A lot of people in OlKalou may not have heard of cheese, although it is a milk product, which they produce in large quantities. The reason they don’t know cheese is because nobody introduced it to them, because nobody makes it. Italians consume lots of cheese on their pizza and pasta dishes. These two food items are made from wheat and milk, Nyandarua being a big producer of both.
The world has become a global village and we can learn and introduce helpful ideas that can change our lives and our communities for the better. If you read up on the internet, you can see how most Italian households make their own pasta and cheese at home. Switzerland also makes plenty of cheese and most of it is made locally by farmers who raise cattle in the Swiss Alps. I have never been to either places but I read alot and watch travel channels. You can too, and you will get a lot of useful ideas that you can turn into a money making venture creating new jobs for our communities.
Back to cheese: It is one product that can be consumed instantly or can be aged for months, even close to two years depending on how sharp you want it. Cheese can be consumed on its own as a snack, can be used as a pizza topping and can be used in foods like pasta and lasagna. Some of those foods may be foreign to most locals, but once introduced, they may become their new favorite meals.
Somebody has to take the first step and introduce these foods. Chapati was not a Kenyan food and neither was Pilau and Samosas. Today, they are mainstream foods that everybody loves. Why dont you be the one to introduce cheese and all the dishes it can make. One can also make homemade butter which can be used as a spread on bread or for cooking, especially for making chapatis.
Had we known this back in the day when KCC returned hundreds of liters of perfectly good milk for days at a time and we ended up pouring it out, we could have made butter and cheese and aged it for months to be consumed during the dry season. People are always fascinated by new things and if somebody introduces cheese to the locals, it may be the idea they have been waiting for since sliced bread.
