"Bebuk!"

[mrissa]

Apparently spuddragon says this word when he means "Wake up!"

I am less nauseated than I was, and I feel popular. Also I am incognito as Mike Ford. I'll bet you didn't know that's what a Mike Ford sweatshirt does! It makes you indistinguishable from Mike Ford. Or so I assume; obviously it wouldn't work from the inside, and this sweatshirt is too small for anyone else in the house to demonstrate for me. markgritter suggested that he could tell me from Mr. Ford readily, but I think this is because I have a key to the house and am much more likely to take out our recycling.

I would blame this on weariness, but I started proclaiming myself incognito when I first put the sweatshirt on around 11:30 this morning.

Someone wanted me to talk about cheese. I'm not sure that's a good idea, as we may have finished off the Dubliner with supper, and I'm almost sure we don't have anything better. I have previously been a hard, sharp cheese person (the hardness and sharpness are traits of the cheese, not the Mris). What I really want right now is a 9-year cheddar. A 6-year would do. Aged gouda would do. Roomano would do. But in general, times that are not the middle of the night, I am starting to like squishier, stinkier cheeses than I used to do. Gorgonzola was always the wedge in the door, because who can dislike gorgonzola? (Answer: C.J. I went overboard with the gorgonzola the first time I made gorgonzola-mushroom risotto, and something tasted funny to Ceej, so he reached for the Nice Cheese to dampen the funny taste. And found the three of us staring at him, astonished that this dish could be insufficiently gorgonzolaed for even the most ardent admirer. He took a bite and understood our expressions, and now he will not eat gorgonzola.) (He used to claim not to be a picky eater, but then he started eating at my house and discovering all sorts of things he doesn't like. It's very easy not to be picky when you do all your own cooking and buy things you know you enjoy.)

Anyway, after gorgonzola, there was cambozola, which is not precisely nice but certainly its own kind of good, and I am not always attached to nice when it comes in opposition to good. And then allochthon took us out for dinner and bought a brie thing that was crusted with nuts, and while I thought I knew I hated brie, I also knew that I love nuts, and that turning your nose up at food without trying it is silly and rude if you don't have some good reason to know you don't like it. So I tried it, and apparently I do like some brie. I even bought some brie of my very own last month.

When we lived in California, I could never find sharp enough cheddars at the grocery store. It was very sad. We had to go to TJ's to get cheese at all, and even then -- well, when you go to a store just for cheese, you want it to be Surdyk's. And while TJ's has some advantages over Surdyk's (chocolate raspberry sticks! walnut gorgonzola ravioli!), the cheese was not on a par.

I do not eat gjetost. Lappi is like mozzarella for me: useful as an ingredient, not for munching separately. I bought a five-layer wedge of British cheeses last month and devoured it on slices of Granny Smith apple. Usually I would hum to myself during this process, because it was so good, and there were five! different! cheeses! All in one! Oh, it was good. Also I like manchego, and the kind with the ashes in the middle. I forget whether I like drunken goat. I think I should try it again now that I am not so opposed to smooshiness in a cheese.

Comments

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

I think you're referring to morbier (http://www.cheese.com/Description.asp?Name=Morbier). It is good. The ash layer is thin and you truly cannot taste it.

Though oddly, I had remembered it as a hard, sharp cheese and yet really it is a softish cheese. Not as soft as brie, though.

I like hard, sharp cheeses and soft, mild cheeses. I adore toasted cheese on bread, especially Gruyere or Dubliner (though a nice cheddar is fine, and mozzarella is always good). I think Toasted gjetost is wonderful on whole wheat, except that the bread gets burned to a crisp before the cheese melts properly. Though this may just be because I don't have a proper toaster oven (the last one we had developed an electrical short and went PFFF! and let the magic smoke out one fine day when it wasn't even on! and I haven't found another that didn't feel flimsy and shortable so it never got replaced. It's been seven years, I think.), and so I melt my cheese by putting it in the real oven on "Broil". I know, I know, it's terrible overkill.

My husband is a big fan of brie.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, that.

I grew up without a toaster oven, so I never got used to toaasting cheese on bread that way. We made grilled cheese sandwiches on a griddle, which is different.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

Never heard of it before, but thanks for the link; from what I read there, it sounds like it would indeed be a tasty cheese (at least to me). I am one of those ghastly unadventurous types who really prefers American cheese when it goes on my burgers, mozzarella on my Italian dishes, and snacks on mild cheddar. The most adventurous I get in the cheese department is Monterrey jack. I've never even tried brie. I had a terribly, TERRIBLY unfortunate experience with some Stilton cheese and mint jelly on a cracker, cruelly foisted upon me by Jason and my grandfather, and I must say, I pulled a scene reminiscent of Tom Hanks when he bites into the caviar in Big. UGH.

But anyway, thanks for the info.

[genevra.livejournal.com]

I am convinced that American cheese is not really cheese at all. In fact, I don't think it's really even a food. I think it's a petroleum byproduct or something, and a toxic one at that...

[brooksmoses]

There is American cheese that comes in proper blocks and gets sliced and is basically a very very mild Cheddarish thing. This is rare.

The stuff that comes in little plastic-wrapped slices is cheese food -- which, as everyone knows, is what you feed cheese. Not what you feed people.

(Of course, it takes a really well-aged Gorgonzola to be up to eating the stuff, but when you do have a Gorgonzola that old on hand, you'd better have food for it!)

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

It is an affront to both "American" and "cheese" (concepts that I love, when faithfully executed) that this product continues to manifest itself under this name.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, maybe...but it's a yummy one. ;oD

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's not my personal yummy near-cheese food, but my appreciation of radioactive cheese dust in Kraft dinner makes me a lot more understanding of some people's love of American cheese.

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was raised on nothing but processed foods and artificial colors and flavors, so it's "normal" to me. It wasn't until I was in college that I began to know there were people out there who didn't eat the way my family did. I grew up eating Lucky Charms for breakfast, and Kraft dinner and some sort of meat for dinner, and grilled American cheese sandwiches on white bread for lunch. Quite unhealthy, I'm sure, but it's all I knew. Old habits die hard. ;P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

greykev has talked about this, too, about adjusting so that the flavors of fruit actually connect to the terms in his head, because the taste of a strawberry is very different from the "strawberry-flavored" he grew up on.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Now that I am awake: no, not that. But that sounds good.