Say Cheese
Book Number 6 is The New American Cheese by Laura Werlin. Yes, I'm going to count this as book number 6, though, technically, you might classify it as a cookbook and the revelation that I've read it twice cover to cover really shows off my bourgeois fuck side. The book is a comprehensive celebration of the quiet revolution in artisanal American cheesemaking over the last ten or so years. Though I really like cheese, I've only recently realized just how many small cheesemakers there are in Oregon and Vermont and Wisconsin who only supply a few specialty shops and restaurant. You can order their stuff via the Internet, but where to start? This book tells you. It's also a fine education in the possibilities and victories of independent agriculture.
I've tasted several of the cheeses in this book, including five during an excellent New Year's Eve cheese tasting at my house, a picture of which you can see here. Artisanal cheeses are expensive, but there's a way to do it on the cheap. Buy two ounces. No matter how much the cheese is per pound, it's going to set you back three bucks at the most. For really good, fresh cheese, two ounces are more than enough. Death to Kraft! Long live Vella Dry Jack!
I'm also reading another book in the Hard Case Crime series, the creation of which is one of the great unsung stories of contemporary publishing. Out of one man's mania for the genre, pulp has been reborn, and it's authentic. Genre fiction is where it's at, people. And I don't mean postmodern re-interpretations of genre. I mean genre in its purest form, written for nearly no money by obscure people with day jobs. I feel privileged to have taken a peek inside the noir community, and am humbled and excited by what I've found. A writer like Ken Bruen can hold his own with any Booker Prize nominee. I often wonder what literature would be like if the noir people ran the show.....