Maggots

Here is a short list of things that make me squeamish: earwigs, leeches, cockroaches and maggots.
Nothing will  make me scream like a girl like finding an earwig crawling on the flowers I just picked. Most of the other things on my list I have not seen in person. Except maggots, and encounters with them are few and far between.  I'll get back to this in a moment.

I have spent the last two weeks trying to make 2 types of cheeses I have not made before. One is a moldy chevre called valencay and the other is gruyere (which requires "washing" with brine every two days). Both seemed fairly straightforward until I put them in the "cheese cave" which started out as a cooler and switched a mini fridge set to 52 degrees.  Because the mini fridge has a mini freezer in it, the humidity is an issue. The humidity in the cooler wasn't so bad, but bugs kept flying in. So, I moved them to the mini fridge but I could not keep the humidity down. I found the ice tray was still in the mini freezer, which obviously wasn't helping! So I took it out and wiped out all the water. But my gruyere was still sticky/slimy. So I did tons of research online and find that as I suspected, the humidity was probably too high but it doesn't seem that all is lost. The valencay grew some lovely white fluffy mold, as it was supposed to, but then the cheese inside started shrinking. So after the requisite 2 weeks, I take the valencay out of the cheese cave to wrap it up for storing in the house fridge.

This brings us back to the maggots. I look closely and that is exactly what I see.  I very nearly screamed and then I started to cry. All that work and milk wasted. Maggots. There is NO way I am going to try and save the cheese after finding maggots!!! The only positive thing I can find is that the mold on the outside was exactly the right texture. So I check the gruyere and I see only 2 maggots. But they are still MAGGOTS! ON MY CHEESE!  So I curse and cry and take all that hard work out to the compost pile. P comforts me the best he can and the next day takes my spoiled cheeses to the chickens. At least they'll enjoy it. I think for now I'll stick to the easy ones - chevre, feta, cheddar.

~T