#cheese witchery

[lazywitchling]

what's a cheese you really enjoyed in 2024

This goat cheese!

It’s a Blueberry Lemon Thyme goat cheese from Vermont Creamery. I got it at Kroger, and it was really delicious. I put it with an orange-flavored cracker and a candied pecan. SO GOOD. I brought some for a family xmas get-together and I should have brought two of them 😂

[lazywitchling]

I mean... I could tell you that blue cheese is good for prosperity, but if you hate blue cheese and wonder how anyone could eat mold, you’re gonna end up dealing with the “old and rotting” property instead of the “thriving and flourishing” property. (I mean idk, that’s my hypothesis)

On anons suggestion, I was wondering about cheddar acting as a wealth component. But like... what kind of cheddar? A ten year aged cheddar? HELL yes! But what about the mild bulk industrially produced cheddar that comes in a 40 lb block and sometimes has white spots on it from where the yellow dye didn’t quite mix in? Does that count for wealth?

No?

But what if you’re living paycheck to paycheck and that industrially made bulk cheddar IS a luxury? Does it count for wealth now?

I guess what I’m saying is that... cheese is my career, it is my area of study and expertise. I couldn’t write a “cheese correspondences” list, because it’s not that cut and dry. (For me, at least.) I can’t tell you the correspondence of Parmigiano Reggiano, because it depends entirely on the wheel. I’ve worked with wheels that survived the big earthquake in Italy back in 2012, and I’ve worked with wheels that sat in warehouses for months upon months longer than usual because of what quarantine did to demand. Mystically and not-mystically speaking, those wheels have a vastly different vibe/essence about them than the ones that are able to age properly and move from production to consumer in a timely manner.

I could try to tell you the properties of goat cheese, but... which goat cheese? The local one where I’ve met the cheesemaker and the goats, seen the milking facility and the rolling lakeside hills where the goats graze? Or the vacuum sealed industrial one that’s clearly being packaged before it’s finished ripening in order to keep up with a sudden massive demand during covid-panic-shopping?

(Unrelated to witchery: Seriously, next time you’re at the grocery store, check out the fresh goat cheese logs. I bet you they’re pretty damn soft, almost squishy. Usually they’re more firm, able to be crumbled off the log easily. Now they’re coming in almost liquid. Manufacturers are trying to keep up with massive demand as people make more and more food at home, but you can’t rush proper cheese ripening. BUT DONT ACTUALLY SQUISH THE LOGS, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD.)

I keep thinking about how Alex Wrekk talks about her garden, and picking out herbs and plants to build spells with. It’s not so much about “correspondences” as it is about “who wants to help with this spell”. When you put your time and energy and focus into tending a garden, you fall away from “this is for healing, this is for prosperity” and you end up experiencing more... “this fucker won’t stay off the front step, this other one wants to wilt if I miss watering time by an hour, and this other one could probably get magma poured directly on it and still come back up next year”.

It’s less aesthetically pleasing to be in a grocery store under fluorescent lights, working with cheese, but I still have that hands-on connection with my work. My coworkers will see me pick up a wheel that (to them) looks like an ordinary wheel of cheese, but I’ll frown, squint at it, and ask the cheese “what are you doing?” and I don’t think I could write that in a list.

[lazywitchling]

Ok I was watching this show Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (highly recommend) and there’s these old goats called the Chèvre Sisters that do cheese witching and I thought of you

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

First: Thank you, that's flattering

Second: That is possibly the 150th time I've heard that 🤣

(I checked the notes of the old Cheese Witch post, and it turns out that the "Are you the Kipo goats?" responses have died down, but the "um actually that's called Tyromancy" from people who think they're the only one who has ever played Witcher are still going strong)

I DID JUST THINK ABOUT THIS THE OTHER DAY THOUGH! I was at work, and there was a woman shopping my cheese wall and she asked if I have fresh mozzarella ("Yes, lots of different kinds! Are you using it for anything in particular?" "I'm going to put some slices on tomatoes with basil") and I SWEAR I heard Mozzarella Season approaching like a freight train.

[lazywitchling]

Like.

I mean, we talk about kitchen witchery with soups and bread and stuff. Lots of herbs and seasonings added to stuff.

I uh.

I bet I could totally make a magical cheese board.

I am already brimming with ideas.

[lazywitchling]

Idk man, I’d use blue cheese for like... growth. Because blue cheese doesn’t have the mold added or “injected” in like people think (you can see little spiky holes/lines where they’ve stabbed a wheel of blue cheese, and that’s where the molds grow), wheels already have the cultures mixed inside the milk, and when the wheel is exposed to oxygen, the cultures grow mold spores. So like... speaking witchily (that’s totally a word), anything you want to grow exponentially would benefit from witching with blue cheese.

I have DEFINITELY used it to great effect in a curse to simultaneously rot a managers influence and also grow her troubles.

[lazywitchling]

Then again, I would hesitate to make any kind of general “cheese correspondences” list, because having done many a cheese based spell, I find that it’s a really really subjective sort of component.