flodnak writes:
> Maybe you need to be a leeetle more skeptical about what
> your girlfriend tells you. Head cheese no more qualifies as a
> cheese than sweetbreads would as bread.
And most Americans have never even heard of head cheese, let alone tried it.
Cheesesteak writes:
> I can’t recall ever seeing american cheese in a solid block like
> you would see for cheddar.
You’re looking in the wrong section of the supermarket. There’s a section with a large selection of good cheeses, some of them made in the U.S. There’s also a section with sliced cheese (and perhaps a few of the less exotic cheeses). Many people only buy cheese from one section and don’t even know of the other cheeses sold in their local supermarket.
I might be the only one in the world who gets annoyed at this, but I find a discussion of cheese to be largely pointless. It’s like trying to have a meaningful comparison with the category of meat. There is just this strange belief that since it comes from milk it is all basically the same stuff. It’s like somebody commenting that they love the local chicken wings, and somebody else jumping in to say that their local bratwurst in much better.
I love cheese, I love nearly all kinds of cheese but they are different foods. I’m not going to bother putting Velvetta on a cracker, but it does make a excelent base for a good smooth Queso dip. I find the common cheese(kraft cheddar etc), to be perfect for cutting a large slice and throwing on a sandwhich. A good parmesian is unbeatable on pasta. Some of the tastier more expensive cheeses are best served naked on just the knife. Hell, even Easy Cheese(cheese in a can) sometimes just fills a craving I have that nothing else will work for.
Sorry to hijack, but discusions about cheese as if it were one monolithic entity is a peeve of mine.
Bow down before the cheesy monolithic entity!
The Master Speaks, Cecil explains the origins of Red/Orange Chedder, basically it all comes down to the diet of the cows, and how much beta-carotene they consume, the beta-carotene levels are higher in spring/summer so the cheese appears more orange.
Then people started dying the cheese made during the rest of the year to match, as a marketing ploy, and it caught on.