The South-Eastern Manitoba Sausage & Cheese Tour - Part Deux

Letter of the Week:

Dear Mr. Crang,

Never being one to trust book learning, you can't imagine how delighted me and the missus were to find out you're not a doctor! Seems you've done pretty well for yourself without that liberal brain-washing, better known as 'higher' education. Back to my question: I'm reading Richard Dawkin's book The Blind Watchmaker and he's talking about sonar in bats, and after reading of your sausage and cheese tour I was wondering, what do bats taste like? I eat meat for the same reason most people eat it - to ingest the power of the animal spirit - but you got to think a fruit bat's going to be pretty tasty as well! What do you think? Here's an idea: how about a wish list of animals people most want to eat! For me, hummingbird would be right at the top!

Yours truly,

Mr. Dilly

Well, that was an interesting letter. An animal-eating wish list. I started putting some thought into the idea and decided to add this to my 'Everything Else' page. So if you'd like to let me in on what kind of meat you've always wanted to eat but never have, I'll post it there.

I got another letter requesting information:

I think you should do an article on leaf cutter bees. I'm sure there are thousands of people wondering what those cute houses are for.

What a great idea! I was all set to write something up when I had to make another trip to Blumenort. And with all that happened on the trip, the leaf cutter bees are going to have wait until next week - I decided to do a Part 2 on the Meat & Sausage Tour.

The trip to Blumenort now invariably includes a stop at the Country Meat & Sausage shop. This time I knew exactly what I was doing: I quickly asked for my 6 frankfurters and also added an order of farmer's sausage. The farmer's sausage was on sale this week! We (my co-worker and I - we'll call him "Peter") also grabbed a couple of pepperoni sticks for the road. And the kind lady behind the counter couldn't be fooled - she knew they were for the road and left them out of the main bag.

We left the shop and headed back east down PR 311 and again spotted the New Bothwell sign - "The Cheese Capital". Last week I thought it read 'of Manitoba' but it didn't. "The Cheese Capital of what?" I asked Peter. He didn't know. This time we saw a semi-trailer hauling milk into town so we decided to follow it.

We were happy to discover that New Bothwell was only about 2 miles south of PR 311 and the first building we came to was Bothwell Cheese. We wheeled into the parking lot and quickly hopped out of the van. Peter asked if I had enough money and I replied, "As long as they take Interac!" So I peeked through the glass door, saw the Interac machine, and grinned, "We're in!"

Looking over all the types of cheese available, we thought we were in mouse heaven. I asked the stern-looking lady behind the counter what their specialties were. She proceeded to tell me what was on special. Great. Now I had to gently explain that I wanted to know what they had that I couldn't get in... say... Winnipeg. So I reworded it. She told me that they had these bags of cheese curds that they were famous for. She pulled out a few for Peter and me to try and boy, were they delicious! I was kind of surprised how much it felt like I was chewing on rubber, however, because it squeaked like you would not believe. I didn't have the nerve, but Peter commented on how much he enjoyed eating 'artificial' cheese.

I decided to buy some cheddar. She pulled out some medium and explained that it was at least three months old. I bought a large hunk of medium and a smaller block of old cheddar. The old cheddar is aged for at least nine months. Wondering how it lasted that long without going mouldy, I was told that it is aged in oxygen-free tanks. For a tour of the facilities, please call (204) 388-4666 and ask for Jake Rempel.

As we drove out of town, back to Winnipeg with my bags of sausage and cheese, we spotted a big manure spreader working out in one of the nearby fields. Every trip I've made to the Blumenort area, I've spotted (or smelled) a manure spreader. Mmmm, country living at it's best. The last thing I noticed before leaving PR 311 was the "Buffalo Meat" sign. Maybe next time....

As always, send me your suggestions for future columns on crang.com. See you next week.

© September 23, 2000