Mozzarella Season

Mozzarella is a surprisingly stubborn and difficult to work with cheese. Based on the Italians I'm close to, an obstinate Italian cheese should not shock me. However, mozzarella has such a mild flavor that I expect it to be more compliant with my wishes.
My first day at the cheese house (back in September of 2008) we stretched mozzarella. By the end of the day I thought it would be my last day at the cheese house. The Head Cheese (known as Marge to some) hated to stretch mozzarella. This hatred was directly proportional to her inability to master the skill. She had to import a teacher to show us how to stretch - The Cheese Nazi. We would later discover that The Cheese Nazi was harsh about everything, leading to names such at The Display Nazi, The Market Nazi, and finally just plain The Nazi. Suddenly the name seemed much more offensive than when Seinfeld popularized it, so she is no longer the anything Nazi. Now we just call her Gilligan (another story for another time).
Gilligan addressed the class of four painfully challenged cheese makers with a tone that could only be described as condescending. I worked furiously with my first ball, following every contradicting instruction: Push up from the bottom of the ball while pulling down and around the top, making sure to build one even skin around the ball. Rotate the ball as you work, but don't move the ball very much. Let it sit in hot water long enough that it is easy to work with. If your water is too hot you will ruin the cheese. Make sure that you get a lot of moisture out, but don't squeeze the mozzarella ball.
After fifteen minutes, my mess of curd was worse than when I started and I was certain that if you looked at a cross-section of my brain it would have deteriorated to the point that it would resemble the mush in my hand. Gilligan took my pathetic attempt out of my hand and effortlessly whipped it into the form of a perfect mozzarella ball.
At this point I feel that it is necessary to interject that educational theory does not permit a teacher to simply tear down his/her students. The educator must value the student and accept his/her contribution prior to gently guiding the student to a more acceptable answer. Apparently Gilligan has never taken an education course.
After Gilligan's "tender" dose of criticism, I set out for attempt number two. The result from this attempt slightly differed from the first: Gilligan stepped in sooner. An hour later the score stood at 6 balls started, 0 completed by me. As Gilligan took the sixth ball from my hand, I was curtly dismissed to wash dishes, a task that I was capable of completing correctly. To my delight, that was the last stretching of mozzarella for the 2008 season.
On opening day of the 2009 mozzarella season I awoke with a degree of trepidation. My father added fuel to the fire by making the remark, "Mozzarella, huh. You're not very good at that, are you?" As the morning progressed and I settled into my routine at the cheese house, The Head Cheese and I worked ourselves into a frenzy, much like a locker room scene before a big game. We weren't going to let mozzarella embarrass us this season - not in our cheese house!
Well, we've won some and we've lost some this season. It was a rocky start, but we've looked like a different team since the All-Star Break. Maybe next year the team with be strong enough to go into October.
This week we hung up our stretching gloves for the season. We had a rookie with us: my mother. Gilligan wasn't there, so last years students became the teachers. I gently warned my mother that stretching mozzarella is a painstaking, infuriating , I daresay nearly impossible task.
Turns out my mother has a great aptitude for stretching mozzarella. I think it was her teachers.

Las Vegas

The cheese house is just like Las Vegas. Well, Las Vegas sans dancing girls and flashing lights. Follow the analogy with me for just a moment and I believe that you will see that this is not a flippant statement, but a well thought out comparison.

The cheese house has no windows to the outside world. Many an evening I have left the cheese house on what I thought to be a rainy day, only to witness the most captivating sunset imaginable, slipping over the ridge. While Vegas keeps the window population low to ensure time lost in long hours of gambling, I believe that the architect of the cheese house had his employees in mind while at the drafting table. Surely less work would get done if we were gazing out the transparent glass, pining for the days when we spent hours swinging from trees and catching frogs in a babbling brook, believing tales that the Moses Kill derived it's name from a horrific murder of a man named Moses. No, more gambling and more cheese making occur when you are unaware of the hours passing and the weather being missed.

Secondly, and perhaps less obvious to the layperson, is the rush one gets while placing a bet or adding enzymes to a vat of milk. The impending doom of a botched attempt mixed ever so slightly with the glory of potential success produces a special kind of feeling in your gut that is not altogether unlike indigestion.

The comparison can be brought to an end with the motto known to all in the cheese house: "What's said in the cheese house, stays in the the cheese house!" That is, until now.

In the midst of my quarter-life crisis, which is perhaps a notion invented by a generation bent on complaining about everything, I find infinite wisdom and experience in the cheese house. So, forgetting the love-life that crashed and burned or the career that more than derailed, I share musings from the cheese house. For as the cheese ages to it's perfection, perhaps I will age to mine.