Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Cheese in Illinois

Ishita was extremely happy to be studying in Illinois University at Champagne Urbana for her student exchange year.
Her room in the hostel had a Microwave and a mini fridge. These two trusty companions helped her to feed herself for the entire duration of her stay at the university.
She is thrifty and vegetarian to boot so with the limited choices available she was happy to fend for herself and in the process experiment with food.
She has always been in a structured environment where food has been the last thing on her mind as it magically appears when it is time to eat. :)
In Illinois it was another story.
She bought the groceries, stored them and used them to feed herself.
While she was still new, she bought a carton of milk which had around four liters of milk.
She consumed some of it in the first few days and then noticed that the rest of the milk in the carton tasted funny.
Those days Skype used to keep us connected for hours at a stretch every day. She asked me what could have happened and how she could fix it.
I told her she could make cheese with the off color milk.
She had a small half litre borosil bowl that was her one all-purpose utensil.
She began by taking some milk in it and putting it in the microwave with some lime juice added.
Soon she saw cheese in the bowl, drained the whey and saved the cheese. She was elated as it tasted good and was something that she could recognize, use and eat.
It was almost as if she was the first person in the world to make cheese from milk.
There was plenty more where the first batch came from. She did it again and again till all the milk was used up and she had a big mug full of cottage cheese.
Oh, she was so proud for not having wasted the milk and having a supply of cottage cheese that she relished over the next few days. On bread, in her mixed veg salad, and just like that.

She did set the fridge to a lower temperature and none of the other cartons that she bought later turned sour or were made into cheese.
That first carton had taught her a lot.
Good lesson for the price of one milk carton.

4 comments:

  1. Good Lesson I would rather say making some useful from the thing that we generally used to throw away..Cheesy lesson Indeed

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  2. hehehe .. I am fond of Chena so much since childhood that I learnt the lesson in class 7 and till date been two decades .. ;) my once in every two day self made food is this .. although I use curd .. as mum says the quantity comes out more :)
    as they say lessons of life are best learnt in adversities only :)

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  3. Is it your daughter's story?
    yes some some trivial things done for the first time look like big achievements... first time tying your shoe lace... first time omelet making... first time going to vegetable market all alone and so on...
    [nostalgic smile flooding the corners of lips]

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    Replies
    1. Thank you @ Mysay @ Anunoy and allresourceupdates

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