Homework Submitted:

Here’s the reply the teacher received the following day:

Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.

I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.

From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Yes, Italy is spending 50M EU to help their struggling PR dairy farmers.    There seems to be a bit of sniffing going on b/c some second class Grana Padano folks are included in the effort.  I say, help one, help all.   Widen the net…help the Mozzarella masters, the Pecorino producers and of course, the Robiola retailer…..Tis the season for charitable works.

here’s a link to the story.  Note the excellent b&w picture of Parm about 1/2 way down the story…is this meant to symbolize the fractured state of the industry?  Very deep.  Very cheesy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122877565358989333.html

The bacon people.

You may have one in your life.

They talk obsessively about how bacon is the most karmically wonderfully thing going; they send you songs, ditties and odes to bacon (I admit to loving the Bacon Flowchart); they obsess about epicurean finds like Benton’s Bacon; they play games like Pass the Pigs

(.38% chance of rolling a “makin’ bacon’!); they peruse/ build websites like mrbaconpants.com; they own tshirts/baseball caps/bumper stickers that read “Bacon is Meat Candy”. Many of them are Europhiles; more than a handful are Jewish (albeit the majority non practicing) and not infrequently, they are even serious health nuts, outside of, er, bacon.

So, I’m not one of them. sure, I’ll snag a strip off my dining companion’s plate during brunch pretty consistently but I won’t order it on my own.

No, my “cigarette of the food world”, the thing that will happily cut my life expectancy by a couple of years, is cheese. Double cream, triple cream, due latte, semi-firm, aged, blue, 3 days old, whatever.

HOWEVER……. a dish that my friend Dan made me the other night has me actually thinking about buying some bacon and recreating this dish. 2 big perfectly cooked scallops wading in big puddles of bacon cream sauce. He is holding out on giving me the recipe. He is probably just looking out for my well being – does not want me to turn into one of “them”. Dan, I’ve tasted the sweet nectar. I promise to steer clear of chocolate covered bacon, bacon mints, and bacon-related facebook groups (including the 305 member religious group, The Church of Bacon). Gimme the goods. I promise to post it here when he cries uncle.

but truly, that opener was just a way to draw you into this post-hiatus post and force you to look at a picture of my new kittens!!!!!

But lately, i guess it’s gotten worse and sadly, this has had a devestating impact on something near and dear to my heart: burrata cheese. OK, a bacterial infection called Brucellosis (no, not Brescianella) also had something to do with this and apparently, the local mafioso isn’t really helping either. You can read all about it here but bottom line: lots of dead cows, less delicious cheese.

 The custom of eating cheese on Hanukkah has kind of been overshadowed by latkes, I guess (since I wasn’t aware of this awesome tradition until um, now) but it’s real. Here’s the story:

Judith, a beautiful widow, approached the Assyrian general and all around bad guy, Holofernes, and fed him salty cheese, which made him really thirsty (salty cheese = the original bar snack?). As a result, he drank a lot of wine, got pretty drunk and passed out. Judith seized the opportunity and cut off his head. Seriously.  

This act inspired the Jews, who then rose up – aka: the Maccabean Revolt, liberated the 2^nd temple, used the oil that lasted way longer than it should have, and gave us Hanukkah.

So, Jews are supposed to eat cheese during Hanukkah time (are extra credit points available for year round consumption?) to commemorate Judith’s bravery and the acts which followed that it inspired.

Technically, there are a few holes in the story – like the fact that Holofernes appears to have worked for Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon (another interesting connection to wine and therefore, to cheese) who reigned about 400 years before the Maccabees were around but never mind, let’s focus on the important part here: cheeses deserved place as a revered foodstuff.

But what really caught my eye in this pretty bizzare story was the tale of the Dilberito, the “first and last product” of Adams’ food company. The Dilberito is nauseatingly described as “a vitamin-packed meatless burrito with a wheat-based meat substitute intended to give workaholics a full day’s worth of nourishment”.  Featured flavors include Spicy Mexican, Spicy Indian, BBQ and Garlic/Herb.  But what really puzzles me, even more than how the  “smoked non diary cheese” used in the BBQ version tastes, is this picture of Dilbert being chased by the giant purple bean – creepy.

So, anyone surprised this restaurant venture is not making $ hand over fist?

Anyway, I think the uniqueness of this establishment and it’s truly diverse clientele and the sheer beauty of San Francisco can be summed up in this quote in the SF Chronicle’s coverage of the event:

“I always wanted to eat there,” Larry Edmond, who lives in a nearby residential hotel, said wistfully as he watched the fire crews. Heavily bearded, he wore a woman’s pink wig and sleigh bells on his wrists.

photo credit: SF Chronicle

Shoppers don’t search* based on the traditional cow/sheep/goat metrics. Here, you choose between a dizzying array of sub-categories….are you in the mood for Friesian, Guernsey or Holstein cow? Perhaps a fine nubian alpine (goat) – definitely not primarily alpine. No way.

And, I love how the “customers who bought this also enjoyed xyz” (I’m sure there is a technical term for that) has made its way from the amazon/itunes world to the cheese universe!!

Sadly, the “I’m an equal opportunity cheese lover-surprise me!” link on the home page (is this where Google stole the “I’m feeling lucky” idea?) is not currently in service.

Back to the drawing board. Hm what’s this….a fine Raw Apline Chamoisee Goat’s milk cheese. Just what I was looking for.

* click on “cheese” on the home page to bring up the search page