{"id":7720,"date":"2011-12-14T03:55:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T11:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=7720"},"modified":"2011-12-14T03:55:37","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T11:55:37","slug":"award-winning-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/7720","title":{"rendered":"award-winning cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">After devouring a tin of Washington State University&#8217;s award-winning Cougar Gold cheddar cheese, what did I do with the leftover tin?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Put it to good use it in the barnyard, of course.\u00a0Inside are the green scrubbies I use to clean my cow&#8217;s watering trough. But, not until after I&#8217;d taken a tour of their cheese-making facility (below).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-7721 aligncenter\" title=\"cougar_gold-9167\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/cougar_gold-9167.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Cheese is a complex science and when done right, out-of-the-world delicious. Kim and I and friends visited Ferdinand&#8217;s Ice Cream Shoppe<strong><\/strong>, Washington State University&#8217;s creamery, to see how large-scale production\u00a0cheese-making is accomplished.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">When we arrived, they had a batch of cheese on the finishing table and were getting ready to put it into cans to be aged.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-8005\" title=\"ferdinands3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-8007\" title=\"ferdinands4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">First they chop the slabs up into curds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-8004\" title=\"ferdinands2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Then they added (like a ton of!) salt to keep the curds from liquifying back together again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-8003\" title=\"ferdinands1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"ferdinands10\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands10.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The curds are then put into pressurized containers for an hour to remove the last of the whey.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ferdinands9\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands9.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ferdinands7\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands7.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-8012\" title=\"ferdinands8\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands8.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">After an hour, the cheese is wrapped in cheesecloth, and allowed to press again overnight to give the cheese a smooth surface.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"ferdinands13\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands13.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ferdinands5\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"ferdinands6\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The next day the cheese is sliced into rounds and placed into their signature cans and vacuum sealed. Cougar Gold, a gourmet cheddar, is then left to age for 1 year before being sold.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image wp-image-8015\" title=\"ferdinands12\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ferdinands12.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">You may purchase Cougar Gold online at <a href=\"http:\/\/public.wsu.edu\/~creamery\/ferdfront.htm\">Ferdinands<\/a> in Pullman, Washington (or their ice cream on location). All the cheese is made by\u00a0Washington State University students. At the end of our tour (we organized the tour with some <a title=\"friends who homeschool\" href=\"http:\/\/www.maryjanesfarm.tv\/FarmRomance.asp?Action=PlayVideo&amp;VideoView=GridView&amp;FarmRomanceVideoID=18&amp;SortBy=VideoDate\">friends who\u00a0homeschool<\/a>),\u00a0we were treated to free double-decker ice cream cones. Chocolate mint for me,\u00a0espresso for Kim, huckleberry for the kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After devouring a tin of Washington State University&#8217;s award-winning Cougar Gold cheddar cheese, what did I do with the leftover tin? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/7720\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[159,202,312,385,487,954],"class_list":["post-7720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift_for_gab","tag-cheese","tag-cougar-gold","tag-ferdinands-ice-cream-shoppe","tag-gratitude-2","tag-kim","tag-washington-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}