Eating cheese just before sleeping increases the chance of interesting dreams since the cheese is hard to digest and keeps your body active for quite some time, thus making the lapse into deep sleep impossible, keeping you in a lighter, more dream-prone sleep.

It is also rumored to make your sentences longer.

Cheese is also slang for really absurd song lyrics or bad poetry. Something along the lines of air supply would work well as an example of cheese. Many Nana Mouskouri albums are irreperably cheese by nature, and even Al Green has his career in velveeta.

Most people don't actually cringe when cheese is played on am radio, they love it.. it fills their hearts with words that have been passed around enough times to be called sloppy millenium seconds. The key to cheese is cliche and lame words of love.
Nasty cheese? Too bad. Just throw it out.

Next time, you might want to consider the following cheese maintenance and storage guidelines.

Nasty Cheese?
How you should store any particular cheese depends on the moisture content. Fresh and soft ripened cheeses have a high moisture content and are, therefore, more susceptible to spoilage. Ideally, they should be used in about two week's time whereas hard cheeses with a low moisture content can last for several weeks.

Wrap cheese tight in a wrapping, such as plastic or foil, that will form a moisture barrier. This will prevent it from drying out and becoming rubbery and nasty. Airtight wrapping will also slow mold growth due to the fact that mold spores are airborne. Changing the wrap frequently will also slow the formation of random molds. In the case of quark, ricotta, or cottage cheese, storing the container upside down will help slow oxidation, thus prolonging their life. Strange but true.

When mold forms on ripened cheeses, you only need to cut off the mold plus a little extra (about 1/2 inch) to get the roots. The remainder is generally safe to eat, but keep in mind that the mold growth is a sign that the cheese is about to become nasty and should be used up within a week.

mold growth is part of the aging process on ripened cheeses. But this is done by experts and should not be attempted by amateurs at home. Roquefort for example is moldy and smelly and good. Velveeta with a blue fuzz is just nasty. You have to know what you are doing.

Unripened cheeses such as cottage cheese, ricotta and cream cheese, do not age and mold growth is a sign of spoilage. Discard these immediately at the first sign of mold. Don't even think about scraping that stuff off and eating the rest.

mold-ripened cheese such as gorgonzola, stilton and roquefort are susceptible to a type of mold which produces a harmful toxin and should be discarded immediately if a different colour or type of mold is evident. The best rule of thumb is to discard any cheese if in doubt.

What You Can Do To Prevent Nastiness In Your Cheese
Cheese should be stored between 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit. A refrigerator cheese compartment would normally reflect this temperature range. But regardless of where you choose to store it, make sure the temperature is also consistent and keep in mind that cheese is porous and will absorb strong odours from other foods. If you are storing a food with a strong odor such as onions, keep it apart from the cheese. It is also good to keep your cheese collection in a plastic box with a snap-shut lid inside the refrigerator.

Can Cheese Be Frozen?
A question asked suprisingly often is "Can cheese be frozen?" Perhaps no one has asked you this yet. But they will, some day. So here is what you can tell them. Look into their confused eyes with confidence, reassuring them with your tone of voice and manner and thus transmitting your confidence to them. The answer is "Yes, but...."

Freezing cheese will change the texture. Hard cheese tends to get crumbly and soft cheeses separate. Nasty. For this reason, it is best to use frozen cheese for cooking only. Freezing soft cheeses is best avoided altogether, if possible. Cream cheese, for example, gets both watery and grainy in texture.

Very firm cheeses can be frozen for about six months but most cheese is better not left longer than 8 weeks.

Freeze cheese in 1 to 1-1/2 pound pieces. Larger pieces take too long to freeze which increases their tendency to be very crumbly when thawed.

Thaw cheese slowly in the refrigerator, preferably for 24 hours or longer.

Wrap cheese tightly in foil or thick plastic before freezing. By double wrapping and making it as airtight as possible, you will help prevent moisture loss which is the main contributor to the change in texture.

Cheese is a good meat stretcher in a tight family budget and provides for a good source of protein in a balanced diet.
Cheese is nutritious food made mostly from the milk of cows but also other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, reindeer, camels and yaks. Around 4000 years ago people have started to breed animals and process their milk. That's when the cheese was born.
Says www.cheese.com

Kinds of Cheese:
Nutritional Cheese: Made from cow, sheep or goat milk or cream; usually cured or aged to develop flavor.

    Soft Cheeses
    Brie (bree): French origin. Edible crust. Mild to pungent. Appetizer, dessert.
    Camembert (kam'-em-bear): Pungent. Appetizer, dessert.
    Club: Canadian origin. Usually flavored. Appetizer, sandwich, dessert.
    Cottage: Large or small curds, dry or creamed. Salad, snack,cooking.
    Cream: US origin. Very mild. Chill slightly. Salad, snack, dessert.
    Gourmandise: French origin. Cherry brandy flavor. Appetizer, dessert.
    Liederkranz: US origin. Edible crust. Pungent. As an appetizer, for dessert.
    Ricotta (rih-kah'-tuh) Italian origin. Mild. Curd or dry. Cooking, dessert.

    Semisoft Cheeses

    Bel Paese(bel-pah-ay'-ze): Italian origin. Mild. As an appetizer, for dessert.
    Brick: US origin. Mild to sharp flavor. Firm to soft. As a snack or in sandwiches.
    Monterey Jack: California origin. Mild appetizer, cooking, sandwich.
    Mozzarella, Scamorze: Italian origin. Mild. For cooking, as a snack.
    Muenster (mun'-ster): German origin. Mild to sharp. Appetizer, sandwich.
    Port du Salut (por-du-sa-lu): French origin. Mild to robust. Appetizer, dessert.
    Bleu: Probable French origin. Tangy sharp. Appetizer, salad, dessert.
    Cheddar: English origin. Mild to very sharp. Snack, cooking, dessert.
    Cheshire: English origin. Crumbly texture. Snack, cooking (Welsh rarebit).
    Edam, Gouda: Dutch origin. Inedible casing. Mild. Appetizer, dessert.
    Fontina (fahn-tee'-nah) Italian origin. Mellow. Appetizer, dessert.
    Gjertost (yate'-ohst): Norwegian origin. Caramel flavor. Sandwich snack.
    Gorgonzola: Italian origin. Piquant flavor; crumbly. In salads, for dessert.
    Gruyère:(gree-air'): Swiss origin. Nutty, sharper than Swiss. Cooking, dessert.

    Very Hard Cheeses

    Kashkaval (kotch-kah-vaih') Yugoslavian origin. Salty. Appetizer, snack, dessert.
    Noekkelost (nee-ke-lohst): Norwegian origin. Mild. Seeded. Sandwich, snack.
    Provolone (pro-vo-lo'-nee): Italian. Smoked. Mild to sharp. Cooking, snack.
    Swiss: Mild, nutty, sweet flavor. Appetizer, sandwich, cooking, dessert.
    Parmesan: Italian origin. Inedible casing. Sharp. Usually grated for cooking.
    Romano: Italian origin. Piquant. Granular. Usually grated, also as a snack.
    Sapsago (sap-say'-go): Swiss origin. Clover flavor. Usually grated.
    Sbrinz: Of Swiss origin. Medium to sharp. Often grated, also a snack.


Pasteurized process cheese: A blend of one or more lots of cheese, processed using heat, water and emulsifier.
Cheese food: A mixture of one or more cheeses, processed using milk solids, salt, emulsifier.
Cheese spread: Higher in moisture and lower in milk fats than cheese food. Sometimes flavored with pimento, olives or other ingredients.
Cold pack (club) cheese: One or more kinds of natural cheese, mixed without heat or emulsifier.

Buying Cheese

    Domestic cheese is frequently cheaper than imported cheese of the same kind and quality.
    Pasteurized process cheese usually costs less than mild natural cheese.
    Mild natural cheese often cost less than sharp, aged cheese.
    Process cheese loaves are less that spreads.
    Blocks of cheese are generally less that sliced or shredded cheese.

Storing Cheese

    All cheeses need refrigeration. Store soft cheese (Camembert, cream cheese, cottage cheese) tightly covered. Cottage cheese keeps 3 to 5 days; other soft cheese keeps for 2 weeks. Hard cheese (Swiss, Cheddar, Parmesan) keeps for several months. Store unopened in original wrappers. After opening, cover tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap.
    If you find mold on natural cheese, cut it off. If mold has penetrated the cheese throw it away.
    In mold ripened cheese (Bleu, Gorgonzola) the mold contributes distinctive flavor and color.

Cooking Cheese

Keep cooking temperatures low and avoid over cooking to prevent stringiness and toughness in cheese. Add the cheese to other ingredients in small pieces so it will spread evenly and cook in a shorter length of time. To further shorten cooking time use the microwave.

For some fun you can Behold the Power of Cheese and take a test that gives your Cheese Profile at:
http://www.ilovecheese.com/
I'm The Trendsetter woo hoo!

Excerpted from Betty Crocker's Cookbook

Cheese is what you get when you take milk, and let it curdle and be fermented by microbes.

First, either raw milk or pasteurized is used. Raw milk contains a large variety of natural microorganisms, while the process of pasteurization eliminates pretty much anything alive.

The milk is curdled, either giving the bacteria that convert the lactose in lactic acid time to do the job, or by adding rennet, which is made from the enzymes of a calf's stomach. The curdled milk clumps together, due to the protein casein.

After the milk has curdled, the clumps are removed from the remaining liquid. The curds are cut open, and the whey is drained. The curds are then taken, pressed together, and pressed into molds.

The cheese is then ripened, which is letting it age while various molds do their work. The ripening may also be called affinage, when done by an expert cheese maker. This is where the type of cheese gets selected. The molds digest various ingredients in the curd, and release enzymes which can color and flavor the cheese. The more molds involved, the more complex the flavor. This is one reason that cheese made with raw milk is usually considered tastier, as there is more to the flavor. Cheese made with pasteurized milk has only a few strains of mold introduced to create the desired type, but may lack the variety of microfauna.

There is some controversy about making cheese with raw milk, due to worries about natural contaminants that may be present, such as E. Coli 0157:H7. However, some argue that the natural variety of organisms keeps such harmful ones from growing to large enough proportions to be harmful. In fact, in the United States, the FDA has required all fresh and soft cheeses to be made from pasteurized milk. Only hard cheeses which are ripened for at least 60 days may use raw milk.

Sources:
Discover Magazine, November 2001, "Ripe for Controversy"
More to come...

In wargaming and RPG slang, "cheese" refers to some aspect of game rules that give a player an unfair advantage, usually because the designers never thought it would be used in a certain way.

For example, anyone who's ever played Adeptus Titanicus (aka Space Marine, Epic 40,000, Epic 40K) will agree that the Ork Gargant's ball weapon is far too destructive for its points value and unfairly skews the game to the Ork player's advantage - it's "cheesy". So are some of the slightly over-the-top artifacts you pick up in a home-made Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and the extra-cheap-but-extra-powerful Clan weapons in BattleTech.

Usually the only way to reduce the cheese factor is to come up with a house rule that limits the flaw - like changing the points value of the item or limiting the number of times it can be used.

In modern days, the word "cheese" is becoming more and more common as an application towards things (usually movies) that are cheesy. Cheesy generally means that something is particularly unbelievable and badly done, put roughly, but the subtleties involved with the word are much more difficult to understand. A good example of cheese would be B movies, such as the Evil Dead line of movies, which are popular as cult classics in many circles just for their cheese. In the movie arena, cheese can generally be easily spotted by bad actors and cliched plots.
Although many people avoid things that contain large amounts of cheese, others are attracted to things by virtue of their very cheesiness. Indeed, cheese and its byproducts are fast becoming popular in this modern world.

Important person, as in big cheese. Also: big kahuna, top dog.

Also outdated slang for doing whatever is necessary to cover your ass when the police arrives. Cheese it can be interpreted as: watch out, run away, hide your illegal substance, hide yourself, etc. Prominently (and ironically) featured in Bringing Up Baby -- Katharine Hepburn says Cheese it, the Fuzz while already in jail -- and assorted 1930s gangster movies.

Above, it mentions that "cheese" is used in RPGs and wargaming to denote something that unbalances gameplay.

Through the long development of internet slang, the term is now used in video gaming, including for platforming and action gaming to denote finding a loophole or unintended course in a game.

For example, "you are supposed to go through this maze, but if you jump right before it, you can just cheese it by running across the top of the screen!"

Cheesing may involve the use of glitches, but does not necessarily do so.

"Cheese" can be used as a verb, or a noun.

Cheese (?), n. chese, AS. fr. L. caseus, LL. casius. Cf. Casein.]

1.

The curd of milk, coagulated usually with rennet, separated from the whey, and pressed into a solid mass in a hoop or mold.

2.

A mass of pomace, or ground apples, pressed together in the form of a cheese.

3.

The flat, circuliar, mucilaginous fruit of the dwarf mallow (Malva rotundifolia).

[Colloq.]

4.

A low courtesy; -- so called on account of the cheese form assumed by a woman's dress when she stoops after extending the skirts by a rapid gyration.

De Quincey. Thackeray.

Cheese cake, a cake made of or filled with, a composition of soft curds, sugar, and butter. Prior. -- Cheese fly Zool., a black dipterous insect (Piophila casei) of which the larvae or maggots, called ckippers or hoppers, live in cheese. -- Cheese mite Zool., a minute mite (Tryoglyhus siro) in cheese and other articles of food. -- Cheese press, a press used in making cheese, to separate the whey from the curd, and to press the curd into a mold. -- Cheese rennet Bot., a plant of the Madder family (Golium verum, or yellow bedstraw), sometimes used to coagulate milk. The roots are used as a substitute for madder. -- Cheese vat, a vat or tub in which the curd is formed and cut or broken, in cheese making.

 

© Webster 1913.

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