SAY, “CHEESE!”

 This is my friend, Julia (the one drinking terere).  I took our team mates on a little field trip to her house to have a cheese making demonstration.

 First, she showed us how to make mosto on her trapiche.  The trapiche squeezes the sap from sugar cane.  It takes a lot of muscle. The sweet liquid is boiled until thickened.  It makes a very sweet drink.

After showing us around her house and her garden and her many milk cows, she showed us how she makes milk. 

The milk that she squeezed from the cow this morning has been curdling in a big bucket a few hours.  It curdles because of an enzyme found in the third stomach lining of the cow. Yep, there’s a cow’s stomach lining in that bucket!  In the picture below, Julia is holding up a cow’s stomach lining that she is curing for this very purpose.   

The milk separates into curds and whey.  She gave us the curds to try.

 The whey is poured off.  They use the whey like we would use buttermilk.  They add it to their traditional foods.

The curds are pressed into a sieve and pushed down to get out all the liquid.  The finished (after it dries a day) result is a round “loaf” of homemade Paraguayan cheese. 

 Julia fed us all lunch with beans and veggies all from her garden.