Schmierkase, literally translated, means spread cheese, or cheese that is soft enough to spread. Cottage cheese, by its very texture, is not spreadable. Cottage cheese is made from curdled milk. My wife eats the curds with applebutter. I can't stand the stuff. I remember Schmierkase as a viscuous, cloudy, glue-like mess that didn't look fit to eat. I'll admit my memory is hazy on the substance; since I didn't have a liking for it. One recipe I read sounds as though schmierkase is nothing but cottage cheese with the curds dissolved. The PADutch-Life Archives contain a post dated 21 Jun 1999 which also hints that schmierkase and cottage cheese are identical. I wish I could enter my memory darkroom and develop a picture of my memory of schmierkase. I seem to remember that it was eaten with molasses, on bread. The German word for rubber is Gummi; the word for rubber band is gummiband. In PA-D, it became gumband. Rubbers, the kind we used to pull over our shoes when it rained, were called gumshoe, singular and plural. Richard Emlin Reed Wesley Chapel, FL ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Churchfield" <dctrk@c2i2.com> To: <padutch-life@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 3:36 PM Subject: [PD-LIFE] Words and phrases >I can remember when I was a kid churning our own butter from milk > straight from the cow, and Mom taking the leftover juice and making > buttermilk and "smearcase" I didn't realize until I looked it up that > smearcase was PA Dutch. We had some cottage cheese at the church last > Friday for our food distribution, and when I called it smearcase, > everybody > looked rather strange at me, and didn't seem to understand what I was > talking about. > > Now and then I call rubber bands "gum bands", and didn't realize that > seems > to be unique to PA as well. > > Don in AZ