Cheese is the reason I cannot go vegan. Yesterday visited a wonderful cheese stall. I bought an orange skinned cheese from Langres, France. Yellow gold flows out of it.
This stall had the names of the makers on each cheese. One cheese, rinsed in brine, looking rustic and weathered, is made by a monstrous looking goat farmer. Goat farmers have a high suicide rate as do farmers generally. They spend much time alone. They never go on holiday. They can never leave their goats alone. They have to turn the goat cheeses every day.
The girl who served on the stall spent a month in France with an ‘affineur‘, the people who age the cheeses. I’d love to do something like this, like Bill Buford who wrote one of my favourite books ‘Heat’, who spent months in Italy. (Ok he learnt to be a butcher which I wouldn’t like, but the principle is there.)
Hi there! Loving the food posts 😀
Cheese was the last thing to go when I became vegan – I did it gradually over several years. I do think it’s a tricky one, but I don’t really miss it anymore, and even find the ‘animal’ smell of it repulsive (which I never noticed when I ate it regularly).
I would recommend anybody who likes the idea of being vegan but loves cheese too much to cut down all other dairy over a long period then experiment with prolonged periods without cheese – just to get your true reaction to it when you’re not ‘used to’ it. Like I say, I was a total cheese lover, really obsessed with it, but now I find it repulsive, so give it a go – nothing to lose!
Love a vegan ex-cheese-addict X