Chekhov's Mistress
O is for Obsession
You thought this was going to be yet another Oprah post. Nope. What can I say folks, allergies are in full bloom so I can’t breath or see, my propensity for staying up late is constantly at odds with the Sun King’s propensity to want breakfast first thing in the morning and I don’t think I’ve actually even read for a day or two (defined as something less than an hour of having a book in hand). So today, I turn you over to one of the other little things that make my world turn: Cheese.
The New York Times has an article on the current American obsession with artisanal cheese (By Cheese Obsessed, 4/27/05). It’s funny because I see cheese, even good stinky cheese, as something like peasant food and I buy small enough chunks that it doesn’t feel as extravagant as it is at $20+ a pound.
My love for cheese knows no bounds – I once ruined a rented Renault carrying around a pound of livarot about Brittany for a week, or it was my friendships I ruined, but the smell just wouldn’t go away. Cheese, queso, fromage, call it what you like, is so rewarding to eat because there are so many flavors, some strong, some mild, they smell, they linger, you eat it with your hands.
Of course, the Europeans always knew about the mouldy stuff and being a fromage fanatic now is just one more post-baby boom obsession. Take this for example from the Times article:
Another cheese lover, Frederic W. Melendez, the chief executive of the Garden State Fund, a hedge fund in Wyckoff, N.J., said he is thinking of installing cheese caves next to the 750-bottle wine cellar in his basement. “It would be a cheese closet, not a cave,” he said, and it would keep the $100 worth of cheese he buys weekly from soaking up flavors of other foods in his refrigerator.
I don’t know, it just rubs me wrong; who can eat $100 worth of cheese a week and manage to savor it? Ah, I don’t really care what the hedge fund mogul does with his money and all that attention just means that we will have access to ever greater amounts of cheese too good for the grater. In fact, like some of the people in the Times article, I’m taking classes this year at Artisinal with my brother-in-choice. The phenomenon has also been good for local farms, and we are no longer captive to imports.
In case you don’t have a good cheese monger in your neck of the woods, you can order from Murray’s Cheese (Canadian’s of course, don’t have our silly rules on raw milk cheese, so for the young cheese’s it’s best to stay home). And if you’re reading Don Quixote, you may want to go out and pick up some Manchego to get in the spirit of things.
That’s all for me. Back to the books tomorrow.
Read widely, think well, and write often
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: April 27, 2005
- Filed Under:
Polygluttonous: Food/Places
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
