Yes, it’s a transatlantic thing; somewhat like ‘urbs’ (herbs).
Agreed, I think. I got nothing in the olfactory pipes that even resembled “cheese” from this stuff, in any proximity to my nose. All I smelled and tasted was mold, and it wasn’t some exotic flavorful mold, it was just all musty, breadmoldy odor. I’m thinking certain mass-market restaurants with middling-upscale pretentions are buying off-brand cheese…
Admit it. You work for the Dairy Council.
Actually, it is supposed to taste like feet. *Brevibacteria *is one of the species of bacteria that eat milk and shit cheese. They’re also one of the bacteria that eat the skin cells and sebum between your toes . . . and shit cheese.
Many of the bacteria that excrete cheese are bacteria that come from human and animal hosts. Don’t forget that cheese was inventeded when someone put milk inside an animal bladder. The digestive agents–including bacteria–produced the first cheese.
Cheese is just recycled milk. It’s pre-digested and -excreted. (Why it’s OK for some lactose intolerants.)
Yum.
Personally, I don’t think salads are the way to go. Want to really savor some Gorgonzola? eat a crumble with a slice of ripe pear. Some weird kind of synergy happens, and you just dee eye ee die.
Heh! And it actually IS named after the washing machine. Or at least named after the family the washing machine’s named for…
Would you agree that bleu cheese generally has a “piquant” taste?
Piquant, not a word I use much.
Ooh, or a nice bit of Stilton with a crisp Cox’s Pippin
droooooooooooolllllllsssssssssssssssssss
For a good American bleu, try Great Hill Bleu…it is made right in my hometown!
serving at room temperature. I grew up in the midwest USA and didn’t have real cheese experience until a grown-up.
Served properly makes such a difference!
Yanno, I was okay with leaving my ignorance unfought on this.
I think blue cheese tastes a lot like feet- and I’m all for it.
But think of the new puzzlers you can hit readers with! “Honey! What’s a 13-letter word for ‘cheese-shitter’?”
Like most of us, I suppose, I was raised and came to some level of maturity eating yellow cheeses, Wisconsin Cheddar, Wisconsin Swiss, Velveeta, and a little bit of fake Parmesan/Romano. Once in a great while I’d get some supposed Roquefort in a salad dressing (as often as not in an aluminum pot with a ladle in it). Then a couple years ago my wife and I took a trip or a top flight canal barge through Northeastern France. Breakfast, noon and evening meals were on the boat and prepared on the boat. The food was spectacular but the high-point for me was that the noon and evening meals were ended with a cheese course – one hard cheese, one soft cheese and one blue cheese – and a different selection every time.
It was as if I had never eaten cheese before. Cows milk cheese, sheep milk cheese, goat milk cheese, cheese with a salty rind, double cream cheese, fresh cheese, aged cheese, runny cheese, cheese as hard as a concrete block, cheese with blue veins running through it, cheese with a green vein running through it, thirty-six different cheeses. They were just spectacular. Because almost none of them were pasturized there is not one of them that I can get at the local Hi-Vee store (which thinks its getting pretty uppity if it carries Kraft’s smoked processed Swiss). It quickly got to the point that all my inclinations toward gluttony were fully engaged and I was looking forward to, no yearning and lusting for, that final bite of the evening of a blue cheese on a crust of crunchy bread.
If good artisan blue cheese is not a direct boon from The Almighty then it is a taste of the temptation we pray to be spared. Damn, it was good.
Maytag Blue, incidentally is made on a dairy farm near Newton, Iowa, and aged in a cellar-cave right on the premises. The place is owned by the same family that built the washing machines – now in the midst of being absorbed by some global kitchen appliance mega-corporation, the more is the shame. Because Fritz Maytag’s cheese is pasturized it does fall a little short. Them cheese eating surrender monkeys do do cheese right.
I’ve got to stop this. I’m salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs.
Ask me about honey. 
Mmmm, cheesy goodness… It’s almost my birthday, so to celebrate (it being payday and all!) I stopped off at Trader Joe’s after work for the makings of one of my favorite meals–the living room picnic. Bought a bottle of French blended rose and a bottle of Two Buck Chuck Sauvignon blanc, some sourdough bread, some pate (unfortunately, they no longer stock the pork liver pate with the truffles, tant pis… Had to settle for the chicken and pork with port) and a bit of cheese–in this case some nice double cream Brie and some wildly delicious English cheddar with caramelized onions. Heated the Brie with a bit of butter on it and proceeded to go hog wild on the whole mess. We’ve done variations of this particular favorite meal in many places and with many permutations of the basic ingredient set and it just never gets old. Oh, chocolate has to wind up the whole shebang, today it’s dark chocolate covered espresso beans–it was a tossup with those maddeningly addictive house brand truffles…
If you’re ever in Portland, I heartily recommend the Blue Cheese burger at the Giant Burger in Lake Oswego, it is so incredibly yummy it makes me like beef for a moment!
See how I neatly avoided that hijack there? That was pretty cool, huh?!
How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese? (Charles De Gaulle)
Mmm, that’s how I love my Stilton, although also with pears and gingersnaps. The gingersnaps-and-blue-cheese thing was a hard sell for my boyfriend, but once he tried it he was absolutely hooked.
Are any of the burgers at Ruby Tuesday’s any good? I hadn’t eaten at any restaurants of that chain for years, and my distant memories were that the food there was mediocre. A couple of months ago, having seen their TV advertisements about their burgers (which seem to run endlessly), I decided to just once go there to check out their hamburgers. I picked some burger from the menu that looked interesting. It was pretty terrible. The meat was bad, the bun was bad, and the toppings were bad. I suspect that going to Ruby Tuesday’s for your first experience of anything is a bad idea.