Chekhov's Mistress

The Cheese Explosion

by Bud Parr

Bud,

If you keep posting about hedge fund executives buying hundreds of dollars worth a cheese a week and quibbling over if they’re building a "cheese cave" or a "cheese closet," my head is going to explode.

But, you know what? In this case, it’s all right, because I think I’ve figured out why you’ve pointed us to this article. Have a look at this quote:

Heather Ramsdell, a copywriter who lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, argued with an acquaintance at a dinner party recently when he cold-shouldered the goat cheese chevrot and questioned her taste when she said she didn’t like Humboldt Fog, a goat cheese from Cypress Grove in California. "He needed to enforce his tiny little cheese wisdom on us all," she said.

Hmmm . . . an outspoken copywriter from Brooklyn championing the little guy against the cheese snobs of the world. Clearly, Bud, this is you, and you’ve asked the Times to change your name and gender for anonymity.

Anyway, I got to get back to my books. Now where did I put that exquisite $700 Brazillian hemp-bound, gold leaf-text copy of Speak, Memory?

posted April 27, 2005

comments

Scott, you should have recognized me as the guy trying to force his cheese wisdom.

    – Bud (04/27  at  08:25 PM)


Cheese, glorious cheese: an honorable obsession. As a non-vegan vegetarian I honour cheese in all its infinite variety. The paradise for cheese devotees must be that restaurant in Paris which serves more varieties of cheese than there are days of the year.  (I have forgotten its name, but Bud will know of it no doubt; when I was there I couldn’t afford to dine, but did buy an exquisite little grape-leaf wrapped “Banon de Provence”.)

It’s not just the protein value for non-meat eaters that attracts me to cheese, and of course it’s not my only source of non-meat protein. There is also the wondrous compatibility of cheese and wine, of various cheeses with various wines, of even basic cheddar with Chateau de Niagara Falls if that’s all one has, a kinship harking back even to Homer’s epics. (For the moment we’ll forget the nasty oaf Polyphemus, definitely not a vegetarian.)

And there is also, to my possibly skewed thinking, a deeper philosophical and political import to the glorification of cheese: it is a celebration of the local in a world now gung-ho for “globalization”. Small local cheese-making folk whether in Ontario, Provence, Minnesota, Vermont, etc., are stout-heartedly maintaining a devotion to their local milk-producing sheep, cows, and goats to make their own local cheeses.

One of my local favorites is made by a fellow who raises a dozen goats and makes his own organic, herbed goat cream cheese, which is truly divine. He sells it only at the Saturday morning Waldorf School Organic Farmers Market north of Toronto, and the last time I saw him, he had no cheese for sale because his goats had just given birth and until the kids are weaned, he will not be taking their milk to make cheese. Like all truly worthwhile things (poetry, music, wine, garden tomatoes, etc.) this cheese will be worth waiting for.

    – Norma (04/28  at  01:07 PM)


Bud,

Who knew that cheese was the secret link? Oh, the goat’s gouda we had tonight was enjoyed by all & the Friday ritual of a nice hunk of special cheese shows no signs of fading soon. I was delighted to read ths!

    – Anne (04/29  at  10:20 PM)


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