Woman Cave

My cheese is on a schedule.

Having sat at room temperature for close to three days, it now requires an undisturbed rest of two weeks or so while it grows its white fur coat. The temperature needs to be kept at a more-or-less constant 52 deg F for maximum mold efficiency and the RH should hover around 96%. Where oh where can one find such environmental conditions in one's suburban maison?

I  made myself a mug of Peet's House Blend in my cafetiere and considered my options. The basement might seem an obvious place but ours, unfortunately, is out of the question. Chilly? Yes. Damp? Undoubtedly. It's also dark, dank, and scary. It floods whenever rain is driven against the front of the house and, despite the prowling of a useless Siamese cat, has been known to harbor mice. It is not a place to which my usual strict hygiene rules are applied and currently accommodates two unused bicycles, a wheelbarrow with a flat tire, a broken ping-pong table, three long strings of defunct holiday lights, and all the surplus kitchen cabinetry from when we installed the Wolf. The stairs are rickety and the entire space is oozing with radon.

Verdict: not a suitable locale for my babies' slumbering.

Another possibility is the cupboard in the upstairs bathroom (dark, damp, and definitely cool at this time of year) but there is very little airflow and we're in there all the time for aspirin, bandaids, vitamins and the like. My cheeses would never get their necessary beauty sleep with the constant disturbance. Also, at some point the sun is bound to come out and the temperature will shoot up to unacceptably high levels.

Next!

Our fridge in the kitchen is a pis aller (thank you, dictionary.com!) but it's too cold for maximum mold growth and again, the door is in constant use.

What is a newly-minted cheesemaker with four recently-hatched camemberts to do?

I decided to purchase a cheap minifridge that I would use only for my cheese and perhaps the odd bottle of wine. One can fashion or acquire nifty thermostatic overrides that allow the temperature to hover wherever one chooses, so I figured I would install one of those, put a couple of bowls of water in the bottom for humidity control purposes and be done.

Off to Lowes I went, with the back seats of my Element neatly folded away in anticipation of my purchase.

What did I find when I got there? The most perfect appliance in all the world - a beer cooler (sorry, 'wine cellar') costing only slightly more than the mini-fridge option, with a temperature range of 45-60 deg F. Rarely have I been so thrilled by a trip to the home improvement warehouse. It was as though the hardware gods were looking down on me and smiling!  I hurried my treasure home before they could change their minds and send some lightning bolts my way.

Where to install my fridge? I removed the Squid's dumping-ground for three-year-old English essays, forgotten parental permission slips, and other assorted rubbish (I'm sorry, I meant to say homework desk) from the library and plugged in the chill chest. She immediately began humming away, working towards my desired 52 deg F. One hiccup - I couldn't get the temperature to drop sufficiently - indeed, whenever I adjusted it, it seemed to go in the wrong direction!

Sir was hastily summoned for a second opinion, but could offer no insight. The Squid was also presented with the conundrum, which he of course solved in an instant. 'Max', he pointed out as though it were self-evident, meant 'maximum power' rather than 'maximum temperature', as Sir and I had both assumed. Resultingly, I had been turning the ridiculous dial the wrong way.

Ah, youth - such flexible minds!

Once my desired temperature was reached, I filled two tacky French chocolat bowls with water, placed them in the bottom of the fridge, and shelved my camemberts on their mats, spaced with plenty of room to breath. The cave's fabulous glass door allows me to monitor the temperature and the cheeses' progress with minimum disturbance and its handy ground-floor geography means I can check my bebes whenever I feel the urge (which is about once every five minutes - I'm such an anxious parent!). There's room for more cheese and maybe even a bottle or two of the good stuff after we've made our next trip to the State Store.

We'll have wine and cheese in no time.

Judging that I still have some shelf space in my cave, I have decided to make an Italian pressed cheese this coming Saturday. Vacha Toscano or Asiago? Watch this space for my next exciting formaggio installment!