This week I made matzo balls for the first time, and my dad inexplicably bought a whole house of furniture in one fell swoop after 3 months of living as a relative monastic with only a coffee table and one plastic outdoor chair (that’s a story for another day), and a couple of nights ago I attended “Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour”, which made a stop at ASU.
The evening started out with the tour’s organizer, writer and professor Joanna Brooks, asking everyone to repeat “My Grandmother is _______.” We went around the auditorium, each person saying the name of her grandmother, which was sweetly powerful.
There was an elderly woman seated a few rows in front of me who had short curly white hair and a wide frame and resembled the same archetype of “Mormon Woman” that my grandmother did. She was crocheting the whole time she listened to the readers.
It was great to hear women writers giving voice to these stories, and the evening was good mental ferment for me.
But believe it or not the thing I found myself thinking most about was cheese.
I was thinking about diary entries from my great-great-grandmother Lucy’s journal. Here’s a brief excerpt:
August 1896
Saturday 1, I don’t feel very well made my fifteenth cheese to day…
Monday 3, We made a cheese, and done a lot of washing blankets and flannel and colored clothes
Tuesday 4, I made my seventeenth cheese…
Wednesday 5, I made a cheese …
Friday 7, I made a cheese and we churned. I don’t feel very well. Sister Willis is better, the weather is cooler now. The flies are so bad
Monday 10, I made cheese we churned and got dinner. In the evening killed a beef was hard work all day
Tuesday 11, Made cheese . . .
Well you get the point. The woman was forever making cheese.
And it’s occurred to me that I can’t possibly understand what it was to be her without understanding something about her labors? What does it mean really to make ten pounds of cheese? And so I ask you – Does anyone know where I can learn to make cheese in Arizona or the Southwest?
Sativa, did you know that there are tons of Mormon Mommy Bloggers? And I don’t mean just a few, but A LOT. Like google that term. I have a few followers who are and they have become some of my dearest friends in the blogger world.
I don’t blame you for becoming fixated on “making a cheese” after reading that many references to it in the journal. I, of course, know nothing about this. But I know quite a bit about matzo balls and will be making quite a few on Monday. Good luck on the cheese making – it sounds interesting!
as long as you don’t want to make it out of breast milk, i’m happy to help you find someone who can teach you how to make cheese. michele’s become acquainted with a local woman with a cheese shop (small world, i went to grade school with this woman and her kid takes dance at DTW) and i bet she’ll know.
I can assure you I won’t make it out of breast milk. eew. Yes, I’d love to be put in touch with local cheese shop woman.
New Frontier Market in Flagstaff has cheese making kits. I was very tempted to buy one the last time I was there.
BTW: I made my own matzo from scratch the other day. I found that my moms pasta machine was perfect for rolling the sheets. I’ll post a pic on facebook.
Dave, that’s awesome. Send pics!