A while back I did a post about rules of the house. Ha, as I was typing this I just thought of another one. My hubby is not allowed to talk to me when I am doing my Nia bars. If he sees me with my ear buds in and paper in front of me with lines on it he knows I am listening to my Nia music and not to talk to me. Sometimes there are songs that are just not that easy for me to count and when he interrupts me I have to start over. So we have reached an agreement there. Anyway, back to my other post, in that I mentioned not touching the cheese. One of my friends commented that she was going to come out here and she promised not to touch my cheese. I was actually waiting for her to come out here to post this, but that scheduled trip got cancelled and I still feel the need to explain. Her comment had me thinking that she thought I won’t SHARE my cheese. But that is not it at all. If I have a good cheese I will gladly share it with a fellow cheese lover because everything taste better when you share it. I actually mean don’t TOUCH the cheese.
One reason I have been putting off writing this post is I like to post pictures with my posts. So I was going to take pictures of what I am about to explain, but I really didn’t want to waste the cheese. I could not — every time since then that I have had a hunk of cheese, I could not bring myself to touch it! Cheese is made from curdled milk. In some cases they use bacteria to make the cheese. Cheese contains living organisms. With all these facts that make up cheese most cheese tend to mold quite easily and quickly.
It is my experience that the mold begins to grow where the cheese is touched. Go ahead, see for yourself. As I said, I will not sacrifice my cheese to show you pictures of this type of experiment. I know it to be true. Even though you wash your hands before you touch the cheese, you still have bacteria and things on your hand that apparently help the mold grow. Again, this is just what I have experienced. I have found that if the cheese is touched that is where the mold grows. I have found that if the BAG or wrapper in which the cheese is stored is touched and that area touches the cheese that is where the mold grows.
Of course, if cheese is old enough it starts to grow mold on its own, but wherever it is touched it grows faster. Have you experienced this to be true? I have, so that is why there is a “rule” in our house that the cheese cannot be touched. That includes ALL cheese in all forms. You cannot put your hand in a bag of shredded cheese. You can pour a small amount into a bowl (or whatever) and handle it from there using what you want, but hopefully you will end up using all of it. If not, it gets put in a separate bag or container it does not go back in the bag with the rest of the cheese. Tubs of cheese . . . . same thing. Even cream and ricotta, you can’t use a utensil then “double-dip” if the utensil has touched hands or mouth. Mouth is probably even worse than hands touching the cheese.
So, that is the reason for the “Don’t Touch the Cheese” rule in our house. It has nothing to do with sharing. We will gladly share our cheese with you, just don’t HANDLE it!
Are you willing to experiment? Use two pieces of cheese to see if the one you touch goes bad before the one you don’t touch? Let us know? Remember you have to have cheese around your house long enough for this to even happen. Ha, ha! (I know how some of you cheese lovers are!)
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