The Dangers of Mozzarella Bricks

We use a lot of mozzarella cheese in our house. We use it in homemade pizza, ziti-bake, lasagna - you know, all sorts of high-fat, delicious meals.

So, always looking for ways to save a few bucks, one day several years ago I decided to get mozzarella cheese in brick form. I figured I could shred it myself and save a few bucks over the pre-shredded stuff. I get ideas like this once in a while and sometimes they turn out to be a great idea, other times not so much. I'll let you decide which this was.

So, I unwrapped my brick of cheese. I sniffed it over soundly. I licked the edges (no, wait, I did not do that). Then I pulled out the food processor. It has a shredding blade and people on the internet said I could do this. (If it's on the internet, it must be true, right?)

First, let me say that I rarely use my food processor. It seems like a good idea, but I almost never have food that requires 'processing'. I cut carrots and potatoes by hand. And most of my other food I can chew myself. (I know, I'm sure I could use if for all sorts of wonderful things that would make my life so so so much easier. But really, digging it out of the cupboard is more work than I usually want to get involved in.)

So, I rarely use it.

But it seemed like the perfect tool for shredding mozzarella.

So, I began.

Before too long, the food processor began to make a lot of scary noises. It vibrated and shook like a china shop in a 7.5 earthquake and then cracked into pieces. There were two things it did not do.

1) It stopped just short of flinging its blade across the room like a batarang and
2) It did not shred my cheese.

Needless to say, I gave up. I shredded the stuff by hand, returned the (obviously defective) broken processor to the store and moved on with my life.

And, having a short memory, a year or so after that I decided to try again.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The outcome wasn't quite as spectacular, but was basically the same. A broken food processor and some chunks of cheese with blade-nibbles on the edges.

I gave up and shredded the stuff by hand.

It's been a few years and it's getting to be time to try it again.

But I must say, the 30 cents I saved on the cheese has so far not been quite the investment I had hoped:

Food processor #1:	-$35.00
Cheese savings:	$0.30
Food processor #2:	-$35.00
Cheese savings:	$0.30
Pain and suffering due to stress, frustration, near-death experience:	-$2,336,792.00
Overall net:	-$2,336,861.40

If you do a search on the internet you will see that many many people do this. I suspect they either have industrial strength food processors, or they are lying out their, um, noses.

And while I do have a nice, new food processor sitting in a far dark corner of the cupboard, I no longer have an urge to shred mozzarella cheese with it. Or anything else.

Quack!