Cheese, Cheese, Cheese, and Wine on the Side

You can’t go to Holland without experiencing cheese in one way or another. Fortunate was I to be hosted by locals who wanted to ensure I got an authentic Dutch holiday, so of course we went to a farm to make cheese. The instructional video we watched was quite dated as the young woman in the video was now a grandmother, she let us know how sanitary the cheesemaking process is and gave us shoe covers, hair nets, gloves and smocks. Covered head to toe in plastic, we combined the ingredients into a large bucket and spent nearly an hour mixing the contents until it solidified. Once the curds had solidified enough to make a ball, we added herbs and used a cheese mold to make the typical shape and voila! The farmer and his wife gave us a tour of the farm, introducing us to calves and a barn full of cows going through the milking process. We left with our blocks of cheese and instructions to salt them every day for two weeks.