Cheese

What on earth makes cheese, you know, the blocky stuff, so expensive? Isn't this labeled under "Economy Meals" in the old Betty Crocker cookbook, and I do mean the Old One from the fifties? It has no reason to be expensive, certainly not looking the part.

It's almost like making a car payment, this buying of cheese; but folks, lemme tell ya, don't go cheap. You will suffer through lord knows what sort of edible additives the manufacturer puts in as a stretcher. Chalk, for example. Glue. Old yellow and orange crayons. You Just Don't Know. Buy the better grade in smaller quantities.

This I have learned, in my living on a string days. The affordable in larger quantity tastes like phooey, but if you search among the varieties of finer cheeses, take the time to learn which gives the most bang for the buck. Case example, your Auntie 2seahorses was demanding a nice parmigiana romano to go on top of some bland vegetable but was scorched by the prices for a plastic tub. I put it down like it twere afarh, afire, or afur, depending on what part of the country you are from. I went for the cheaper store brand.

And then everytime I put that crappy cheap mess that looked like shredded fingernails on my food, the chalky, grainy, thick taste yelled "IDIOT! SUFFER!!" which I did to the last little granuale. Lord knows what chemical ingested produced the chacha in my gizzards, but I won't throw things out if they have been approved by the FDA. This fake cheese was from probably fake Italy, where there ain' no sucha thing as rules. It said it was food on the package.

After that experience, I denied myself cheese, you would of thought it was sin to purchase expensive. But I broke. Down. And got a container of parmagiana from the co-op for five dollars, but if you sprinkle it in eensy bits, the flavor awakens the tastebuds with less.

Again, I had been buying the two for four bucks rectangular chunks of alleged cheddar and layering it on to achieve flavor. This week, a smaller square of a 'farm-made by the family and the happy grass-fed cow that is so sweet she could watch tv in the living room with them and the kids just snuggle and lay back on her warm black and white cow belly' extra sharp cheddar squeaked hello in the cheese aisle at a greater price, but a sliver, a sliver, I say, of it sufficed and filled my quota for mold for the day.

You know, I think I need to buy a cheese shaver, one of those flat blade slotted utensils that slices in thin, delicate design. Ooo. No, I won't go to the dollar store for that; metal utensils made in China frighten me. I'll have to find a 'craftsman smithy with brawny forearms in the Alleghany foothills forging iron and kitchen gadgets' kind of cheese shaver. Local, y'know.

It has been a long long day, and the continuing saga of qi gong has worn out my knees and my arms, but this is good. I am rolling the chi between my hands very close to what the two instructors display. Really. I will get this any minute now.

It is evening, time for getting the last of the responsibilities finished. I dusted the shell cabinet and was horrified at what names I just don't remember. They are in the cerebellum, somewhere. Maybe in a dream, cypraea, murex, cymatium....sleep well, hear the tides.