Cheese in the library

Going to the cheese aisle of a store is like going to the library.  There's so many different kinds cheeses, each with its own aroma, flavor, color, texture, and heft.  I have to spend time examining whatever blocks of cheese catch my eye. Like browsing the shelves of the nonfiction section, I rely on serendipity to lead me to the next type of cheese to try. 

My latest discovery is a hard goat cheese made by a Kentucky based company, Sapori d'Italia. I have no idea what it's called, as I threw away the wrapper in my eagerness to cut a slice.  It's a pungent, crumbly cheese with a rich nutty flavor and a hint of black pepper. 

My paltry description aside, I like it quite a bit.  J., on the other hand, thought it tasted "vaguely like soap."*  Which is good, as it means more cheese for me.

I love cheese.

*I have no idea where the soapy flavor comes from, and I think this is the result of J.'s tendency to devour foods without savoring them (ha!)

The mouse takes the cheese

Sometimes I wonder about the origin of events, especially for the oddball ones, like the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake held every year near Gloucestershire, England. Do people sit around bored and come up with these ideas, or was there some wacky once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (like someone accidentally dropping a round of cheese down a steep hill) that made someone think: "Hey! Wouldn't it be absolutely hilarious to get a bunch of dumb daredevil people to chase a piece of cheese? Wouldn't it be even more funny if they chased it down a really steep hill?"

I think this particular race is even more compelling because the objective is cheese. Cheese has the enviable quality of rousing even the most sensible person into doing something he might never condescend to do otherwise. I guess it depends on the cheese. Not Kraft cheese squares, or those ubiquitous blocks of cheddar cheese lining the grocery store shelves, but cheese with names that fill your mouth: camembert, gorgonzola, boursin. Cheese with flavors that evoke pleasure or disgust--so intense as to leave no room for ambivalence.

My perception of the conference that I'm currently at in Asheville, North Carolina skyrocketed a million notches when I saw that they were serving good cheese at the opening night reception. Not those little squares of cheddar, swiss, and colby jack, but giant hunks of rich cheese (I think one was a kind of blue cheese) that you were free to cut into. I had to restrain myself from carving off fistfuls of cheese.

It's cheese. What else is there to say?