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Yogurt is a healthy food that can be made at home. One way to make it is to first buy some yogurt from a store or purchase dry yogurt culture. Add two small spoonfuls of the yogurt to two cups of milk. This will be the starter for your own yogurt. A cup in the United States is two hundred forty milliliters.

A Tibetan woman tries some yogurt during a yogurt festival in Lhasa

When making yogurt, it is very important to have clean equipment, clean hands and good temperature control.

Pour eight cups of milk into a large cooking pot. Heat the milk to eighty-five degrees Celsius. Then cool the milk quickly to forty-three degrees. To do this, you can put the cooking pot in cool water.

Keep the yogurt at forty-three degrees and add one-half cup of the starter. The remaining starter can be kept for later use. If you want a thicker yogurt, you can also add one-third of a cup of dry milk.

Cover the pot and keep it at a temperature of forty to forty-five degrees Celsius for four to six hours. After that, your homemade yogurt is ready. It can be left at room temperature for up to twelve hours if you like a stronger taste.

You can add fruit, nuts, honey or spices.

Yogurt can be made with milk from cows or other animals including goats, sheep, water buffalo and camels. It can be spelled y-o-g-u-r-t or y-o-g-h-u-r-t. More information on making it can be found at Web sites such as practicalaction.org.

Now, from yogurt, we move on to another ancient and related food — cheese.

Parmigiano-Reggiano is the king of Italy’s cheeses. People worldwide use it on pasta and other foods. The traditional Italian cheese is produced on several hundred farms around the northern city of Parma.

Cheese makers age it for at least twelve months in large rounds called wheels.

Parmigiano-Reggiano

Parmigiano-Reggiano producers say now they are struggling with the financial crisis. Sales of the cheese and a lower-priced version, Grana Padano, are down in Italy. Prices for producers have dropped. And low-priced copies are on the market.

Now comes a rescue plan for the industry. Italy’s government has made available enough money to buy two hundred thousand wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Charitable organizations then will give the cheese — more than sixty million dollars’ worth — to poor people.

Here is a list of cheeses to try in the new year… I think this could be a new years resolution I can actually keep!

1. Monforte Dairy Company, Millbank

In the heart of Amish country, cheesemaker Ruth Klahsen, a veteran chef well-known to patrons of Rundles and the Old Prune in Stratford where she once cooked, makes more than 30 different cheeses including the “wow” one called Piacere (pleasure in Italian), a semi-soft sheep’s milk cheese covered with rosemary, savoury, chill pepper and juniper, that’s addictive.

www.monfortedairy.com

2. Fifth Town Artisan Cheese, Picton

Fifth Town, which gets its name from its location, once known as “Fifth Town” or the fifth town to be settled in newly formed Upper Canada, makes about 15 cheeses including I Wish, an Idiazbal-style sheep’s-milk cheese (a Basque style smoked cheese), cave-aged for three to nine months, and Lemon Fetish, a soft sheep’s milk cheese that’s lightly aged and made with lemon zest.

www.fifthtown.ca

3. Upper Canada Cheese Company, Jordan

The well-stocked factory shop naturally features Upper Canada’s two unique cheeses produced using the milk of a single local Niagara herd of Guernsey cows cared for by the Comfort Family (one of only a half dozen Guernsey herds in Canada), namely the Oka-style semi-soft Niagara Gold fashioned after recipes developed by the Trappist Monks, and Comfort Cream, their camembert-style soft, white bloomy rind cheese.

www.uppercanadacheese.com

4. Thunder Oak Cheese, Thunder Bay

One of the most northerly of Ontario’s cheesemakers, Thunder Oak took the Canadian Cheese Grand Prix in 2002 for the best firm cheese for their handcrafted farmstead Gouda. The cheese company was founded by Jacob and Margaret Schep, who both came from cheese-making families in Holland.

www.cheesefarm.ca

5. Les Brebis sur le toit bleu, Oxford Mills

This small farm with a name evocative of Jean Cocteau and 1920’s Paris has been developing a special herd of dairy sheep, such as Lacaune, East Friesian and Rideau Arcott crosses, to produce Pyrenees-style Tomme, blue cheese and feta. www.sheepcheese.ca

– Margaret Swaine, a cheese- and wine-loving Toronto based writer, who makes it a point to search out both wherever she goes.

6. Black River Cheese, Milford

Historic Black River Cheese Company, located in bucolic Prince Edward County, was started in 1901 by local farmers and is still a co-operative producing tangy aged cheddar, flavoured mozzarella and even garlic curds. www.blackrivercheese.com

7. Best Baa Dairy, Fergus

As founding members of Ewenity Dairy Co-op, cheesemaker Elisabeth Bzikot and her husband Eric buy raw sheep milk from the small co-operative to make yogurt, ice cream and a fine collection of firm and soft sheep cheeses, such as Mouton Rouge, a 60-day-aged raw milk cheese and Ramembert, a creamy camembert style cheese. www.ewenity.com

8. Wilton Cheese, Odessa

Master cheesemaker Arne Jensen from Denmark founded Jensen Cheese in 1925, now Wilton’s Cheese Factory. Aged cheddars, such as Vintage Reserved that’s six years and older, is the delicious specialty. www.jensencheese.ca or www.wiltoncheese.com

9. Back Forty Artisan Cheese, Lanark

James Keith handmakes ewe milk cheese in a little fromagerie in Lanark Highlands and trucks it to the Carp Farmer’s market, the Byward Market and restaurants and shops in Ottawa, Perth and Kingston. Back Forty is known for its Highland Blue; Madawaska, with its tangy soft centre; and Dalhousie, a semi-firm brushed cheese. www.artisancheese.ca

10. Thornloe Cheese, Thornloe

A respected brand in Northern Ontario for more than 68 years, the cheese, ice cream and curds made at Thornloe use millions of litres of locally produced milk every year. Travellers love to stop at the cheese factory store on Highway 11 between New Liskeard and Armstrong. www.thornloecheese.ca

At this year’s annual American Cheese Society competition, aficionados and producers were dazzled by a newcomer: Hidden Springs Creamery of Westby, Wis., won six awards, including two first-place honors.

Tasters may have been puzzled by how this cheesemaker emerged from nowhere. Just two years ago, Hidden Springs did not exist and its owner, Brenda Jensen, was working as a manager at a global packaging company.

Today, Ms. Jensen can be found milking sheep and hand-crafting two-pound wheels of cheese. After 25 years in the corporate world, Ms. Jensen, 47 years old, decided to quit her job and start a creamery. Her first-place Ocooch Mountain cheese, a European Bufont-style aged cheese, is gaining prestige in the artisanal cheese world. Her creamy sheep’s milk cheese, Driftless, which comes in flavors ranging from basil to lavender, has garnered a number of local and national awards, including three at the 2007 American Cheese Society competition, which is considered the U.S.’s premiere cheese festival.

“Brenda sends me this almost flawless cheese that is consistent and sharp,” says Lenny Rice, the buyer for Cowgirl Creamery, which carries Ocooch Mountain and Driftless cheese at its stores in California and Washington, D.C. “One of the reasons is she has put a lot of care into the milk.”

Ms. Jensen is among a growing number of dairy farmers who have left corporate jobs for the allure of the cheese world. According to the American Cheese Society, which represents artisanal and craft cheesemakers, the number of cheesemakers who have joined the organization has more than tripled in the past seven years, from 426 in 2001 to 1,346 in 2007. And cheesemaking has attracted producers from non-food backgrounds. Jeff Roberts, author of “The Atlas of American Cheese,” found that almost a third of artisanal cheesemakers in 2006 had come from other careers ranging from doctors to dotcommers.

“It’s a desire to do something outside of the corporate world, to do something with nature, to do something on your own,” says Mike Gingrich of Uplands Cheese Company, in Dodgeville, Wis. Mr. Gingrich spent several years as an executive at Xerox Corp. and on a venture capital team before settling into the dairy business nine years ago. His Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese won two American Cheese Society “Best in Show” awards. “I have never been in a business like this where your customers are helpful, where your competitors are helpful. It’s not as cutthroat.”

Adds Laura Werlin, author of “Laura Werlin’s Cheese Essentials”: “The lifestyle appeals to people. I think we revere cheese makers in a way that we don’t other agricultural producers. It’s harder to stand out if you are a really good blueberry maker than if you are a really good cheesemaker.”

A demand for artisanal cheese has helped foster these new cheesemakers. The rising cost of transporting cheese from Europe, in addition to the weakened dollar, has driven up the price of imported cheese by as much as 30%, forcing many consumers to look to cheaper domestic products. In addition, Jeanne Carpenter, a spokeswoman at the Wisconsin Diary Business Innovation Center, points to a shift in American taste towards bolder and farmstead cheeses.

“We have gone from the 1970s when everybody wants to eat this commodity Kraft cheese to one where they want a cheese that is funky and has a story behind [it]. The artisanal cheesemaker provides this,” Ms. Carpenter said, noting that the number of farmstead cheesemakers in Wisconsin has increased from 10 to 44 in the past decade. “It’s really been consumer driven.”

To be sure, becoming a cheesemaker is no simple task. Average start-up costs are about $250,000, says Ms. Carpenter, and cheesemakers must take a series of classes to become certified. And once you’re knee-deep in cow manure, the lifestyle may not seem quite as romantic.

“You got to really love it,” says Ms. Rice of Cowgirl Creamery. “They might be wealthy coming into it, but they are not going to get wealthy making cheese. We have a seen a couple of instances of people who worked in the dotcom industry, sold out their stock and opened a dairy farm — and they were quickly humbled by the lifestyle. Those animals become your children. You’re up at 3 o’clock in the morning to tend to them.”

Ms. Jensen was the manufacturing manager at Milprint, a division of packaging giant Bemis Co. in Lancaster, Wis, before she decided to leave her $80,000-a-year job for the cheese world in 2006.

“I always knew that I would live in the country and have a barn,” says Ms. Jensen, who grew up on a “hobby farm” in Benoit, Wis., where she and her brothers helped tend to chickens, rabbits, horses and a milk cow. “But I didn’t know much beyond that. I never thought I would have sheep.”

For fun, she and her husband, Dean, a mental health physician, decided to buy about 50 milking sheep for their 76-acre farm four years ago. In November 2005 she attended a three-day cheese-making and started experimenting with cheese.

Today, Ms. Jensen’s retails Hidden Valley Creamery cheese for $20 to $40 a pound at specialty stores across the country. She made about 6,000 pounds of cheese in 2007 and expects to make a total of 12,000 pounds by year end. Ms. Jensen says she is $20,000 away from being profitable.

“It was the whole romance of it,” she says. “The smell of the milk, the feel of the cheese — I didn’t realize how intimate you could become with the cheese making process.”