In Honor of American Cheese Month

Seeing that this October marks the very First Annual American Cheese Month. I thought I'd pay tribute to the high hailed dairy product with some fun, frivolous and purely self-indulgent facts.

• The terms "Big Wheel" and "Big Cheese" originally referred to those who were wealthy enough to purchase a whole wheel of cheese.

• A one-ounce serving of cheese is about the size of four dice.

• A farm in Sweden makes moose cheese.

• Remains of cheese has been found in Egyptian tombs over 4000 years old.

• The Chalet Cheese Co-op in Monroe, Wisconsin, is the only cheese factory in the country that still makes the famously stinky Limburger cheese.

• Brie, and other soft cheeses, have less fat than hard cheeses.

• The Sargento Cheese Company in Plymouth, Wisconsin, introduced packaged shredded cheese in 1958. In 1986, the company went even further to ensure the “spread of the shred” by introducing the resealable bag.

• Cheese takes up about 1/10 the volume of the milk it was made from.

• Salvador Dali’s inspiration for his famous painting “The Persistence of Memory” apparently came from the runny Camembert. At home with a headache on a sunny day, Dali noticed how runny some half-eaten Camembert had become. That evening he dreamt of clocks melting on a landscape.

• The British cheese board now lists more than 700 varieties of British cheese – almost twice as many as its fromage-gobbling neighbours in France.

• Lactose intolerance is typically cow-milk intolerance.

• More cheese is produced annually worldwide than coffee beans, tea leaves, cocoa beans and tobacco combined!

• Pizza Hut uses about 300 million pounds of cheese per year.

• All cheese rinds are edible. Even the waxy ones! Cheesemakers spend time crafting the rinds to enhance its flavor. The rinds don't always taste as good as the rest of the wheel, but they’re edible.

Although, in this vein one could suggest that one's shoes are edible. Anyone can choose to eat their own shoes if they please, but most choose not to (unlike Charlie Chaplin).

And to think you weren't going to learn a damn thing today.

Happy October'isms!

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