Nor are they sheep or goats.  I realize some people may resemble farm animals on occasion, but I can assure you there are some important differences.  And those differences are what makes this so not OK.

Chef Daniel Angerer is letting diners at Klee Brasserie munch on cheese made from his wife’s breast milk.

“It tastes like cow’s-milk cheese, kind of sweet,” he told The Post.

The flavor depends on what the cheese is served with — Angerer recommends a Riesling — and “what the mother eats,” said Angerer, who once bested Bobby Flay on TV’s “Iron Chef.”

Breast milk doesn’t curdle well due to its low protein content, so a little moo juice has to be added to round out the texture, Angerer said.

After blogging about his efforts with the human cheese, customers started demanding a sample, he said.

“The phone was ringing off the hook,” the chef said. “So I prepared a little canapé of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper.”

We don’t allow fellow citizens to sell organs, and we don’t allow them to sell their body for sex.  There’s a very good reason for this - financial incentives for selling or renting your body can induce desperate people to take very dangerous risks with their body.  Imagine if breast milk became a commercial enterprise - women could be coerced into taking hormones or antibiotics or supplements to increase the quantity or quality of milk they produce with potentially negative side effects.

Yes we do allow people to sell blood.  However donations are heavily regulated and the product is used for life saving measures, not as fancy appetizers.

Congrats to Angerer, who obviously is very skilled in garnering PR for himself.  Now let’s hope this doesn’t become a trend.

A: If they are sold under the label “Parkers”, Listeria!

Yummm, recall fun. Good luck with that one Big Food.

While most of the barely year old administration has been mired in a morass of inertia, there has been a few bright points of, egads, CHANGE. And I’m happy to report its the good sort of change.  While Hilda Solis has been hard at work trying to keep employers from killing their employees and screwing them over in their paychecks, the FDA has been ginning up the oversight machine as well.

Working with the DOJ, the FDA has asked for a permanent injunction against the Quesos Mi Pueblito manufacturer, because along with a bunch of mexican cheese-esque products, they have also been manufacturing Listeria.

WalletPop has all the delightful details:

In the complaint, provided to WalletPop, inspectors found a pit in the cheese production room with sewer gases leaking from it, thermometers that register the wrong temperatures — causing cheese to be “refrigerated” at up to 55 degrees, the use of rusty equipment and an infestation of cockroaches and other insects. Tests also found Listeria in several parts of the facility.

The FDA said the company reported addressing many of the issues in the fall, but retests over several months continued to find contamination at the plant. On other occasions, responding to state officials, the plant was closed for cleaning and repairs only to be cited again for more violations.

Requests to close down facilities are uncommon.

Compare this response to the horrendous peanut butter contamination a year and a half ago that killed 8 people.  Yep, change is good.  People not dying is even better.

Did you know there was a World Cheese Awards?  Nope, me neither, but now I have another thing on the list of things to do before I die.  This year, the World Cheese Awards was held on the Canary Islands. But it was a Canadian goat cheese that took home the top prize:

A Canadian goat’s-milk cheese named Cinderella (Le Cendrillon), was named best cheese in the world at the 21st annual World Cheese Awards.
Recipe Included

The log-shaped, ash-covered cheese from Quebec beat out 2,440 other entries from 34 countries to claim the coveted Grand Champion title in the world’s largest cheese competition. It was the first time ever that a Canadian cheese won the top spot.

Le Cendrillon is produced by La Maison Alexis de Portneuf (which is owned by Saputo, one of the world’s largest milk processors) in St. Raymond de Portneuf, about 30 miles northwest of Quebec City on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. It is described by the producer as a “vegetable ash-covered, soft surface-ripened soft goat cheese with a semi-strong, slightly sour taste that becomes stronger with age.”

All together now - SWOON.

photo courtesy of flickr user thisisbossi

Sigh.  Next they will be concern trolling that secret police will be raiding the kitchens of apple pie baking grandmas everywhere.

For the record - no one sane has proposed any kind of food ban (with the exception of extremely endangered species, but that’s not health concern related).  People should be free to eat as many jelly donuts as they like.  Of course, the it would be nice if the health costs were reflected in the food prices.

Addiction is bad. Crack, coke, meth, whatever the vice may be, people can do unbelievably stupid things to support a habit. Apparently for one South African man that vice is cheese:

Police Captain Shooz Magudulela said Gumede was then linked to 16 other cases of housebreaking.

He said that Gumede broke into houses between 7.30am and 5pm.

Once he had broken into the house he would eat the cheese before taking the valuables.

Can’t say I blame him.

Best idea ever.

I will never, ever, be able to give up cheese.  I live by the belief that everything is better with cheese.

This poem on cheese just goes to show that some people will never understand my love affair with the stinky:

A poem about cheese
I brought a lump of chedder cheese
And put it in a sarnie
I ate a bit and looked at it
And thought I must be barmy
Coz cheese is milk thats just gone off
All hard and going rotten
Its all conjealed,thats how it feeled
How could I have forgottnen
It smells of socks
And sweats a lot
When left out in the heat
Its pretty gross
When your up close
Not very nice to eat
So I’ll leave milk to baby cows
I think they like it better
They drink it raw
Thats what its for
And I like humous better

I don’t really don’t get the point, but this mean we will be seeing Interstellar Cheddar on the supermarket shelves?

Prince Charles is bringing cheese making to UK organics and he’s tapping a member of the band Blur to do it. The bassist claims to make the “poshest cheese in the world” and hopes to sell it for £3.  The Prince has contracted Alex James to make half a million litres of milk worth.

What’s next?  Will David Beckham start his own line of pickles? I snark, but actually this is fascinating culture bubble that is growing in England.  Through both Prince Charles and Paul McCartney, organic produce and grow your own food are becoming all the rage in the UK.  We’ve seen early green shoots of that with the Obama garden, and people like Neil Patrick Harris acting as judges on shows Like Top Chef and Next Food Network Star.  We’ll know we’ve really hit it big when Brangelina open their own sustainable urban farm in NOLA.

photo courtesy of flickr user yashima

Making my own ricotta.  This link to a post entitles “Making Ricotta: Stupidly Easy and Delicious” arrived in my mailbox yesterday from my friend Greg.  Subject Line: “For what its worth”. I think a gauntlet may have thrown.