around here we grate our own cheese

there was a joke going around when i was a kid that i belonged to the milk man. an old joke that became overtly tongue-in-cheek when applied to me.

i did not like meat. especially the red meat my family raised. how else could one be born to a family of hard-working nebraska cattlemen and not appreciate God's cannery unless they were, indeed, the milk man's?

i used to object that i didn't like milk either.


grandpa did not know what to do with me. he could tempt me not with a hamburger. steak. prime rib. his signature grill was a three-inch porterhouse. we would sit together and he would look sadly from his dish, years cumulative hard-work, perseverance and planning perfectly marbled and medium-rare, to my plated cheeze-wiz sandwich.

i never would have survived had i been born a generation or two earlier, he would grieve.

i would correct him that i could have lived off berries.


it didn't help any that we'd have these discussions about what a shame of a prairie woman i would have made while looking out the window at a herd of grazing angus. my cousin that summer habitually failed to close a pasture gate and inevitably cattle would be found wandering around. peering in the kitchen window watching us eat... the them of last year.

so darn cute.

i didn't have trouble eating beef because it came from something so darn cute; i had trouble eating beef because i didn't like the taste. and moreover, i couldn't stomach the feel of raw meat. it's hard to shape a hamburger patty without touching it. hard to trim a steak. a chicken. wrap a roast. stuff a turkey.

i would cook with my grandfather and he would spy me acting all silly and squeamish. my grandfather loved me, but he knew i was just too lazy to have ever survived his generation. and he told me so. with love. and a little pity.

meat came from neat and tidy wrapped packages at the grocery store. cowboys were nearly extinct. people were turning vegetarian. the world was going soft, and i was its proof.

last week we stopped buying bagged cheese. i had read the ingredients listed on our package of shredded. i had uncovered my mother's old grater. i told my family, from now on we grate our own.

the first time i did so, the kids watched with awe. they didn't realize cheese came in hunks. they were fascinated to watch the slivers fall down and pile up. the soft, springy, salty pyramid of colby jack. i told them stories of my childhood, of when grating cheese was my risky job, of how careful i had to be not to grate my knuckles towards the end.

i reminded myself of my grandfather telling tales of butchering chickens.

i felt very pioneer-ish.

we don't grow our own, we don't butcher our own, but by george...

i felt like posting it above the sink in a hand-lettered sign. beneath the title of our weekly posted meal plan "the dine-n-dash menu" - that twice daily includes some sort of dried berry and rarely requires more than a boneless, skinless breast or fareway-prepared grill/slow-cook item.

...we grate our own.