I opened my mail to see a message from a friend. It read, "Hey, this is an emergency. Do you know how to easily get cheese of a cat?", so I immediately hit "Reply" and typed up the following:
==================================================================
Hmmm... to get cheese of a cat, you must first learn the art of "milking" a cat.
You will need to carefully follow these instructions:
1. Find a female cat.
a. (Hairless breeds are best, as it is easier to maintain the integrity of the milk you will express from the cat's teets.)
b. A female cat should not have **********
2. Locate the cat's teets.
a. This is also easier in hairless breeds.
b. There should be 8 nipples (one for each teet) arranged in 2 rows of 4 along the underside of the cat.
3. If the cat has recently produced a litter of kittens, you should have no problem "expressing" the milk from said cat's teets.
a. Locating a cat who has recently procreated, and therefore has full mammary glands ready for the sqeezin', should be fairly easy, as all cats are sluts.
b. If you are unable to find a suitable cat, find an old lady (normally pushing a squeaky cart filled with tin cans, and smelling of fish) and follow her home. There you should be able to find a cat of the appropriate type.
4. When you have gathered the milk into a container, (I find wooden containers to be the most appropriate.) check to make sure you have enough milk. (I recommend 5 gallons.) (This may take a few friends and several cats.)
Now for the making of the cheese:
1. Warm the milk to 20C (68F) in a sterilized pot. (The cream can be skimmed off and saved to make ice cream, the details of which I will reveal at a later date.)
2. Blend one cup of live cultured yogurt and 2 cups of milk until smooth. Stir into the remaining milk to mix thoroughly.
3. Cover and let sit overnight.
The next morning, you can skim off the additional cream and make pancakes with it! That's right, I said delicious pancakes! (This step is optional.)
4. Dissolve one tablet of rennet, which can be found online or in some grocery stores, into 1/2 cup of cold water.
5. Add dissolved rennet to the warmed milk.
6. Test for a "CLEAN BREAK".
a. To test for "clean break" (completed action of rennet), probe a clean finger into (hopefully) gelled milk and lift. If the gelled milk is not firm enough to split cleanly as you lift, let milk sit until clean break is obtained. (Do not stir.)
b. This may take as long as 3 hours. Be patient, do NOT disturb the milk. Keep warm.
7. Once you have a clean break, cut the curd with a blade.
a. Begin the cuts at one edge of pot, cut straight down the side to bottom. Cut repeatedly parallel to first cut, but increasing the angle of the knife until you reach the other side of pot.
b. Rotate and cut a total of three more times (four in all), yielding ½ inch cubes of curd.
8. "Cook the curds":
a. After sitting for 15 minutes and pouring off excess whey, place pot over a low fire, stir curd with thoroughly cleansed bare hand by reaching down to bottom, gently lifting with an open hand to stir. Cut larger curds as they appear. Do not mash or squeeze.
b. If you want to set aside some for a type of cottage cheese, remove a portion of the curds at this steps and refrigerate before you raise the temperature.
c. Stir continuously as you heating (curds will clump together otherwise), until the milk is 34°C (95°F) for soft curd cheese, or as high as 39°C (102°F)for very firm cheese.
Note: you need a quality thermometer for this'cooking' step: a small change in temperature makes a great deal of differencein the consistency of the curd/cheese.
9. Stir and maintain desired temperature until curd has contracted to consistency of firm scrambled eggs. Remove from stove.
10. Separate the curds from the Whey.
a. Let the "cooked" curds sit for a few minutes. The curds should sink in whey. [If the curds float , you have a gas-producing contaminant in your starter. It does not necessarily ruin the cheese, indeed, you might WANT bubbles in your finished cheese. But floating curds are more difficult to separate from the whey than sinking curds.]
b. Decant off whey through a strainer (you may line the strainer with clean cloth if the curd is very fine grained).
11. Salt the curds.
12. Load the press with the salted curds.
13. Press the curds.
14. Age to develope a rind.
15. Wax the cheese.
Let me know if you need any more info! Also, I hope you are doing well!
====================================================================
After clicking the "send" button, I went back to my messages to finish deleting credit card offers, online casino offers, and emails promising to "increase the size of my member" when I see I have received another email from my friend. It reads, "I mean cheese OFF a cat".
I am looking for some reply that will encompass the feelings of rage and disbelief at the enormity of the amount of time I wasted compiling that response. (It should be easy for you to put yourself into my place if you have in-fact read this entire post.) So, I am looking forward to your responses.
I know that only an appropriately named forum such as "The Asylum" would be able to fabricate a response that will truly include everything I want to say.
Thanks in advance,
Fumu