Dad's cheese progress

My dad sent me some pictures of the results of all his efforts in cheesemaking. This is his cheese locker, a mini-fridge kept around sixty-three degrees in the basement. The top shelf is all little bries made of goat's milk, sealed in plastic so as not to contaminate other cheeses with their mold. The narrower yellow ones are the wheels of cheddar he and I made, while the thicker ones are cow's milk manchego. The big pale ones are gouda. This is about twenty pounds of cheese, all and all.

Here are my dad's latest products, two wheels of Swiss being kept at seventy-five degrees with little glasses of water to produce humidity. This is to encourage the growth of bacteria to produce the carbon dioxide that is responsible for blowing Swiss's characteristic holes. They stay in that box for three weeks, getting regularly washed with salt water, then they will be waxed and go into the cheese fridge to age for at least three months.

The only ones that are approaching readiness are the cheddar, which we made around Christmastime. Dad says when I come home for Easter we'll break into one and see how it came out. That will be the first time we taste a hard cheese we made ourselves.

Dad and Mom have also been making ricotta out of the whey that's left over from making the hard cheeses. I looked up a bunch of ricotta recipes for them, and they've made some delicious things. They sent me this picture of one such ricotta-based meal, roasted eggplant and ricotta crostini with strawberries in balsamic ricotta cream.