- My mother would take me to the farms
and we would buy milk
because we would produce this artisan cheese.
And we would make it for ourselves and for our own use.
Or to share with our family and friends.
The Panela cheese is my favorite cheese.
You can either use it like as an appetizer
or you can use it to accompany a dish.
There's what we call Panela Botanera
which has jalapenos inside and small pieces of carrot.
Wisconsin is very important to me.
It's a part of who I am.
Growing up as a Mexican-Wisconsinite,
as a Mexican-American,
you're always stuck in an in-between
because you don't know
if you fully belong to the Mexican background
or to the American background or what that even means.
There are many commonalities
between my hometown in Mexico
and my hometown here.
We share the love of cheese.
Hopefully someday here in Racine,
I'm able to open an ag business
in which people from my hometown
can produce artisan cheese
and co-exist and share this cheese
at the cheese fairs with other Wisconsinites.
I continue to hold these trans-national ties
that connect me to the land here and there,
so for me, home is both.