With one week left in Europe, it’s time for a cheese-fueled road trip.
du shamans et savants
Many of you know that some of the most delicious cheeses in the world can also smell the most, well, revolting. Indeed, cheese making and aging is a process of “controlled spoilage”, and it makes evolutionary sense that we’d be turned off when faced with something rotten.
It was Leon-Paul Fargue, a French surrealist poet, who described Camembert cheese as “les pieds de Dieu” – “the feet of God”. I love this characterization- it simultaneously highlights the divine sensation of eating this great cheese and the disgusting smell it produces. And even more, it brings up a truism that scientists are only beginning to explore- the correlation between stinky cheese and the body.
The other day I stumbled upon this New York Times article featuring a farmer and his 230 ‘happy’ cows. How does the author prove that they’re happy? They each have names. It reminded me of a conversation I had last week with my co-worker Laetitia. We were driving up to the Alpage (higher in altitude where the cows are kept during the summer) and talking about, you know, cow stuff. I was telling her about the huge dairy farms we have in the US and she said “Oh, I’ve heard about that. I heard that on some of the farms, the cows don’t even have names”.
Reading online about the raw milk debate can make your head spin. In the beginning, it’s an excited, hopeful kind of disorientation like that experienced when first reading about the wonders of apple cider vinegar, grape seed oil or acai berries. Suddenly you wonder why you haven’t been downing bottles your whole life because if you’d have been, you’d be problem-free, obviously. But after reading some of the not-so-nice stories and then hearing Colbert make fun of you, you start to wonder if you’re actually insane, like Ron Paul or the people who drink their own urine. Are you turning into one of those compulsive message-board fanatics? Is this going to be like the time you spent every night for a week with goat yogurt on your face? How will you fit all of these various all-natural supplement-taking activities into your morning routine? Will you need to wake up at 5:30 now instead of 5:45? And so on. Ugh.
I spend most of my working life in a cave. It’s cold, humid, and it smells crazy. No, I am not a spelunker. I am a lady who washes cheese.
I’ve already described at length my love for mushrooms, as well as my love for eating stuff I find near my house. Combined, these two loves of mine have birthed this summer’s obsession: chanterelle foraging. It’s fun, easy and tasty- and besides the two ticks I’ve accumulated wading in waist-deep grasses, I have yet to find a downside.
We all know that there’s some crazy stuff that you can only find in Japan. When I made my first trip there earlier this summer, I experienced several ‘firsts’- first time getting served cocktails by a dude wearing a French maid outfit; first time eating something that was still moving around on my plate; first time in a CAT CAFE.
