Thanks for the interesting read!

My condolences on the state of the US food industry as a whole, and dairy in particular. As a European who loves their cheeses, it saddens me how a product that’s not cheap but accessible can be gatekept economically like that in the US.

Don’t be hard on yourself about it though, to me this is a systemic failure. You clearly did your research, even though the “cheese platter” available to you is small and mostly gross ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

If you’re looking for a hobby though: making cheese yourself doesn’t require any expensive stuff except milk (and in some cases time). You may have come across making mozzarella at home, which you can do in a day. But other cheese is possible too: apparently you can make a young cheese with yoghurt as the culture which starts fermentation!