Cheese Can be Scary

My adventure into food has progressed considerably since my husband has almost literally forced

You have to admit this cheese is scary.... then have it shipped to
 you for your birthday, unknowingly from across one of the
largest countries in the world, so it sits on the floor of your living
room for several days before you eat it.  I think we're on the
cheese version of Elm Street people.

new foods down my throat.  When I first met him I didn’t eat anything that came out of the ocean, and I mean anything; it was a definitive rule that I implemented based on frozen fish sticks from my childhood.  This is how my approach to food started out before it had been slowly chipped away at by resilient people in my life who refused to accept my automatic dismissal of entire food groups.

While my indulgence into the vast world of food has been tepid, I have always loved cheese*.  The disclaimer noted is that blue cheese terrified me and the general concept of blue cheese disgusted me – given that I think I was first introduced to blue cheese in my mid-twenties, I possessed the cognitive ability to refute the very idea of blue cheese the way that I felt that people would automatically refuse yogurt given a full description of how yogurt is formed with the combination of bacterial cultures with milk…  I hope I did not just ruin yogurt for anyone because I love it despite all that.

Back to blue cheese – I have a very clear & distinct memory of the first time I positively loved blue cheese (I don’t think I had it prior to this but there’s a chance I could be mistaken).  I was at my friend’s house and she was making dinner for myself and a group of her hometown friends.  She was making a traditional Carbonara pasta, (you know, the legitimate kind where a soft egg makes for the sauce instead of a bucket load of cream) and alongside this delectable dish she also prepared garlic bread baked with gorgonzola on top.  It was phenomenal. 



And from something once terrifying came this delectable
board of awesomeness - did you just invite me over
 to make you a cheese plate?

For one, I don’t believe I had ever had garlic bread before (garlic = delicious) and the blue cheese was the crown upon this triumphant toasted garlic bread.  I had no idea that it would be this simple to love something so conceptually disgusting as molded cheese… but it was – to the point that I was willing to indulge in the blue cheese shipped to me from across the country by my father for my birthday.  Can you believe I went from utterly refusing the idea of blue cheese to loving it so much that it gets sent to me from other provinces for my birthday?  Me neither. 



The cheese was Dragon’s Breath Cheese – it comes packaged in this thick blue wax.  When I first opened the parcel I honestly thought it was a plant form… the cardboard was a bit damp, it was covered in plastic; it was a genuine mystery as to what this was until we removed it from the package and eventually uncovered the label.  The label describes the cheese as the little brother to St. Agur – despite the intimidating packaging of this cheese I knew I was safe as I have long indulged & enjoyed St. Agur and all of its deliciousness.  So while this was not my greatest adventure into food – it was nice to rediscover my roots into food adventurism and all the delicious things that it has exposed me to.