Speaking of Wisconsin

Thanks to Stacy for pointing out that today's New York Times Magazine has a little blurb about cheese curds:

Cheese Curds
By LOUISA KAMPS

When I moved back to Wisconsin, my home state, two years ago, I couldn't help saluting the first huge sign I saw, just over the Illinois-Wisconsin border, for cheese curds -- those squiggly, squeaky chunks of young cheddar we learn to love early here in America's Dairyland. Right along the Interstate to Milwaukee, there's a cluster of cheese-curd, porn and firecracker stores that has always made me wonder about the guy who would indulge in all three; but driving a distance to score curds alone -- well, that makes sense to almost any Wisconsinite.

On field trips to cheese factories when we were kids, my schoolmates and I peered into vats of bright orange cheese-to-be as dairymen in coveralls explained that curds were simply cheddar in its freshest state, separated from whey and salted but not yet pressed into shapes for aging. They squeal, most volubly within a day of their making, we learned, because their binding proteins are still superelastic, like new rubber bands. Gnawing on sample curds on the bus ride home, I marveled at their sound: balloons trying to neck.

In this artisanal age, when plain and simple mass-produced cheese is falling from favor, even in Wisconsin, it is reassuring that locals remain loyal to cheese curds. Sure, there's oohing and ahing at farmers' markets here over pricey organic chevre made by earnest newcomers to the cheese trade. But the fast action is still at the stalls, manned by farm boys in feed caps, selling curds and curds alone for three bucks a bag. It's not postmodern appreciation for a down-home and, frankly, homely food; it's the nicest kind of regional pride. A young friend from Los Angeles whose father grew up in Wisconsin came to visit this summer, and when he told me he'd tried cheese curds for the first time, I asked the inevitable. ''They squeaked like heck,'' he replied, narrowing his eyes to emphasize the sheer weirdness of the experience. ''And not just a little, but, like, 'a-squeak-a-squeak-a-squeak' with each bite.'' As Wisconsinites love to say, Atta boy!

Louisa Kamps is a contributing writer for Elle magazine.