Oh No! No More Cheese!

This came as quite a blow to my cheese-loving self. It happened last night at the annual Cider Press Potluck at the kids' school. The school is located at Meadowstone Farm, an organic farm with tons of beautiful produce, chickens/eggs, goats, pigs. The purpose of the goats is to make delectable goat cheese. And, man, is it good. I reached into the commercial kitchen's giant fridge yesterday evening to grab the big bowl of bean dip that was our contribution to the potluck and my eye rested long enough to get a pit in my stomach on a bottle filled with brownish liquid sharing the same shelf in the commercial fridge as my bowl of beans. "Veal Rennet" is what it said. I had a very bad feeling about that bottle, and I went outside to ask Farmer Tim, the school's landlord, organic farmer, and goat cheesemaker extraordinaire, what the deal was with the bottle of veal rennet in the fridge. I feared the answer and was not wrong in doing so. I have been a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian for 21 years. I have read vegetarian-diet books, I have subscribed on and off to Vegetarian Times magazine. I was shocked (and saddened) to find out after all these years that almost all cheese is produced thanks to the slaughter of baby cows. Yes, I wear leather shoes. Sure I love me a good pair of gorgeous leather boots. My issue is not one of animal rights so much as I just feel grossed out to think about EATING animal parts. And baby animals!? Even gross-er.

So I am afraid my love affair with cheese has ended. At least until baby cows are no more harvested for veal because farmers can sell a lot more meat from a full grown cow and the price of veal rennet will be so high that more and more farmers will turn to alternative enzymes to produce cheese and more and more of those alternatives will be vegetarian. Sigh. I feel like a new cheese-less me already.