A woman prepares a snack for her family while her youngest child, an eight-month-old named Mabel Mae, looks on from her high chair. She pours milk into a Dutch oven from a glass jar almost as big as the baby girl beside her, heats it to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and mixes in citric acid. Off to the side, a blonde girl in a pink dress—Frances, age six, the woman’s fourth child and eldest daughter—tends to her baby sister. The woman checks the milk’s temperature, lets it sit until it congeals. She slices the curd into half-inch cubes, stirs it into a runny mixture, adds salt. Black rubber gloves materialize on her hands, and she plunges them into the pot, picking up the cheese she’s made out of almost nothing, forming it into a ball, stretching it as if it were saltwater taffy.
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