Baby Cheeses

Mum, as many of you will know, is Irish, and was brought up thinking she hated cheese. Cheese to them was mainly two brands, with which Irish readers may be (horribly) familiar - Galtee, and especially Calvita (calcium and vitamins - geddit?) which came in little blocks about the size of 5 Ryvita welded together, in foil and then in a little cardboard flip-top box (very useful for keeping your sewing stuff in in the classroom).

This cheese was truly awful, plasticky and artificial, and reportedly never went hard, no matter what you did to it.

So when Mum went off to la France as a teenager to do a bit of au-pairing, and was offered cheese, her reply "I don't like cheese" met with consternation and amazement! How can you not like cheese? Being true French folk, the family therefore set about converting her by introducing her to ever more interesting cheeses. It worked - Mum and Dad are both confirmed cheese eaters, and are willing to try all manner of weird and wonderful regional product.

Most recently, Mum has come back from the supermarket with a circular flat box of really smelly Germain Epoisses from the Champagne region of France, a cheese washed in brandy to enhance flavour. Honestly, if you didn't know it was meant to look like that, you'd bin it for the fermenting, oozing "mess" it looks like. Have a heart Mum - our noses are 40 times more powerful than yours! Mum protests that this is nowhere near the smelliest cheese you can get. She was given one in france called Maroile by the end of her 2nd year, in the sprit of a graduation exam to become a true "honorary French femme"

Go Mum
Go Epoisses (and it did)

Deefer