Iowa-tastic

I like to provide tid-bits of interesting Iowa news.
For your enjoyment: Fairfield Ledger story

Famous Cheese

Blue cheese is, essentially, moldy cheese. In America, the best blue mold happens to grow in Newton, Iowa, where Maytag Dairy Farms has been turning out Maytag Blue Cheese since Duke Ellington's "Daydream" was a hit on the radio.

In 1941, the first wheels of Maytag Blue aged in underground caves. Cheesemakers produced the cheese by hand, stirring big vats of curds and testing the curd firmness with their fingers.
Little has changed, except now the cheesemakers wear hairnets.

I got to wear a hairnet myself when I toured the cheese factory to write an article about it for my master's project. You gotta love a master's program where there's no thesis and instead you can write quaint stories about cheesemaking in small town Iowa. Ahhh, graduate school.

Surprisingly, to me at least, not many Iowans know about Maytag Blue Cheese. Come on people! It's been in Oprah's magazine. It's been on the Emeril show. Maybe Iowan's don't even know about O magazine and Emeril. Don't you people get cable? I've decided Iowan's don't watch enough TV. It's one of our few outlets to civilization--we need to up the tube-time!

Workers still cut and wrap all the cheese by hand. The work rooms looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All the workers in white coats and hairnets would move quickly, not saying a word. The cheesemakers stirred big stainless steel vats of goo. I kept watching for Oompa Loompas.

If you've had blue cheese salad dressing you have no idea what actual blue cheese tastes like. That's what I discovered when I tasted a hunk of the huge wheel I felt I had to buy to reciprocate for them being so nice and letting me see the curds and whey in the vats. For the first couple of chews it was delicious--cheesy and tangy and creamy. But after swallowing I was left with an aftertaste of cement basement floor. That's mold for you.

Trouble in River City

I am such a pansy.

Really, I am. I've never smoked weed. I've never blacked out from drinking too much. I've never worn shirts cut too low to be decent. I am, overall, a master of self-control. I like my life clean, simple and healthy. I am too sane for my own good.

I've always wanted to do what was right. In elementary school the teachers instilled a holy fear of drugs into me, and I vowed to "just say no" when the moment came. They assured me the moment would come. I pictured myself in a parking lot surrounded by kids with long hair. One greasy hoodlum would hold a joint in my face and antagonize me, but I would walk away with my nose in the air. Alas, that moment never came. In small-town Iowa, no one ever offered me drugs. Sure, people took them. But my friends didn't, and no one would have been stupid enough to offer me drugs anyway. They knew I was too straight.

I went to college in clean-thinking, God-fearing Pella, Iowa. No one offered me drugs there, either. I knew people who did them, even saw them doing them, but no one solicited my participation. I would have said no, but it's still nice to be asked.

Spring is near. My yearly case of spring-fever is starting early, and I want to rebel. Along with most people, I sometimes want to do something out of character. I want to dance on tabletops. I want to get a tattoo. I don't want to do drugs--my holy fear of them is still intact. But I want to do something. I smoked a cigarette for the first time a couple days ago. Well, not really smoked--I didn't inhale. I'm still a clean and healthy pansy at heart.

Wheels Go Round and Round

Yesterday it finally hit me that I'm graduating in two months and have no job. This fact didn't hit me as a wave of pure panic, just as a fact that hadn't yet occurred to me. I think I should be more nervous about it, but I'm pretty serene. I don't know why. I think about how I've freaked out so many times in the past and it's always turned out fine, so why worry this time? Something will turn up. I am not merely a leaf being blown in the wind.

That said, I did take some time yesterday to think about what I should do when they kick me out of the University of Iowa. I thought about it on the bus, where I do most of my good thinking. The bus is fun. I can watch people, and the same people usually get off and on, so I can watch them over time. I know when the lady who smells funny is going to get on, so I try not to sit near where she will sit.

While thinking on the bus, I decided that if I can't get a job, I might move to Des Moines and try to be a freelancer for a year. I would of course be trying to get a job at the same time. And I could work some crap job too, I suppose. I don't want to live anywhere smaller than Des Moines, for now at least. If you want things to happen, you have to go where things are happening. Not that all that much happens in Des Moines, but it's the whole big fish small pond idea.

Not that I'm a big fish. But I could be a lot bigger fish in Des Moines than I could in Chicago. My sister wants to own Des Moines. She wants to go into commercial real estate and fight her way to the top. I want to go into journalism and fight my way to the top. Maybe we can own Des Moines together. Or at least rent a two bedroom for a year.

That's what I thought on the bus.