Three kinds of cheese news

I've been meaning to get to this for awhile. A collection of news about cheese.

First of all, the world's cheese diversity is under threat:

Endangered French cheese cry out for help

Of the 100-150 available raw milk cheeses available, three disappear each year, meaning around 40 have become extinct in the last decade.

Held ahead of National Cheese Day, feting its 10th edition this weekend, the tasting was organised by a grouping bent on saving ancient cheeses from falling off the food map -- the Association Fromages de Terroirs.

"The paradox," its president Veronique Richez-Lerouge told AFP, "is that we're known as the land of cheese yet we're losing an increasing number."

Long known as a country of avid cheese-eaters, with more than 1,000 varieties in a symphony of creams, pale yellows and subtle shades of orange, overall cheese consumption is on the rise in France, but industrially-made products are outgunning traditional farm-crafted varieties.

Two: Now, while this is certainly a cheese crisis, Chef Daniel Angerer may have a partial solution: cheese made from human breast milk. Some people might recoil at this idea, but it certainly intrigues me -- why should there be a problem with the consumption of a product that is produced for human consumption? It's the intimacy aspect of it, I think (I'm going to write more on this theme soon, hopefully): the idea of consuming human breast milk may conjure up in our minds images of the naked human female breast, which is both a vital organ for human reproduction as well as an object of desire and pleasure.



That mix might make some people uncomfortable. Angerer himself says:

"I came about mother’s milk when our daughter celebrated her 4th week birthday -- my spouse is feeding our baby with breast milk. We are fortunate to have plenty of pumped mommy’s milk on hand and we even freeze a good amount of it – my spouse actually thinks of donating some to an infant milk bank which could help little babies in Haiti and such but for the meantime (the milk bank requires check-ups which takes a little while) our small freezer ran out of space. To throw it out would be like wasting gold."

(from Mommy's Milk)

So he views it primarily as a foodstuff -- which it IS. Note that to make the cheese regular milk has to be added because human breast milk won't curdle.

Late in the comments thread, someone named Billy England suggests that women sell their milk to make this gourmet item. I actually had the idea for celebrity mothers to market their own brands of cheese; imagine having a slice of Pamela Anderson cheddar, or Angelina Jolie gruyere, or Alessandra Ambrosio brie. Make the bucks for charity. (It might be too late for these moms, but I'm sure there will be more. Joe Cole and his very lovely wife Carly Zucker just had a baby, and soccer fans who are also admirers of beauty (see below) might pay extensively to have some of this soccer star wife's special brand.

Or not.

(The baby's name is Ruby Tatiana.)


Three: here is the results page for the World Championship Cheese Contest, held recently in Madison, Wisconsin:

2010 Results: World Championship Cheese Contest

I've had a couple of these: Tillamook Cheddar, Bel Gioiso Parmesan and Mascarpone, Kraft Mozzarella (!!) -- but I'd like to try more. Interesting to see that the folks from Kaukauna did well.

Here's a page from which some previous champion cheese can be ordered:

World Championship Cheese Contest Winners