Tuesday

Cream Cheese Mincemeat Pie

pie crust, mincemeat, mincemeat pie

By LeAnn Ralph

• bottom pie crust for a 9 or 10 inch pie plate

• 3 cups mincemeat

• 8 ounces of cream cheese (softened)

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Make the pie crust and line the pie plate with the crust (I know this seems obvious, but one time when I happened to listen to Oprah -- I have listened to the show about 3 times in my life -- there was a chef who was talking about cooking something in one of those plastic cooking bags. "When you take it out of the oven, cut open the bag and throw it away," Oprah said. "You have to say that because there are people out there who will eat the bag if you don't tell them to throw it away.")

Put the mincemeat on top of the pie crust. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 25 minutes.

Using an electric mixer, whip the softened cream cheese, sugar, the egg and the lemon juice until smooth. Pour on top of the mincemeat and bake for another 25 to 30 minutes or until set.

LeAnn R. Ralph is the author of the books "Cream of the Crop (More True Stories from Wisconsin Farm)" (trade paperback, Sept. 2005); "Christmas in Dairyland (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm" (trade paperback 2003); "Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam" (trade paperback 2004); "Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Interviewing Family Members and Writing Oral Histories" (e-book 2004). You are invited to read sample chapters, order books and sign up for the free newsletter, Rural Route 2 News

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Monday

No-rennet cottage cheese

rennet, buttermilk, canning, kosher

1 gallon milk
1 cup cultured buttermilk

Warm the milk to about 95 [degrees] F. Stir in the buttermilk and allow to set at room temperature for 12 to 18 hours. The milk will clabber, or become thick.

Cut the curds into 1/2-inch cubes and let rest for 10 minutes. Place the pot into a double boiler-type pot and heat at a very low setting until the curd reaches 115 [degrees] F. Stir often to keep the curds from matting together. This will take an hour or more.

The curd is ready when it is somewhat firm on the interior of the cheese. Cook longer if necessary. Some whey will rise to the top. Let the curds settle to the bottom of the pot, drain off the whey and place the curds in a clothlined colander to drain. Be gentle, as the curds are rather fragile.

Allow the cheese to drain until it stops dripping. Place in a bowl and add salt to taste. I usually use about one teaspoon of kosher or canning salt per pound. Stir in about four ounces of half-and-half or cream per pound if you like a creamed cottage cheese.

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Make Homemade Pizza

pizza dough, oregano, pizza stone

by Jan Kovarik

Making pizza from scratch, at home, isn't really as hard as you might think---and once you learn just a few secrets about how to make a great pizza crust, you might never want to "order in" again! First, there is the matter of a recipe for pizza dough. Most of them call for very similar ingredients, basically water, yeast, oil, and flour. Some have a little more oil, some use less oil and add an egg. Whichever recipe you use, making the pizza dough goes fairly quickly and doesn't need to rise for hours like bread dough.

Here's a tip: If you aren't familiar with working with recipes that call for yeast, you might not know that yeast has to "proof"---that is, activate. You do this by combining it with water water (about 110*), and usually a little bit of sugar (1 teaspoon or less). After you combine the yeast, warm water, and sugar, you need to let this mixture "rest" for about 5 minutes. This allows the yeast to activate or "proof."

Don't just assume that you can run hot water from your tap and it will be "warm" enough, without being "too hot." A small cooking thermometer is
handy to have. It might be easier to heat up water to 110* rather than run hot water and then try to cool it down (especially if your water heater is set at 120* or above). I put room temperature water in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat the water in the microwave. After a while, you'll know exactly what setting and how long it takes to heat up the water.

After the yeast has proofed, stir in the other ingredients, following the recipe. You'll probably have to knead the dough a bit to mix all of the flour in, so that you have a smooth and dry mound of pizza dough. Be very careful about kneading the pizza dough---it is easy to knead in too much flour. As long as the dough isn't actually sticking to your fingers, it is OK.

Once the dough is ready, let it "rest" for about 5 minutes. That's right, just let it lay there. This gets the rising process started.

Hand form, or use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to the desired size.

After experimenting with the different types of pizza pans and stones that are available, I have concluded that the one-ply pans with holes in them are the best. This helps to bake a crust that is nicely done on the bottom without being burnt, and yet leaves the dough nice a "chewy" in the middle. Depending on your preference for pizza dough, you can experiment by first baking pizza on regular cookie sheets. After that you can get inexpensive pizza pans at dollar stores or discount stores like Wal-Mart to continue to experiment until you find the pan you prefer.

Now you are ready to bake the pizza. Here's a tip: pre-bake just the pizza crust for about 6 minutes before you load on the sauce and toppings. This helps to cook the crust enough so that the sauce won't sink in too much, leaving a gooey crust.

After you've pre-baked the crust, remove it from the oven and load it with sauce and meat toppings (be sure that anything other than pepperoni is pre-cooked, such as sausage or ground beef). If you like onions and peppers, then here's another tip: pre-cook them so that the onions are almost transparent and the pepper is limp. Load on the onions and peppers. Sprinkle on oregano or any other spices that you desire.

Return to the oven and bake for about 13-15 minutes. This is long enough to heat the sauce and other toppings.

Remove from the oven and add the cheese. (If you are like me and like Hawaiian pizza, add the pineapple now, too.) Return to the oven for about 3 minutes, or just long enough to melt the cheese without burning it.

Once the pizza is baked, I like to slide it onto a pizza stone that I've sprinkled with cornmeal. Then, I let the pizza cool for about 5 minutes. The cornmeal keeps the bottom of the crust from getting soggy, and sure adds a nice "zest" to the taste of it! Cut with a pizza cutter (or kitchen shears---which work great!).

Enjoy with your favorite beverage!
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Thursday

Pizza Fundraiser Ideas

Papa Johns, pepperoni, Dominos, Pizza Hut

by Kimberly Reynolds

Fundraising with pizza is a great idea for most any size group. It provides your buyers with something everyone wants, and can be very profitable as a fundraising idea.

There are three different types of pizza fundraisers:

Sales of pizza by the slice Sales of pizza fundraising discount cards Sales of pizza supplies - make your own kits

Each of these fundraisers varies in effort, requirements, and profitability. Let's take a brief look at each one.

Pizza Fundraising By The Slice This is a quick and easy profit source for just about any type of youth sports team. You purchase your pizzas at a quantity discount and have them delivered piping hot to your event.

Papa Johns and Dominos both offer the delivery service from any location. Of course, you'll need to pay cash when the pizzas are delivered.

Sell the individual slices at close to 100% markup so that your team receives $2 for every $1 in cost.

That markup covers any unsold or damaged slices.

Tips: Don't overbuy, reorder instead. Also, sell them fast before they cool off. Plain cheese is the most popular followed by pepperoni.

Pizza Fundraising Discount Cards A pizza fundraiser card is a discount card with an offer tied to a single merchant, usually a national chain. It often provides
a two- for-one offer on every order and is tends to be priced at $10 for a card good for a one-year period.

Offers vary with most being tied to either a single location or a small group of outlets for a national chain. Pizza Hut cards are good for eat-in dining while most others are aimed at the take-out or delivery market.

Given how popular pizza is with younger children as well as teenagers, pizza cards are excellent school fundraising ideas.

The cards for Pizza Hut and those for some of the other chains place a limit on the number of times you can use the card, often 21 times. That is a lot of free pizza for $10. Usage is tracked via holes punched in marked spots on the card.

Some of the offers also specify that your initial order must be for a large pizza while your free pizza is a medium size. When you think about it, that works well for most adults because they usually want a different set of toppings than what their children enjoy.

Profit Tip: Pizza cards can be obtained from many suppliers. Most offer the same set of national chains and prices can vary widely, so it pays to shop around.

All in all, pizza cards are among the best easy fundraisers based on profitability and ease of sale.

Fundraising Sales of Frozen Pizza, Supplies, or Kits Little Caesars and several other companies offer a "do it yourself" pizza kit that many schools, youth groups, and sports teams have successfully sold.

The basic concept is the same as a cookie dough fundraiser. Your sellers use an order-taker brochure, collect payment upfront, and deliver the goods after you receive your bulk shipment.

As with all order taker sales efforts, there is slightly more work involved than with immediate sale items. The delivered product must be received, counted, and sorted by customer.

Pricing is generally close to the price the customer would pay at retail. Profit margins are in the 30%-40% range.

Tip: Because the dough is frozen, deliveries need to be timed well. Your customer pickup/delivery needs to take place within 4 to 6 hours after your bulk delivery.

If you are looking for a great fundraising idea for your school, youth group, or sports team, try pizza this year!
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Saturday

Iowa cheese co-op helps preserve a way of life

American Cheese Society, goat milk, blue cheese

Rural Cooperatives

Like the blue cheese it produces, the Golden Ridge Cheese Cooperative had to age a while before it was ready to go.

Founded five years ago by 40 Old Order Amish dairy farmers in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, Golden Ridge was plagued by a series of production problems before the first blue cheese wheels were shipped from its 12,500-square-foot plant north of Cresco, Iowa, last January.

The Amish farmers invested more of their own capital into the plant, for a total of $1 million, and brought in Neville McNaughton, a New Zealand native and cheese consultant who now lives in St. Louis. Like the blue mold that turns the Amish milk into cheese, McNaughton's addition as general manager has turned the Golden Ridge co-op into a going operation.

The co-op got a big boost in July when its Schwarz und "Weiss natural rind blue cheese tied for first place in the blue cheese category of the American Cheese Society's annual contest held in Milwaukee.

The competition is "considered one of the world's most influential and prestigious competitions "
in recognizing the art of specialty cheesemaking," according to the American Cheese Society's Web site. Since the announcement of the award, McNaughton said, "Cheese is now flying out of here. People are calling us." Prospects at the co-op weren't so rosy when McNaughton first showed up at the Golden Ridge plant.

"This was a stalled project," he said.

"They couldn't decide how to get this up and running."

McNaughton did a three-day assessment of the operation and re-wrote the co-op's business plan. The co-op had been focused on making what McNaughton called commodity blue cheese. "We refocused the plant on making a quality product that plays to the strength of the milk," he said.

A $2 million loan guarantee was obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's rural development agency [USDA Rural Development]. That loan guarantee allowed the co-op's bank to advance it more money to reconfigure the plant.

Dan Gingerich, an Old Order Amish dairy producer from Lanesboro, Minn., said the co-op members "didn't realize what we were getting into" when they decided to form the co-op and make cheese. The dairy, producers milk their small herds by hand and sell the milk in stainless steel cans weighing 80 pounds that hold just under 10 gallons of milk. The number of dairy, processors willing to handle their milk cans had dropped from five to one, Gingerich said, narrowing their marketing options considerably.

"I'm trying to hang on to the dairy," he said. "It got tougher to make a living on the farm than 20 years ago."

Forming a cooperative to produce cheese in a modern plant needed to be examined by leaders of the Old Order Amish, Gingerich said. For religious reasons, Old Order Amish do not use many kinds of modern machinery. Their lifestyle is best known for the horse-and-buggy transportation on which the Amish rely. "Our elders thought that in order to keep the family farms going, we needed to change," Gingerich said.

"We needed something like this so our children won't have to live on one or two acres and become factory workers. On the one hand, it might be a modern concept, but on the other hand, we needed to have something like the cheese plant to keep our way of life going."

With McNaughton on board and the American Cheese Society award, Gingerich said he thinks Golden Ridge has turned the corner. Golden Ridge makes three cheese products: Schwarz und Weiss, which means "black and white" in German; Harmony Blue, which has extra cream added, and Ultimate 50, which is half Amish cow milk and half goat milk supplied by Joy Peckham, whose Peckview Dairy Goats operation is near the plant.

Peckham sells the Golden Ridge cheese and her other dairy goat products at the Metro Market in Des Moines and the Des Moines Farmers Market.

"Last weekend, I sold everything I brought in from Golden Ridge in the first hour," Peckham said. "I wish I had brought more." Peckham said she hopes the Ultimate 50 cheese takes off so she can eventually sell to Golden Ridge all of the 500,000 pounds of goat milk produced annually by her goats. Now, she sells almost all of her goat milk to a plant in Illinois.

Steve Logsdon, owner of the Basil Prosperi Bakery in Des Moines, said Schwarz und Weiss is selling well out of his dairy case.

"We carry European blue cheeses and Australian blue cheeses, and we've had a really good response to the Golden Ridge cheese," Logsdon said. "People like the fact that it's from Iowa and that they are using their own milk." The Golden Ridge cheese also is priced competitively, he said, with a half-pound selling for $7 to $8, about the same as the nationally known Maytag blue cheese, the only other blue cheese made in Iowa.

Swiss Valley Farms, a farmer-owned cooperative with operations in Iowa, makes blue cheese at its plant in Mindoro, Wis. Myrna Ver Ploeg, president of Maytag Dairy Farms, said she did not think the Golden Ridge and Maytag blue cheeses can be compared. "Ours is so different because it is made by hand," Vet Ploeg said. "They are very different cheeses, and they satisfy different markets.
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Friday

Swiss Fondue Recipe and History

cheese fondue, fondue, kirsch

By Sara Gray

Truly epic, fondue history starts with a recipe in Homer's Iliad (Song XI). Doesn't it stand to reason that the mixture described of Pramnos wine, grated goat's cheese and white flour was a fondue?

Well, whether that's what Homer was describing or not, fondue history states that the warm cheese dish originated in Switzerland but more specifically in the Canton of Neuchatel.

According to history experts, fondue consists of at least two varieties of cheeses that are melted with wine and a bit of flour. It's served communally out of pot called a "caquelon". Long forks are used by each guest to spear a cube of bread then the bread is dipped into the cheese and eaten.

How did cheese fondue get started?

Well, before we get into the nitty gritty of cheese fondue, let's back up for a second. The word fondue is a derivative of the French word, fondre, which means "to melt". However, this is only a part of how the word fondue is used today.

In doing my research of fondue history,"fondue" has a much broader meaning. It refers to foods that are dunked, heated, or cooked in sauce, oil, or broth in a fondue (or similar) pot. We know now, of course, that the Swiss take credit for the neighborly cuisine. They created it out of necessity, not because someone with too much time on their hands came up with a great idea for eating together!

Before the invention of the refrigerator, cheese and bread were made in the summer and fall to last through the winter. Both became extremely hard and inedible in that state. The bread became so much like concrete that it literally had to be chopped with an axe!

The Swiss realized that if hard-as-rock cheese was heated with wine over a fire, it softened and became deliciously edible. Bread that was too dried out to eat by itself, became soft and pliable when dunked in the melted cheese.

Once a necessity, the cooking method of fondue became a social custom of making the best of the long, cold Swiss winters by huddling around the fire with friends or family with a large pot of cheese and some hard bread. It's a tradition that has stood the years and travelled across the continents.

Fondue history states that the cooking method of fondue dates back to the 18th century when both cheese and wine were important industries in Switzerland. The simple-to-prepare meal used ingredients that were found in most average homes.

Most recipes we see for "traditional" Swiss style fondue are a combination of two cheeses used, Gruyere and Emmenthaler. They are combined because either cheese alone would make for a mixture that was too sharp or too bland.

Most recipes call for the cheeses to be melted in a dry white wine. This helps to keep the cheese from the direct heat as it melts, as well as to add flavor. Kirsch (a clear cherry brandy) was added if the cheese itself was too young to produce the desired tartness. Adding garlic gives the flavoring a good mellow taste, while the flour or cornstarch assists in keeping the cheese from separating.

Here's a delicious and easy recipe for traditional Swiss Fondue: What you'll need:

2 cups shredded process Swiss cheese (1/2 lb unshredded)
1 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp pepper
1 cup buttermilk
1 clove garlic
Dry white table wine
Cooked ham cubes
Toast triangles

Serve this version of Swiss fondue with ham cubes and toast triangles that are made ahead for swirling in the cheese mixture. You can also use fresh fruits such as apple and pear slices.

Start by tossing the cheese with cornstarch, salt, dry mustard, nutmeg, and pepper. Heat the buttermilk with the garlic in a double boiler or over hot water in the fondue pot. When thoroughly heated, remove the garlic and add the cheese mixture. Stir it until the cheese melts and is blending smoothly.

Heat the wine up a little and add gradually to the mixture, 2 Tbsp at a time. This keeps the fondue at a dipping consistency. Serve your guest and make sure each has a fondue fork to use with the ham cubes and fruit. Once you swirl the ham in the cheese mixture, place it on top of the toast triangle and eat until you can eat no more. Delicious!

Important: Feel free to republish this article on your website. However, you are not allowed to modify any part of its content and all links should be kept active.

For more great info on Fondue and other types of appetizers and appetizer meals, visit http://www.easy-appetizer-recipes.com.

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Thursday

Cheese-Puff Potatoes

Serves: 2 Servings

Ingredients:

1 Baked potato (scrubbed,
-pierced with a fork and
Baked 3/4 - 1 hour at 450oF)
1/2 ts Butter (optional)
1 Egg
2 tb Shredded mild cheese*
1 ts Wheat germ

Instructions:

When you're cooking baked potatoes for yourself, throw an extra one in the
oven to make this for baby. And, if you have a baby who is allergic to
eggs, just skip the eggs and double the amount of milk.

Scoop potato out and mash in a bowl. Whip egg in a separate bowl and add
to potato mixture. Beat in butter, milk, cheese and add wheat germ.
Carefully spoon back into potato shell, and fold a small piece of foil
around bottom of potato to prevent leakage.

Place in preheated, 350 o oven for 15 minutes.

To make ahead, cover and refrigerate without baking. When ready to serve,
place uncovered potato in 350 o oven for 20 minutes.

*for older babies
Serves 2-4

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Peanut Butter and Pizza - An Alternative to the High Protein Diet

high protein diet, skim milk

by Randy Mclean

Did the title to this article catch your interest? I thought it would! As of late we are always hearing talk of two main approaches to dieting, namely the high carbohydrate diet and the high protein diet. But what about fat? And what role can it play while we are losing weight?

Contrary to popular myths our bodies need fat. Now don't get me wrong. As I have mentioned in other articles too much of anything is bad but we can, and do, lean to one macronutrient over another. As well as breaking down the vitamins A, D, E, and K (fat soluble vitamins) we also need fat for energy purposes. At the same time it would be wise to consume carbs and proteins as well. Any diet where either carbs, proteins or fats are significantly raised or lowered is not a healthy one. Our bodies need all of these in order to work properly. We can tend to lean more strongly towards one or another but we shouldn't forsake the rest. Each have their own functions as well as positives and negatives.

This diet would benefit those who have weak will power or who don't have the time or patience to prepare too many meals. It is good if you are only used to eating 3 times a day. This diet is also beneficial
for eating out whether in restaurants, at relatives, or at parties and socials.

One characteristic of fat is that it makes you full longer therefore making you feel more satisfied. You will not have to eat as many times (in terms of real food) to keep your metabolism going and you will still feel okay. You can either use homemade 'shakes' or use food supplements in order to keep the number of times you take in calories constant. Taking in calories a minimum of four times daily will keep your metabolism going and the body will be less likely to store the food you take in as fat.

Obviously there is a catch...you know the saying, if anything is too good to be true it probably is. The catch is that these meals still have to be figured into your daily caloric intake or else eventually the inevitable will happen. But the good news is that this variation gives you the illusion of a greater food intake. The more you study fitness and nutrition the more you can manipulate variables or natural laws in your favour.

As an example, say you want to eat only 3 times a day but you want to take in calories 5 times a day in total. So your first meal would be real food, say a few peanut butter sandwhiches. Okay, so you have eaten that and two hours roll around so it's time for another meal. You can either eat or have some kind of replacement as I mentioned earlier. An example of a quick replacement would be a protein bar (chocolate flavour, yum!) or possibly a homemade shake. How would you make this shake? Just take 8 ounces of skim milk, add 4 heaping tablespoons of skim milk powder to thicken it and finally a bit of chocolate syrup for flavour! This drink provides approximately 200 calories which is not much but enough to keep your metabolism going. And this also leaves room for greater food consumption!

In summary this diet is great for those with higher cholesterol levels and don't want to take the risks of eating a higher protein diet. You mostly have to watch your dairy products, things like butter, ice cream etc. Basically when it comes down to it food is food. No matter how it is broken down and/or used by the body if you eat too much...well, you know!
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King of cheeses; cheese of kings; Parmigiano-Reggiano is one of

rennet, parmesan,

by MARY-LIZ SHAW

It is little more than the natural result of combining warmed raw cow's milk with rennet and time.

But to the world's gourmands, from Catherine de Medici to Sophia Loren, the cheese we call Parmesan was and is nothing less than a work of epicurean art.

This hard, grainy, pungent cheese from the northwest cuff of Italy's boot has been the snack of monarchs and the pride of popes, including Julius II, the Renaissance pontiff who had a taste for fine things: He commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel and Raphael to spruce up a few rooms in the Vatican.

Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most erudite and cultured of the Founding Fathers, would have considered the larders of Monticello lacking without a wheel of fine Parmesan.

The great French dramatist, Moliere, would eat nothing else in the last days of his life.

And when Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century English diarist and confidant of two kings, looked out into the streets of London as the Great Fire of 1666 ravaged neighborhoods, he realized he would have to bury his most valuable household items or watch them go up in smoke. His wheel of Parmesan was one of the first things to go into the hole.

Fit for a king

Parmigiano-Reggiano, the Italian name for the original and best form of the cheese, and Proscuitto di Parma, the ham that comes from the same part of Italy, are "almost mythical" in their stature in the culinary canon, says Ivan Day, an expert on food history in Britain who has a vast personal collection of rare historical cookbooks.

"Parmesan" was a French word, later adopted by the English (sometimes as "Parmezan"), to identify the toothsome Italian cheese.

Day found a reference to Parmesan in a detailed account of the coronation party of King James II, published in 1687. The first course at the new king's
table featured 145 gastronomic delights, including, No. 10: Stag's tongue, No. 19: Rabbit ragout, No. 37: Four dozen wild pigeons, No. 47: Four fawns, No. 68: 12 stump (spiced meat) pies, No: 70: One whole lamb, and No. 75: Eight godwits (a large English coastal bird). Those four fawns, by the way, were "all on one plate," Day says.

Item No. 134 is listed simply "Parmesan," meaning the great cheese was considered fancy enough to be served to King James as is, without embellishment.

"This was one of the most sought-after cheeses in England at the time," Day says. "It really doesn't surprise me that it's on this royal table."

Parmesan only gained stature throughout the world, even as it reached beyond kings' tables to the well-stocked kitchens of the upper middle class, Day says.

Parmesan was a luxury item throughout the 19th century and was a measure of a family's wealth among what used to be called "the civilized classes."

It helped that the hard, heavy cheese traveled well and stored even better, Day adds.

Ships' captains liked it as cargo because it served a dual purpose: Several dozen wheels of Parmesan in a hold were excellent ballast on the high seas; once in port, the wheels always fetched a premium price.

"It was always expensive," Day says. "It had this cachet of luxury that went with it. It was a status food."

As good as gold

Parmigiano-Reggiano still reigns as a food for refined tastes, "like a fine Cuban cigar or a Ferrari," says Maria Liberati, a former New York supermodel whose new book, "The Basic Art of Italian Cooking," is a collection of recipes handed down through her Italian family for generations.

Liberati, who now lives most of the year near her family's ancestral home in Abruzza, Italy, observed the intricate process of Parmigiano-Reggiano production when she sat for months for a portrait by an artist who lived in the Reggio-Emilia region, the heart of Parmigiano-Reggiano country.

She learned that the Credito Emiliana, a bank in Reggio-Emilia, still holds more than 300,000 wheels of prime Parmigiano-Reggiano in its vaults, as collateral on loans and as securities on the volatile European cheese markets.

It remains a luxury item. One 80-pound wheel of the rarest form of Parmigiano, derived from the milk of Vacche Rosse cows, goes for about $3,200, wholesale.

Hard to believe that a cheese of such regal provenance and currency was devised by an unnamed Benedictine monk more than 1,000 years ago.

One of the earliest written references comes from the Italian poet, Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote "The Decameron" (1349-51), a collection of stories similar to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." One of the stories describes a mythical kingdom built upon hundreds of wheels of Parmigiano.

Recently, Liberati says, the Italian consortium that authenticates the cheese and monitors its production and sale found an even earlier written reference to this beloved formaggio in a legal decree from Genoa dated 1254.

It's the cows

That the cheese enjoyed such status even then, 800 years ago, suggests that its production had been perfected for years. Just as startling is that the cheese-production process has changed very little in those eight centuries, according to the Web site for the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano. As it happens, the provinces where it is produced, Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena, Mantua and Bologna, have remained the same geographically, the agricultural methods unchanged.
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Wednesday

Have a Wine And Cheese Shower or Party

Cabernet, Chardonnay,

by Lee Dobbins

A wine and cheese party can be a great way to get together with friends or for a special bridal or wedding shower, birthday party or other celebration. It be easy to put together with a minimum of work even if you don't know much about wine or cheese! You can throw together a simple but elegant party without a lot of fuss and have an interesting theme to boot.

You can setup your room in a couple different ways which really depends on how much room you have and the shape of your room or rooms. One way is to use a long buffet table against one wall with different sections. Another is to have several "stations" around the room by using little tables each with certain wines and their complimentary cheeses. You'll want to add some other foods too as man cannot live on wine and cheese alone!

Decorations

A wine and cheese party should be somewhat elegant but not too gaudy. You could have simple white tablecloths with white candles.
Perhaps decorating the table with grapes and grape leaves or something seasonal such as fall leaves if the party is in the fall or holly, pine boughs and ornaments if it's at the holidays. A summer party might be cute with light floral bouquets. Fruit - especially grapes go great with wine and cheese so you could have a 3 tiered centerpiece or large antique bowl filled with grapes and other fruit on the tables too. If you choose one large table a big centerpiece would be a nice focal point, you could even use and old architectural urn filled with ice and wine bottles or a large tiered platter with various tidbits on it.

You'll want to have labels for each cheese that states the name and general flavor - you can expand on that by adding the origin and maybe some history if you feel ambitious. Each section of cheese could have it's own cutting board and cutter - A cute idea would be to use the cheese boards that are made out of flattened wine bottles to cut the cheese on.

Glasses and Plates

You'll want to make sure to use the right type of wine glass with each wine. Red wine should be poured into a round ball shaped glass and white wine is more fluted but not as narrow as a champagne flute. Keep a bunch of each type of glass out so your guests can be sure to have the right glass at all times. For dishes you could get wine themed plates or go with an eclectic mix of little antique plates. Make sure you have plenty of little plates around to encourage quests to try small samples of cheese with each wine.

What To Serve

A wine and cheese party needs more than just wine and cheese! You'll also want to provide lots of interesting breads and crackers. Maybe some caviar? And don't forget dessert - a cheesecake would be in keeping with the theme but any dessert will do! And finally, some coffee might be in order after all that wine and please make sure that no one drives after having too much wine.

Of course, you'll want to make sure you serve the right wine with the right cheese and in fact complimentary wine and cheese pairings can produce interesting and unusual tastes. Half the fun of a wine and cheese party is experimenting for yourself to see what new combinations you can come up with, but heres some tips to start you off:

Wine And Cheese Party Pairing Tips

* Wines usually go well with cheese that is from the same country or region

* An acidic cheese usually goes well with acidic wines

* Roquefort goes well with Port

* Camembert, Cheddar and Brie go well with Cabernet and Champagne * Cream Cheese and White Zinfandel make a nice pair

* Mix muenster with Beaujolais

* Colby and Gouda go good with Reisling

* Pair provolone with Chardonnay

About the Author

Lee Dobbins is a writer for Online Gourmet Foods where you can find out more about gourmet foods and appetizers.
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