I like cheese.
A lot.
Especially nice sharp cheddar, and brie. Oh, and this white cheddar with cranberries purchased at the CHEESE CASTLE of Kenosha, Wisconsin, can’t go wrong with that stuff. I must stop here, before I start crying.
There are two kinds of cheese available in Bulgaria. TWO. Cirene and kashkaval. Cirene is pretty much identical to feta, a little sharper and not quite as crumbly. (You can grate it, and Bulgarians are very fond indeed of grating it on top of everything.) Kashkaval is a mild yellow cheese. I pretty much have no use for it at all. I liked cirene at first, but am already pretty much sick of it.
So, what I’m saying here is…if you can figure out a way, um…send me cheese.
Please.
I’m getting desperate.
(Okay, this entry is in jest….mostly. Okay, it’s totally serious. Well, not really.
OR IS IT?
No, it’s not. But I do miss good cheese.)
P.S. Send me cheese.
July 19, 2006 at 12:05 am
Mmm, cheese!
.
Charles de Gaulle once said of France:
“Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?” [How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?] (He may have said it on different occasions using different numbers, but the gist’s the same — and, unusually for him, he *underplays* France’s culinary grandeur, since best-guess estimates put the number at over 500.)
So, perhaps the lack of cheesy diversity in BG is due to *The Powers That Be* wanting to make it easier to govern? Hmm, probably not.
I’d heard previously that there is no real Bulgarian word for “cheese” as a food category, since there’s just the sirene and the kashkaval. Can you confirm?
– The Monty Python “Cheese Shop Sketch” http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/cheese_shop.htm
must be even more puzzling to Bulgarians than the rest of MP. Only follow the link if you’re feeling masochistic — it probably hits a little too close to home while you’re in BG!
Thanks for reminding me about the Sharp Cheddar in my fridge! That was great! (Oops, was that insensitive? Apologies….)
On the other hand, BG can probably claim to have several thousand distinct types of rakia, since so many people make their own!
I’m probably the zillionth person to inform you of this, but the Travel section of last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a long article on BG , and only a small sidebar (“Yes means no – or maybe not”) seems to be available online. I’m sure several people have already made the offer, but if you want it scanned and e-mailed, just ask!
July 19, 2006 at 12:20 am
Darn it…
Wish we had preview on this! I had put witty(?) comments in delimiters in the previous post, that were taken to be valid XHTML by the parser and so disappeared when I clicked “Submit”! Aargh! They’re not funny when repeated out of context!
Anyway, it appears that what Bulgaria needs is a chain of laundromats that serve good beer, wine and imported cheeses while you wash — “Suds ‘n’ Curds!” [When BG joins EU, there are going to be lots of entrepreneurial ventures this brilliant -- or stupid -- mark my words].
I’m still working on the super-secret “Machine that sends blocks of cheese as e-Mail Attachments”. Sounds like something Wallace & Gromit could help with…