesecloth then place cheeseclith in sieve to drain over a bowl. Wait < 48 hours and enjoy cream cheese !
I am unsure if the water/remainder in the bowl is whey and can be used.
Father, if the Spirit moves you to it, could you please provide a post on obtaining pignoli nuts from the pines of Rome?
I have hunted the pine cones of Florida and North Carolina for pignoli nuts to add to my yearly batch of Pesto Genovese and have utterly failed.
In Christ
It’s okay, at least there’s no shortage of Blazin’ sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings.
For anybody that’s seriously considering actually making their own cheeses, I recommend APL Farms.com. They’re my source for all my cheesemaking supplies. ;D
You know which grocery stores in my area never had a cream cheese shortage? Military commissaries. Hmmm. (I realize that most people can’t shop there, but this fact leads me to wonder about the “pay people NOT to use cream cheese” stunt, because I can buy cream cheese at both of the commissaries in my area.)
To timothy get: I can’t advise on buying Italian pignoli, because I can’t find them anywhere. We lived in Italy for over five years, all told (thank you, U. S. Navy!) and I refuse to buy Chinese pignoli. I have had good luck with buying non-Chinese pignoli from Nuts.com for the last couple of years. Our current packet of pignoli is from Turkey and the nuts are great for making pesto.
My dad’s ancestors emigrated to Wisconsin, and one of them opened a cheese factory in a tiny hamlet in Manitowoc County. Many years later, my dad worked in a Lake to Lake cheese factory in Kiel, Wisconsin. I started making cheese last year and it’s fun, but time-consuming. This year has been difficult (deaths in family, etc.) and I’ve had less free time, but I definitely want to keep making cheese!
Blaming Biden and the Jesuits? Sounds like quite the schmear campaign, Father. ;-)
This supply chain situation is strange. I don’t know about cream cheese but in my area I have a hard time finding half and half for my Mystic Monk coffee. We can’t get salmon even though I can see the True North salmon pens out my window where they farm it in the Bay of Fundy. For Christmas Eve I had to get my kids to bring some up from Massachusetts.
Part of the problem is a shortage of truck drivers, that being a poorly paid job with lousy working conditions made even worse by new government regulations. Add to that labor shortages created when someone with no symptoms is sent home because they failed a COVID test, or someone in their office or home failed a test, or whatever. The only pandemic where you have to get tested to find out if you are sick. Sheesh.
JonPatrick: you have to get tested to find out
It’s Schrödinger’s Virus: If you don’t test for it, you neither have it nor don’t have it.
https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/how-to-make-paneer-cubes-at-home/
How to make paneer at home. (You know, that cheese stuff at the Indian restaurant, that they cook in little cubes.)
This emphasizes the use of acids of various kinds, as opposed to rennet.
I was going to suggest making your own cream cheese, but I see you beat me to it.
With butter prices through the roof and inflation on the rise, I have resorted to churning my own butter out of discounted whipping cream.
Father, have you tried Boursin? I had it for the first time at someone’s house recently and let me tell you I could eat that spread over anything on my plate. It’s soooooo delicious. A bit more crumbly than schmeary but worth it. If you can get your hands on it and you haven’t had it do give it a try. Shame it has sin in its name.