“You’ve got a penis in your cheese right here,” says Jennifer Billock, the world’s only professional tyromancer, pointing at my Humboldt Fog. Clients bring four cheeses — past, present, future, and a question — and she reads the veins and cracks like tea leaves.

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Fermentation takes a jar sitting on a countertop for at least a month. Mirna Bamieh left Ramallah a week into the war, emptying her jars and saying goodbye to her scoby. As she puts it: when you are uprooted, you can’t live your life around a jar.

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