I've been peppered with questions about why my blog has been stagnant these past weeks. Sorry, guys. (But thanks to those who missed me!) Truth is, work went into superdrive after we hired our two new professional staffers. Planning, construction, orientation, a 20-page welcome back edition, etc., etc. I'm also reigniting my stalled graduate studies this week. I'm taking a mass media research methods course and an oral history course. I'm excited but a little wary. It's been seven years since I've been on that side of the classroom. If I last the whole semester, I'll be halfway to my master's degree (minus my thesis). Unbelievable.
But what, you ask, does this have to do with drunken goat cheese? Who milks inebriated goats? If you have to ask, you've never experienced the wonder of
Whole Foods.
I was introduced to Whole Foods on my trip to Alabama in July. I've heard of it before, of course. It was founded down the road in Austin. But never could I have imagined the cheese extravaganza laid out before me. The Big Cheese behind the counter told me the company sells more than 400 types of cheeses across the company.
Mouse nirvana, folks.
I felt so ... common. A small chunk of cheddar on the deli tray of life.
Soft cheeses, blue-veined cheeses, grating cheeses, firm cheeses, semi-firm cheeses, fresh cheeses. Cheese in wheels, tins, wedges, spreads. Cheese for the stout and cheese for the faint of heart. Whole Foods staffs a
global cheese buyer, and while they don't promote it on their Web site, some poor soul must be tasked with ... that's right ... cutting the cheese.
I bought drunken goat cheese simply for the name, which was coined for the use of wine in the aging process. My friend and I also bought a chunk of cheese whose name I can't remember. A thin blue layer trailed through the middle of the wedge, like frosting between the layers of a wedding cake.
"What is that?" I ask the Cheesehead.
"Vegetable ash."
"Vegetable ... ASH?"
"Yep."
"As in charred vegetables?"
"Yep."
A long silence.
"Um ... why?"
"To separate the morning milking from the evening milking."
Silence again.
"It's entirely edible."
The reason morning milk and evening milk can't mix is beyond me. The reason why you'd want to eat vegetable ash is even more unfathomable. But for the novelty of it, and at the recommendation of the Cheese Man, we decided to give it a go.
Big mistake. That was the rankest cheese a nose hair ever had the misfortune to curl up at. We tried a sliver just to be sporting, but we ended up toasting the drunken goat cheese on some tasty whole-grain bread made with the eggs of free-range chickens.
We finished up with a stop at the olive oil bar, where my friend and a well-dressed, middle-aged man broke bread and sampled the virtues of wasabi oil. I abstained. Maybe next time.
