Side Effect of Italy

While at the villa in the Italian countryside, the group of 13 did a very good job of feeding ourselves. M, ever the good girl scout, suggested that a different group of people take the duties for one dinner during the week. She even wrote the schedule down and kept track of menu ideas so that trips so the Super Mercado could be minimized.

M and E came to Italy from northern Europe with a suitcase containing—I kid you not—six kilos of licorice and two wheels of cheese. Let's leave the discussion of the quantity of licorice for another day, shall we, and focus instead on the cheese and the person it has turned me into.

I know not what the cheeses were. This is partially due to the fact that every time I asked what the name of the second one was, a different person answered with either a completely different name or a pronunciation of a repeated name that sounded so different as to be a different word in my head. Thusly, I gave up trying to track this info and came home with pictures in my head instead of names. I like cheese in red wax and no wax. This particular info has not made it easy to find similar cheeses here in the States.

I exaggerate—but only a little. The first wheel was Edam and the second unknown. Regardless, downstairs in the chiller I now have a deli drawer full of foreign words or words of foreign origin now bastardized into edible English. There is a wedge of gouda, a wedge from Costmo, a wedge made in Seattle, and two other wedges not yet opened. I have become a cheese snob, as much as is possible here in the northwest.

Individually wrapped cheese slices are out. Huge blocks of bland cheddar are banished. "Gimmee something I can't pronounce" is my new mantra on the solid dairy front.