One of the weirdest things about living in Wisconsin is the widespread cheese fetish. On the one hand, there are lots of artisan cheeses that are so superbly crafted that one taste on a cracker will make your head explode. On the other end of the spectrum are cheese curds, seen at left.
Cheese curds are just that... freshly-made curds of cheddar cheese. They're not broken-up pieces of a larger hunk of cheese... they come out of the cheese-making process that way. Fresh curds are hard to find outside of the upper midwest, because one of the fun things about them is that they squeak against your teeth while you're eating them. The squeak tends to diminish considerably within days of manufacture, so the curds have to be really fresh for you to experience that.
Up here, most cheese curds are eaten either plain or battered and fried. The frying process destroys the "squeak", but it does create a little hunk of fried cheese that is pretty satisfying on a cold day. In Quebec, the cheese curds are more white-ish in color, and are used in a dish called poutine (an ambrosia-like extravaganza of comfort food involving french fries, cheese curds, and gravy).
It must suck to live here and be lactose-intolerant.
