Dairy for all

These things occur occasionally when you mention you work for a dairy magazine out in public. You do hear about the oat milk lattes people of a certain age drink, but that they still eat normal, tasty cheese. They have tried the alternatives and they’re just not nice or the same as real cheese. They also have normal cow milk on their cereal when they sit down for it. As has long been seen, it seems that the dairy alternatives have just been added to the refrigerator door shelf, rather than replacing it. That’s fine, a lot of dairies can make alternatives. We welcome everyone.

We also got a lecture about how pervasive the Dutch dairy industry is, which is true. They have a lot of cows for a small country. I mentioned the historical movement of Dutch dairy farmers to Canada, where they can have thousands of cows, and the other person said, you know, I wondered about that when I lived there. Lots of Dutch surnames in certain Canadian provinces, apparently. Who knew? We knew.

It is a discussion that usually ends in a lot of smiles, because everyone has dairy in their fridges. People grew up with it, and even when they give up on other sectors – meat of varying kinds, processed foods – they stick with dairy. I usually wind up with their grocery list. I have kefir and yogurt and cheese, and the ultimate question is asked. What is your favourite cheese? For myself, I recently managed to buy some Bidlea Blue from Burt’s Cheese recently, registered for the masterclass at the Academy of Cheese, and then proceeded to skip the masterclass and scarf the cheese. Burt’s Blue was also quickly dispatched by us all. Oh they were divine. I apologise for missing the class, but by golly it was tasty cheese. (www.burtscheese.co.uk)