Cheese Bored
It all began with a tweet. A gauntlet thrown my direction, picked up in a moment of weakness: boredom. Who can resist the lure of a challenge when they’re bored?
I wish I could write a beautiful poem about cheese.
— Raven Darkly (@DarklyRaven) December 4, 2019
I once wrote a sonnet about roadkill. I’m down with an ode to cheese. When I was a kid, my parents owned a store in Daytona Beach: The Cheese Shoppe. My hastily penned poem might stink like yesterday’s Limburger smeared on an old fashioned radiator, but how could I resist it? It’ll pair nicely with that other sonnet.
Feel Free to Dis a Brie, But I Think It’s Gouda’nuff!
It began as a sonnet on cheddar
But a Limburger Limerick is better
And there’s nothing to lose
When singing the bleus –
If a lady would sing, you should let her.
Okay, that’s not “beautiful.” Let’s try this again, with a purely autobiographical sonnet.
Cheese Wheel of Life
“I’ve a craving,” I said, “Grilled Havarti on rye,
With horseradish–a copious slather!”
“But we’ve just finished dinner,” he said, with a sigh.Â
“Chocolate cake!” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather–?”
“Well, I might, but we wouldn’t,” I said, with a wink,Â
Looking down at my over-large belly.
And that’s when I brought proud Papa to the brink:
“Blue cheese! Habanero! And jelly!”
“Gorgonzola?” he asked. “Chocolate and chips?”
I nodded and grinned my unbridled delight.
“With mangoes and brie? From your ears to my lips!”
We danced through the groceries all night.
Now we are three, and oh, sweet Baby Bel–
What pairs well with strained carrots and white zinfandel?
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Oh, my Cheese! I am not a cheese lover, but I get the gist of the poem. Funny and cute.
As I said, truly autobiographical! I only had two cravings when pregnant with my son (who is now 23): copious amounts of grapefruit juice, and toasted cheese on rye, with horseradish. The latter first hit me after a large Chinese buffet dinner. I HAD to have, not one, but two of these sandwiches before the craving subsided. For this, we had to go to the grocery store, and my sweet husband did not even bat an eye. We went grocery shopping for dessert.
I had to Google a few words here, and when I found they were all cheeses, I drooled a bucket!
I am a cheese lover – a true blue cheese lover – and reading about cheese, or even reading the word ‘cheese’ makes me want to just go grab a HUGE piece of cheese and enjoy it for hours!
I read your poem twice, Holly, and now I hear my tummy growling!
😛
Oh, goody!! I live to drive readers to the dictionary! (Not to be cruel, mind you – I just figure that means they enjoyed what I wrote and cared enough to go look it up to understand it fully!) 😀 I’m not sure I’m THAT much of a cheese lover, but when we had the shop(pe), I loved to slice off the end of a smoked gouda for my lunch. And I can make a mean cheese ball. I figure “pasteurized processed cheese food” isn’t cheese – it’s the food they feed to baby cheese to make it age and mature. Hope you got some yummy cheese today, after I made your tummy growl.
You might wonder how, if I am a true blue cheese lover, I haven’t heard about the cheeses you mentioned in your poem! 😉
Well, I haven’t found them in any malls in my area. But glad I found them in your blog, Holly!
I love most bleu cheese. I think that Danablue is my favorite. Roquefort is a little too oily; Stilton is way too dry and sharp. Gorgonzola is tasty, but a bit too much on the salty side to eat alone (it’s great crumbled on a salad, though!) Danablue is a Danish blue cheese and it’s just a nice balance of soft, mild, and flavorful.
I like cheese, but I’m no connoisseur of it! I’ve heard of a few of these cheeses, but had to look up the rest!
There are SO MANY. I remember hearing tales, some I later learned may have been fictional, about the origins of some – like sap sago. It was made by monks, but whether they were homesick Irish monks is debatable, and the herb used to make it green isn’t clover. 😉 Still, a good story!
We don’t have many cheese choices growing up, Holly. But that’s changing. I do love cheese, but haven’t tried out too many. Your poem is mouth-watering!
Jane and my fav’s are Raclette and any cheddar combo like parmesan and cheddar or cranberry and cheddar. Cheese is the ultimate gift to humanity thanks to some ancient person who tried to store milk in a goat stomach and ended up with curds and whey. They had to be desperate to eat that for the first time but the human condition strives to perfect everything and cheese is pretty much perfect in my opinion.
Welcome back! 🙂 Despite my almost obscene familiarity with cheese, I don’t think I’ve ever had Raclette. I do love mixing shredded cheddar, parmesan, pepper jack, or other cheeses on a square of parchment paper, then baking (or microwaving) it into a crumchy sort of cracker. I’m not really a huge cheese fanatic; there are a few that I really like, and a few that I cannot stand, and the rest I could just take it or leave it. But that heel of a smoked gouda gets me every time.
Funny you mention what it must’ve been like for that first person to eat cheese. I once ran a writing contest – the idea was to write a short story about the first person to run across some bizarre thing, decide to see if it was edible, then write about how they convinced the next person to try it. Some examples: lobster, truffle (the fungus), blue cheese, balut. One of the contestants wrote about eating worms. The protagonist was a soldier. He lived; his companion, who just could not bring himself to do it, did not. (My intention, really, was to write about how to convince the world that some otherwise “revolting” thing – oh, like casu marzu! – was a “delicacy.” Sort of a foodie’s version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”)
Most went with the “I was so desperate I’d eat anything short of my own hand” approach.
Oh, well.