Chevre

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there! Maybe some of you lucky ones will be receiving very cute tote bags…

So for all of you who love goats and cheese, you might appreciate this story as much as I do.  My mom loves goat cheese more than anyone I have ever met.  She loves it so much that she has dreamt up a fantasy career in the cheese business.  Mind you, the cheese-making mom comes second to the tote bag-making mom, but the fact that she has taken the time to think this through is proof enough that she really does love goat cheese.

My mom woke me up this morning with a funny story about her fantasy cheese business that, until this morning, I knew absolutely nothing about.  Here is how it went:

“So you remember my fantasy artisinal goat cheese making business?”

“No”

“You know, with the cute labels and the goat in the back yard?”

“Still, no”

So she explained it.  A friend had asked her that morning how the blog was going, and she said that it was going well, but that she always had her fantasy artisinal goat cheese business to fall back on if it didn’t work out. She could just have the goat live in our back yard and graze on our grass.  And as we all know, Chicago really is the prime location for goat farming.  Anyways, her friend asked:

“How many goats would you need? How many goats does it take to make enough cheese to sell?”

“Oh, just one.  I think one would be enough.”

“What about during the winter?”

“Oh, the goat could just live in Jake’s room.  You know, lay down some sod and the goat’s happy.”

My mom went on to explain the cute labels and packaging that this endeavor would call for.  When she mentioned that part of the process, it all made sense.  Because for the first part of this story I had been a bit confused.  You see, my mom HATES pets.  I really mean it.  For about a week my brother and I were each allowed to have a snail, cleverly named Jake and Emma (though we never did decide which snail was which), until my mom made the executive decision to free them into the DesPlains river.  I was crushed, to say the least.  Probably so were the snails shortly thereafter.  She also had veto power over my brother, my dad, and me when we begged her for a dog for years.  We lost that battle. 

So here she is talking about her cheese-machine goat in the back yard.  I was confused, because I for one was not going to be taking care of the goat.  And then she explained the cute packaging and labels, and I knew that her draw to the cheese business had nothing to do with cheese, but the presentation of the cheese.  So everything was clear.   And after all that, the whole elaborate story, my mom’s friend asked:

“Do you have to kill the goat to make the cheese?”

She obviously had no experience in goat milking.  Once again, Oak Park is not exactly life on the farm. 

So I’ll give you a heads up when you should be expecting extra-cute goat cheese in a super market near you.  And you can bring it home in your tote bag. 


-Emma