 Hi, hi everyone. This is Manthi here from the Cheese Collective. Of course, if you guys are talking about cheese, I was most excited to be a part of this. So thank you so much for having me you guys. Elizabeth and I connected, of course, over cheese, and we took it from there, and we have an amazing, amazing map that we want to share with you guys. Imagine an entire map of India with a plotting of every cheese maker, every cheese retailer. Oh, there it is. I mean, just look at that. That's us. That's us. That's Indians who are making cheese, who are selling cheese. And some of them are as new as a few months old and some of them are, you know, they started a couple of decades ago. So there's a lot of history on this map. And of course, there are a lot of cheeses that have been there with us since, since, you know, not just decades, but they've been there prehistoric indigenous Indian cheeses. So we have a good mix of everything we got together, we spoke to a bunch of people, we interviewed them, and we have collated all that information. And I'm going to now, you know, I'm going to let Elizabeth introduce you to a little bit about what Food Forward India does and, you know, how this map, this Google Earth actually works. And yes, Elizabeth, are you here? Yes, I am. Hi, hi everyone. Really great to be here and be here with you all to talk about this project that we did together with Mansi. So I'm Elizabeth and I am the assistant project manager at Food Forward India. And so Food Forward India is an initiative that's exploring and discovering food around India. And the main aim of what we do is basically we want to kind of broaden the narrative. And from the current stereotypes that we have that is called like Indian food. And our main work actually was supposed to be traveling around lots of field work, visiting different people in different places and learning about, learning about, I've seen cheeses, learning about cultures and traditions across India. And as you can see the pandemic happened and our explorations all became virtual. And so we decided to meet people, see if we can meet people virtually understand their homes through a series that we call the virtual escapes that you can find on our Instagram, and also put it into a digital media where we have a website launching soon which would be, enable people to, which would be an interactive space for people to kind of explore this journey of food with us. So how, what and why and how did we get to cheese. Well, nothing gets cheddar than this. I was told to use as many cheese funds as possible. And so cheese is actually may not be like the first thing we think about when we hear Indian food so maybe amul cheese and maybe paneer. But that list actually kind of stops there. But having a really rich culinary landscape that we do with our climatic zones that are similar to Europe. So I think that there are a lot of, you know, industrialist communities that out of necessity preserve food in all forms. So factors like these obviously are bound. You know, for us to create some of these delicious products from daddy, going way back like Mansi said you know to the Indus Valley civilization. Cultured butter, but cultured gateway before the Europeans are cultured butter. And so our curiosity is led us to curating the this modern timeline of cheese with with Mansi from the cheese collective that represents people producers and communities, who've kind of brought to life recognition of Indian Indian indigenous cheese. Why was this kind of like important for us to do. Well, it was important for us to do because, as I said before like the main aim of food forward India is to break these stereotypes of Indian cuisine and add more like complexity to the narrative of food. And these was one ingredient like you're going to hear Dr. Rolfson, who is story and journey is absolutely lovely and amazing. And it shows us how this one ingredient can showcase the diversity of products and techniques through the communities they represent, and we're able to see people places here their stories. This opens our mind to food culture and creates a kind of sense of inclusivity in these in these dialogues. And so, the first step for us was obviously to find a collaborator so we reached out to the wonderful Mansi Jasani, who is doing, she's she's like cheese queen with with all of her with with her curation of cheese her collective and and and also, and and also her, her vast knowledge of cheese so it was very exciting to learn that Mansi co authored the chapter in the Oxford companion to cheese on India, and this was this is again another culinary landmark. And so, together we called all code nerds, and we asked them about these different like significant memories that they had about cheese what what did cheese mean to them in their communities. What was that cheese origin story. When did this cheese origin story begin and how, how did they start. And what were the aha moments as they went through cheese. So we didn't just want to share these stories, randomly, but we wanted to create a way that if, if you were new to Indian cheese you could, you could maybe chronologically go along this timeline to learn even more about how these different cheese makers kind of came into place. We started as we called it a modern timeline so we started at Operation flood which was, which was around the time of the white revolution which cheese, dairy processing really took off in India because of the access milk supply. And, and so we tried to create an add in cheese makers as they started their journey and, and learn of their stories. And so I'm really excited today to be here because of also two people who really like brought together this, this, this journey for us, obviously Mansi who we collaborated with to make this possible. And Dr. Rawlifson who I said again who whose story really inspired us and help us think so much more outside of the box of what cheese was within the community.