Part of the reason for my antsiness was that I was not sure how much longer to wait for the next step. Some areas had indeed developed a yellowish layer of dry crust which I supposed was the rind. Other areas, however, were still white and were not showing any desire to ever be anything but white. To complicate matters my cheese started to crack at the edges, in exactly the spots that had developed the thickest of the crust.
The short of it I decided it was time to move on to the next stage which meant --- waxing my cheese. Which obviously brought up one question that I had not given too much though before: Now what do I wax it with? Sure, there are plenty of places on the Internet that will gladly sell you cheese wax but I did not see myself sinking like $20 (once shipping and handling is figured in) to wax a single cheese, then possibly decide I have had enough of that and sit on a pile of unused cheese wax for the rest of my life.
The local Walmart offered paraffin for canning and other household uses, and candles. While the candles came in all sorts of colors (like fire engine red) I decided against it. After all, there was no telling what else might be in that wax and it could well be that the stuff that makes candles smell good could also make stomachs hurt. So the paraffin it was- it was much cheaper anyway.
It also was transparent, and I specifically wanted a red cheese. Luckily, the kids of one of my buddies was able to help me out, and the solution came in form of a bright red crayon, straight out of their art box. It was specifically non toxic. And if parents aren't worried about their kids inevitably eating those crayons, I wasn't going to worry about that crayon around my cheese. I was in business!
The actual waxing was easy enough: Heat the paraffin in a small (but wider than the cheese) pot and melt and stir the crayon in. Obviously, the mix has to be hot enough to be liquid but otherwise only hot enough. Some of that wax will likely splatter on skin at some point in the process and if it does, hot feels better than really hot. Once the wax was liquid and all mixed up I first dipped the top into the cheese, immediately pulled it out and let it dry. Then I turned the cheese in my hand and did the same with the bottom of the cheese. I repeated both top and bottom a few more times to build up a bigger layer of wax.
This left me with a narrow uncovered strip of cheese along the sides. I guess one solution would have been just to dip the sides, one section after another until I got around. I decided to use a paint brush (unused!) instead. It worked very well indeed though this was the point when I discovered you don't want your wax too hot. Anyway, my cheese soon had a solid hard layer of wax all around it. The only problem? Well, it wasn't red:
Obviously, that single red crayon had not quite had the effect I had been hoping for. I guess I could have kept dipping my cheese into the was to build up a bigger shell but it was obvious my cheese would never be fire engine red. So how would I fix that the next time? Well, one possible solution would be to throw more crayons at the problem. Though I was extremely hesitant of raiding the kids' art sets of what remaining red they might have in there. And I don't think you can buy red crayons without building a stock of blue, yellow, and other useless colors as well.
Or maybe I can score a lipstick from someone? I suppose there must be tons of them that are no longer fashionable on lips but would still look great on my cheese. And surely they are non toxic as well, or at least I really hope so. Food coloring might help as well though I am not sure if it dissolves in wax and can withstand the heat without breaking up.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I do want to first find out how this cheese works out before waxing any additional ones. And that I won't know for two more months if I am to believe my Internet sources. If I have the patience to wait that long that is ---
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