"While I have enjoyed some truly fine cheeses in my life, my heart sank at the thought of the years of abuse my palate has suffered under a siege of cheap cheese products--products that now seemed about as appealing as mark-down Halloween candy on New Years day."

There are many notable milestones that a man passes on his journey through life. The first car, the first kiss, the first born and the first round of cheese come immediately to mind.

Did I say cheese? Yes, I suppose I did. I thought I might squeeze it in, thought it might go unnoticed and simply be accepted as but one of a number of steps on the path to enlightenment. For I believe, in all honesty, that cheese making is the missing link, the lost step, between the careless pleasures of youth and the ascension of man to his unrealized potential as a creator of beauty, wonder and all that is good in the universe. I tremble at the possibilities of what our world might be like if our leaders would but come together, in the spirit of mutual respect and brotherhood and just make cheese.

Creating the miracle of cheese from the living and ever changing plasma of raw milk is no small task. Cheese is incomprehensible in its subtleties, unrelenting in its demand for commitment and unforgiving of the foibles of mere mortals. Omar Khayyam, the great Persian mathematician and astronomer came close to capturing the wonder that is cheese with his famous poem which includes the phrase, "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou." I'm certain he meant to include cheese, was no doubt thinking of it, but was probably distracted by some particularly vexing mathematical problem, providing still one more reason for me to hate math.

As you may have guessed, my gushing prattle marks me as an acolyte, an amateur experimentalist, yet unworthy of the exalted title of Cheesemonger. I know that I have many years of labor yet, in the service of the craft before I may wear that title, but much like the aforementioned first kiss, I am left giddy with the contemplation of the limitless possibilities.

I've come to the craft of cheese artistry late in life. It would, of course, be an impressive thing to say that I was visited in a dream one night by a radiant being of pure, light, love and energy who told me, simply, "make cheese." This was not the case however. Truth is, my exercise sessions have been disrupted and spaced farther apart of late, thus requiring that I cut back on my consumption of energy dense whole milk which I so dearly love.

But what to do with the milk, I wondered? I could freeze it as I have done before, but it's never quite the same after that. Raw milk from grass fed cows is, without a doubt, a thing of wonder, not to be taken lightly or squandered. What to do, and then it came to me: make cheese. Much as I imagine men of the East must have felt when confronted with those rousing words, "Go West Young Man," I was driven to act, but cheese? And why not I answered, after making ginger ale, sauerkraut, pickled beets, kefir and sourdough bread made from spelt flour and a rye starter, cheese making seemed the next logical step in my transition to a higher consciousness.

I bought a large stainless steel pot and a thermometer. With two gallons of milk and an adventurous spirit in tow, I set to work. The recipe, which came from the book, Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz, was for a basic cheese using rennet, an animal based substance for curdling milk. Rennet curdles milk at lower temperatures which was just what I needed since I was making raw milk cheese. The recipe also called for yogurt as the starter culture to get the bacterial party off to a roiling start. Yogurt is a thermophilic starter which means the heat required for the process is relatively "high" at about 100 degrees, though it is still well below the temperature required for pasteurization. In order to preserve the beneficial enzymes and bacteria in raw milk and to ensure successful cheesecraft, the temperature must be closely monitored. I followed the steps as closely as I could but found that cheese can be a hard taskmaster for the uninitiated. I was constantly jumping up from the table to check the milk as it quietly went about the metamorphosis of transforming itself into cheese.

After heating the milk, I added yogurt as my starter, then rennet and watched my creation take shape. Now I should say that I have no experience, to speak of, with the farming life, but like many people of my generation, I retain some dim memory of my mother's dim memory of her distant youth on the family farm. I grew up with phrases like, "don't count your chickens before they hatch," and "no sense kicking a dead horse" as if I had surely spent my youth with dirt underfoot and perfect skies of sunshine and gentle rain above. "Were you raised in a barn," must have been my mother's favorite as she seemed to utter it as an announcement of my arrival every time I came in from outside. But like many such memories, mine were incomplete.

I knew that milk could "turn" and "curdle," but Little Miss Muffet not withstanding, I always associated these stages in the life cycle of milk as a sign that the milk had gone bad. Such is the ignorance of the modern man. Now here I stood before a great cauldron of milk hoping for just such a thing to occur.

At the appointed time, I checked the milk and discovered thick curds floating just below the surface. With a long knife, I attempted to cut the curds, but found it quite difficult since they did not float in a flat continuous sheet on the surface of the milk, like an iceberg, but lay beneath the surface instead, in a jumble of disorganized clumps. Giving up on this last step, I dipped a slotted spoon into the, now separated whey, and retrieved about a pound of curds. I had never seen curds before. Interesting how, until that very moment, I never really knew exactly what Miss Muffet was eating. Suddenly, I wanted to know more than anything else.

A penchant for culinary experimentalism is in my genes. Once, in the fourth grade, we were studying the human ear and came to a part of the text which described ear wax as having a bitter taste. At that moment, I looked up and observed Debra Wilson, my academic arch-nemeses, stick her finger into her ear then insert it into her mouth. Her face imploded into a frown immediately afterward. Debra and I were two of the top students in the class. We were engaged in a long running and undeclared cold war to see who could earn the best grades. I found the very prospect of eating ear wax reviling, but what was even more offensive, was the disquieting notion that Debra might now possess knowledge I didn't. What if our next test harbored a question inquiring about the subtle nuances in the flavor of ear wax? I would not grant her this tactical advantage and so decided it was time for a little knowledge proliferation. It had been my custom to observe that size and quantity were often the deciding factors in the resolution of many schoolyard disputes, so I reasoned the same logic would apply here. I gouged out a great gob of ear wax of my own and after a brief hesitation, proceeded to taste it. Reader Note: As this is an article about cheese which I do not wish to sully with a description of what happened next, let it suffice for the reader that there are some truths better left unknown.

With my courage sufficiently marshaled, I gathered up a small bit of the soft gelatin like substance and applied a few crumbs of coarse sea salt, (can't hurt, I thought) before bravely plopping the morsel into my mouth. It was at that moment, the radiant being of which I spoke earlier, appeared before me, not in the form of an angel, but as a sensation of indescribable joy. An ensuing chorus of angels drowned out the clamor of traffic, the neighbor's dog and the beating of my own heart. Even now as I write this, I go light-headed with the memory of that blissful moment. The flavor of the curd was subtle, buttery with a hint of sweetness that contrasted with the pungent audacity of the sea salt. The texture, silken, danced about my tongue like sunshine on the most perfect of spring days. I was transformed. This was as far beyond ear wax as it was possible to go.

While I have enjoyed some truly fine cheeses in my life, my heart sank at the thought of the years of abuse my palate has suffered under a siege of cheap cheese products--products that now seemed about as appealing as mark-down Halloween candy on New Years day. Cheese, fresh cheese, was an entirely new experience for me. In that instant, I realized that I had never had it before. Owing to the draconian laws that govern the sale and distribution of raw milk in this country, you cannot purchase fresh raw cheese for any price, anywhere between the shores of west Los Angeles and eastern Maine. Unless you have friends with the motive and the means, your best bet for fresh raw milk cheese lies in a trip to France where they have it everyday. Viva La France.

I spooned the rest of the curds into a strainer lined with cheese cloth, then gathered the curds into a ball and gently wrung more of the whey from them. The whey, by the way, is not a waste byproduct. It can be mixed with a little more milk and be reborn as ricotta cheese. My wife and I use whey quite a bit to make lacto-fermented foods like sauerkraut, various chutneys, sugar beets, and ginger ale. Whey can also be mixed with filtered water and lemon juice for a refreshing drink or it can be used as an enriching amendment to the soil of your kitchen garden. Sally Fallon's book, Nourishing Traditions, is one of my favorite resources for information on lacto-fermenting foods with whey.

I salted the curds then changed the cheesecloth before gently pressing more whey from them. I split the cheese in half and air dried both sections. About two days later, I moved both cheeses to the basement to age. My intention was to age one cheese for about two months and the other for six. Four days later with my will sufficiently broken, I retrieved one of the cheeses and placed it in the refrigerator. It had the textural consistency of feta. The taste was more subtle though, in part because I did not put enough salt in the curds. Several days later, I went to check on the second cheese in the basement. Like any abandoned child left to fend for itself in an indifferent world, the cheese had metamorphosized into a foul smelling imposter covered in purple splotches. This didn't look good. With some regret, I consigned this fallen comrade to the trash bin. I realized too late that salt acts as a preservative that retards decay. I also noted that the basement was far too warm for aging cheese. This is the nature of cheesecraft. You follow your heart, hope for the best and move on, a little wiser in the ways of cheese.

Undeterred, I purchased Home Cheese Making, by Ricki Carroll and once again set about the business of making cheese. This is a great book that almost makes cheesecraft seem easy. My second wheel of cheese was a triumph I'm proud to say. It was delivered without complications and is maturing into a fine young cheddar. I have to keep an eye on it of course, making sure it's not too dry or too damp, looking out for mold, that sort of thing. It's a lot of work, you know, but in the end, it's worth the effort. These not-so-subtle allusions to birth and child rearing are no mistake. Making and caring for cheese can be effortlessly easy or a comedy of complications, but it is also loads of fun and never boring - just like raising children.

The rule of thumb, then, is to acquire the best quality milk you can find, raw or pasteurized. Raw cheese should be aged for at least 90 days if you are not positively certain of its quality. As for ultrapasteurized and ultra high temperature milk, the latter being found on a shelf at your grocer, trussed up in a cardboard box for goodness sakes, they're both pretty much useless for making cheese or anything else, beyond hosing down your driveway.

I'm already planning my next wheel of cheese: something with jalapeño peppers. I was asked by someone recently, "What is it exactly that you find so appealing about making your own cheese? Considering the time and the expense, it seems like such a great bother don't you think?" I have not spoken to my sister since, but she'll understand when I send her a wheel for the holidays.

I guess when all is said and done, the most pleasurable thing I get out of making cheese, is the certainty that Debra Wilson, wherever she is, probably doesn't know how to do it.