FROM FRANCE:
Roquefort, the king of cheeses - blue- veined, patented five centuries ago.
Brie, the queen of cheeses - soft, buttery, salty, and capricious-once an influence in
French politics.
Camembert, invented by a woman - a soft, elegant dessert cheese associated with affluence. Port du Salut, first made by
Trappist monk - nothing monastic about its rich, ripe flavor.
Neufchƒtel - small, white, creamy, mild- flavored - becomes pungent with age.
FROM GERMANY:
Tilsiter - full-bodied ripe flavor, pleasant to the nose and palate. More respectable than Limburger.
FROM ITALY:
Bel Paese - pearly white, sweetly mild, and agreeably rubbery in texture.
Fontina - yellowish and sometimes slightly smoky. A table cheese that also melts well for cooking.
Gorgonzola - blue-veined like Roquefort but less salty and more creamy than crumbly.
FROM SWITZERLAND:
Emmenthaler - the big cheese with big holes. Wheels weigh up to 160 pounds.
Flavor: Swiss.
GruyŠre - a smaller, saltier, creamier, more delicious Swiss with smaller holes
(called "eyes").
Raclette -a rich cheese made for fondue and the melt-and-scrape ritual called
"raclette."
FROM DENMARK:
Havarti - mild, clean, slightly acid flavor that becomes sharper with age.
Samsoe - similar to Cheddar in flavor with a slightly sweet, nutty flavor.
FROM THE NETHERLANDS:
Edam - popular low-fat cheese with cushiony shape and red rind. Texture: like soap but pleasant.
Gouda - yellow, fairly hard, and blessed with a strong flavor minus bite. Smoked version is great!
FROM CANADA:
Cheddar - with the famous flavor and famous black rind. Need we say more.
FROM GREECE:
Feta - soft, white, heavily salted.
Crumble it on salads, pizza, and other dishes.
FROM GREAT BRITAIN:
Cheddar - from the country where it all began. Complicated to make, easy to love.
Stilton - a magnificent blue-veined cheese that slices well. A classic with port wine.
As Qwilleran read this list aloud, Yum Yum fell asleep on his lap with a foreleg over her ears, but Koko listened attentively. Three times he yowled - at Brie, GruyŠre, and feta. Because they're salty, Qwilleran reasoned, but so is Roquefort... Yet, Koko was unimpressed by the king of cheeses.
At midday he walked to the newspaper office and handed in his copy on eating in the good old days. It began, "Where are the foods of yesteryear?"
He also picked up his fan mail, but Sarah was not there to slit the envelopes for him. The office boy said with a grin, "She took the day off to get her hair and face done. Whoo-ee!" Officially the speaker was a "systems aide," but to Qwilleran he was still an office boy.
For lunch he went to the Spoonery, where the day's soup specials were New Orleans gumbo, Viennese goulash, oxtail, and turkey-barley. He had a bowl of the oxtail and pronounced it sensational. He also asked Lori if the turkey-barley soup really had any turkey in it.
"It's loaded! Big chunks! Want a bowl? The second bowl is twenty percent off," she said.
"No thanks, but I'd like a quart to take out." He planned to fish out a few chunks of turkey for the Siamese, avoiding the barley. That should satisfy them until the bird in the refrigerator was ready to fly.
Before he left the Spoonery, several copies of the Monday paper were delivered for customers to read with their soup, and Qwilleran grabbed one. The weekend had been an editor's delight, with the Celebrity Auction, the Pasty Bake-off and the bike-a-thon. Qwilleran chuckled as he read about the pasty winners' names being locked in a safe overnight - accidentally. More likely, he thought, Hixie had engineered the trick to delay the newsbreak until the Something's deadline. The news story read:
PASTY WINNERS HERALDED
Two local cooks were elected to the new
Pasty Hall of Fame Saturday after their contest entries survived three batteries of judges.
Lenore Bassett of Trawnto Beach placed first among the turnip less entries.
George Stendhup of Sawdust City won in the turnip category. Each will receive a blue ribbon and a $100 prize.
After the process of blind judging - with entrants identified only by number - the suspense was prolonged by an accidental misunderstanding. Entrants' names were locked in a safe in the office of
MacWhannell & Shaw. The bakers of the winning pasties were not known until this morning.
Stendhup, a toolmaker, was one of an unexpected number of male entrants. "I always knew the guys made better pasties than the gals," he said when contacted with the good news. Pork was his meat of choice.
"I always add turnip for more guts."
Bassett could not be reached for comment, but her husband, Robert, said, "She's out of town on family business, but I'm gonna phone her the good news after five o'clock.
Me and the kids always said Mom makes the best goldanged pasties anywhere."
Mildred Riker, food editor of the
Something and one of the final judges, said, "The response to this celebration of a cultural legend exceeded our wildest expectations, with more than a hundred entries. The overall quality was excellent, and the final judges were hard-put to name winners."
The sponsors of the Food Fair and Pasty
Bake-off was the Chamber of Commerce.
Another headline caught Qwilleran's attention, although it was buried on page four. Notable for its brevity, it covered the who, what, when, and where of the newspaper rule book, but not the why.
BIZARRE INCIDENT IN BLACK CREEK
The body of a tourist from Glassville,
OH, was found in a riverbank cabin Sunday morning. Victor Greer, 39, renting the cabin for a weekend of fishing, had been stung to death by bees, according to the medical examiner. The incident was reported by the beekeeper, Aubrey Scotten. The cabin is owned by Scotten Fisheries.
The item, Qwilleran knew, was played down for two reasons: The victim was not a local man, and the county disliked adverse publicity. It was commonly believed that the metropolitan media, bored with ordinary shootings and beatings, watched the small-town newspapers like vultures, hoping to spot a bizarre country crime. Most country crimes reported Down Below were "bizarre," and the use of the word in the Something headline was a mistake, in Qwilleran' s opinion. He wondered who had written it. The wire services would pick it up, and the TV networks would fly crews to the "grim ghost town" with nothing but a "haunted house" and a "death cottage" where "killer bees" attacked an innocent fisherman from Down Below. They would fluster the poor beekeeper and trick him into saying something stupid that would sound suspicious to a coast-to-coast audience, and the cameras would zoom in on the buzzing bees and make them look like monsters. Qwilleran hoped the intruders would be stung; it would serve them right!
Further, he sensed the need to steer the nervous, distraught Aubrey out of harm's way. His motive was not entirely altruistic; as a journalist he was drawn to a newsworthy character with an exclusive story to tell.
He walked home briskly to pick up his car keys. The quart of turkey soup he put in the refrigerator, closing the door as quietly as possible. Then he left the barn without disturbing the sleeping cats.
Arriving at the Limburger house, he parked in the side yard. For the first time the door of the honey shed was closed. First he went to the front door and clanged the old-fashioned doorbell; there was no response. He banged on the door without results. Yet, Aubrey's blue pickup was parked in the yard. He might be down at the creek with his bees.
Qwilleran rang the bell again and peered through the etched glass. A shadowy figure was shambling toward the front door. "Aubrey! It's your friend from Pickax!" Qwilleran yelled. "I need some more honey!" Purposely he used two buzz words: "friend" and "honey." The door opened slowly and Aubrey said in his squeaky voice, "Threw it all out. I'm gonna let my bees go wild."