Of course, it’s cheese; it’s cheese curds that are not pressed. Normally, cheese is pressed and the excess whey is drained. This, obviously, is not part of the process in making cottage cheese. The name, being quite literal, refers to its history of being produced in cottages.

I would love to be able to coin this term for cottage cheese: “rustic cheese.” I only say this because traditionally cottage cheese is a homemade delight, like ricotta cheese. There are so many different varieties, when you consider different levels of fat and type of milk used. Also, cottage cheese is not aged, so it doesn’t require tons of preparation time or fancy apparati. Also, most times cottage cheese is made as a biproduct of making butter, so, I don’t know: I want to call it “rustic cheese,” get over it!

According to Wikipedia, who is usually right on the money, some rustic cheese is pressed to make hoop cheese, farmer cheese, pot cheese or queso blanco. After doing a couple Google searches I found that there are just as many ways to eat cottage cheese as there are varieties. Apparently the most popular way is to eat it in half of a cantaloupe; of course, I don’t have a cantaloupe, so I kept looking. You can also eat it on toast, with vegetables, in salads, in place of ricotta cheese in many desserts. You can even just eat it like I did out of the tub. Someone suggested, you eat it with a drizzle of honey; while another suggested some salt and cracked pepper. You thought I was done, didn’t you… over pasta, with canned peaches, with cut up bananas, with sliced apples, with a sprinkle of cinnamon, peanut butter … *inhales* … with ginger syrup, with salted sunflower seeds, green onion, crunchy snow peas, shredded carrots, cucumber slices, green or black olives, any kind of jams, roasted red peppers… you get the idea; suffice it to say that the possibilities are many. I took a shot comparing the nutrition facts with the tub of yogurt that I bought. Both are 2% fat, but the serving size of the cottage cheese is half that of the yogurt. Cottage cheese has more calories, sugar, and fat than the yogurt. If you’re looking for a substitute for cottage cheese, you can try buying some yogurt next time you’re in the grocery store. Keep in mind though, if you don’t like the taste of cottage cheese and need to add honey or some kind of preserved fruit, that will add more calories. Consider fresh fruit as an alternative. Even honey is 60 calories per tbsp, and about 16g of sugar. Okay, I’m done talking about dieting.

Actually, I didn’t mind the taste. It was mild and reminded me of rice pudding; but, as soon as I had that thought it made me think, “This is definitely not rice.” so that was a little “off-pudding.” Get it? it’s a joke… “off-pudding” “off-putting.” It did have a little tiny bit of an aftertaste which was a little sour, but it wasn’t too bad; some people probably wouldn’t like it is all I’m saying. Anyway, I think I might start buying it in rotation with my regular tub of plain organic yogurt. I’m kind of a yogurt snob, but I don’t make enough “cheese” as a blogger to buy Greek yogurt all the time. But you know, you can make it at home if you buy plain yogurt and happen to have a cheese cloth, or coffee filters, apparently. If you’re interested as to how I took the last photo of the spoon floating in the air, you can follow the link to see the big reveal. How do you eat cottage cheese? Post in the comments.