Cheese curd mania

Cheese curds.....should be re-named "Cheese Delicious" so people will actually give them a chance! Pretty much every restaurant in Seattle has fried cheese curds on the menu, so naturally I decided against ordering something that had the word "curd" in it's name and chalked it up to a disgusting city that serves curds to innocent midwesterners who don't know any better. Boy was I wrong! Thankfully, the other night I was out to dinner with a fellow teacher from the conference who ordered the fried curds to see what they were and I discovered the most deliciously satisfying piece of fried cheese known to mankind. There's no midwestern fired mozzarella stick that could possibly compare to these curds. It's probably a good thing my stomach has been feeling funny, thus relegating me to only 2 curd bites out of fear that I would pay for it later, because had I been at full stomach strength, that basket wouldn't have stood a chance. Hard to describe in words, but imagine tearing off a piece of slightly salty, firm, processed mozzarella flavor-type cheese and frying it to a golden brown yet it retains its firm texture despite being fried. It didn't melt in your mouth or get stringy like fried cheese usually does.

So, since my curd experience, I've been on a quest to find out exactly what a cheese curd is. Obviously I know the nursery rhyme of little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey, but what is a curd?? I thought a curd was the chunky part of sour milk, which is exactly why I would never order fried curds because who wants sour milk?! According to Wikipedia, which is basically the same as Webster's Dictionary (haha! Poor Miriam Webster certainly doesn't like that comparison!), a curd is just as I thought. And upon further reading, fried cheese curds are supposedly most common in Canada and the MIDWEST! Ummmm I think Wikipedia may have just lost some credibility because I for one have never seen cheese curds on any menu in Ohio. Anyways, I was at Pike's Public Market today and wouldn't you know, one of the first stores I came across had a big pan of fresh cheese curds sitting in it's window. So, you know have pictures above of cheese curds before and after frying :) Lesson learned: don't be afraid of curds.