Food: A Love Story (26 page)

To me cheese is fantastic, and I’ve always loved it. I remember when I was a little kid I was kind of surprised when I realized the word
cheesy
was a negative. My older sister Cathy was complaining to a friend over the phone, “Yeah, that movie was kind of cheesy.” This didn’t make sense to the young me. I wanted to ask, “What kind of cheese?” Cheese and a movie sounded ideal to me. I wondered,
Did they have crackers too?
Part of me is relieved that eating tons of cheese makes you feel sick, so you stop. Otherwise I might be dead right now. Below is a letter I recently wrote to a block of Cheddar I met the night before.

Dear Cheddar,

Last night was a mistake. Maybe it was the wine, but I acted impulsively and now I’m feeling a lot of shame and guilt, and, frankly, my stomach hurts. I know I said
I wanted to see you again tonight, but I can’t. It’s not going to happen. I just can’t! Look, it was fun. I might even describe it as delicious, but it’s over. Just because something is delicious and makes me feel whole for a moment does NOT mean it’s good for me. Fine. I’ll see you in the kitchen at 2:00 a.m. Jeez!

Yours truly,
Jim

Types of Cheese

Generally I like all types of cheese. Even the really stinky cheese that makes you almost gag before every delicious bite. On more than one occasion I’ve thought to myself,
This smell makes me want to hurl, but I can’t stop eating it
. Below I give a quick overview that you didn’t ask for on my feelings on the more popular cheeses.

Cheddar

When I’m lying in bed thinking about cheese, which is usually every night, I’m typically thinking about Cheddar cheese. It is the utility cheese. It works great everywhere. Great on a hamburger, great on a sandwich, even great with a piece of apple pie! Wow. You go, Cheddar! When I say
Cheddar
, I’m talking about sharp Cheddar. I usually look for “extra sharp” Cheddar, whatever that means. I just know, the sharper the Cheddar, the better. I don’t understand why “mild” Cheddar even exists. It’s like the nonalcoholic beer of Cheddar. What’s the point?

Blue Cheese

I feel I became an adult when I started enjoying blue cheese. My siblings and I would cringe and snicker when my dad would order a salad with blue cheese as a dressing. “Is he crazy?” Blue
cheese is an acquired taste. And I acquired it. It’s not my daily cheese, but it is one of my favorites. It’s hard to describe how I feel about blue cheese. Blue cheese is like the ice cream sundae of cheese. On a first-class flight they should fill the parfait cup with only blue cheese. No nuts on mine, please. My favorite blue cheese is Saint Agur’s buttercream blue. I’m pretty sure Saint Agur was the Catholic saint of blue cheese.

Swiss

I’ve always viewed Swiss cheese as the grapefruit juice of cheese. Nobody really wants Swiss cheese, but it’s nice to provide a choice for the occasional weirdo who wants something gross-tasting. I keep waiting for people to realize that Swiss cheese tastes like a pencil eraser. Swiss cheese is like an old dirty sock. It smells, it has holes in it, and if it’s hanging on a doorknob, it means “Do not enter.”

Brie

I was slow to get on the Brie bandwagon. I was never sure if I was supposed to eat the skin or shell or rind thing. Now I can eat three or four wheels of Brie during one episode of
The Biggest Loser.
I like the fact that cheese is one of the only food items that comes in a wheel. The cheese wheel is one of the greatest inventions since the actual wheel.

Goat Cheese

I’m a reluctant goat cheese consumer. I understand it’s the healthy cheese (a description that always makes me distrustful), but I can’t get beyond the fact that it comes from a goat. A goat? Goats always seem like characters from one of those
Lord of the Rings
movies. “Hey, you know that disgusting animal you’d never eat? Check out what we did with some of its breast milk!”

American Cheese

I don’t want to create a Dixie Chicks–style cheese controversy here, but I hate American cheese. Hate it. I love my country and not just because it’s God’s favorite, but I don’t understand American cheese. Maybe the idea was “Let’s make a cheese that resembles real cheese but has no taste. You know, for people who like to melt things and hate themselves.” Like a responsible citizen, I confronted this issue head-on by writing a letter to Kraft.

Dear Kraft,

I hope you are well. I wanted to write you regarding American cheese. I’d like you to stop making it, please. It’s disgusting and completely unsatisfying.

Let me be clear up front. I am a huge fan of cheese. I love cheese. I realize an out-of-shape midwestern guy like myself enjoying cheese this much might be rare, but I don’t care. I love cheese. Whenever I’m getting my picture taken and someone tells me to “say cheese,” I smile because the word
cheese
actually makes me happy. I’ve gone to wine-and-cheese events
just
for the cheese. I bet if cows could talk and were asked what dairy product they are most proud of, they would say cheese. (Let’s admit, ice cream is too reliant on sugar.) Cows even look like they eat a lot of cheese.

I love all kinds of cheese too, except for American cheese. American cheese is the worst of all cheeses. Well, to be honest, I’ve never tried headcheese. That sounds like it would be pretty bad. I guess I’m not interested in eating any cheese that has a body part in the name. Frankly, I was shocked when I recently learned that headcheese was not an actual cheese. Kraft, didn’t you think headcheese was a cheese and some lame, casual,
slang description for the president of an organization? Surprised me too. Can you believe they named a terrine of flesh from the head of an animal “cheese”? Isn’t that like taking the name of cheese in vain? If I were you, Kraft, I would sue the headcheese people for copyright infringement. Wouldn’t it be awkward if the person who came up with headcheese was reading this? “Hey, my last name is Head. I wanted to name it after myself. Jeez, this Jim Gaffigan is really mean. But he sure is good-looking.”

Anyway, back to American cheese, which, while slightly better than headcheese, is disgusting. It doesn’t even taste like cheese. I think the plastic that you individually wrap the slices in is tastier. You say in your commercials there is some part of a glass of milk in every slice. Is it the glass? I think that blocks of American cheese should be banned from the deli, where it sits like an imposter hiding among all the real cheeses.

Your cheese product kind of resembles cheese, but let’s be honest, it’s not even cheese. Why are you lying to our children? American cheese is like one of those fake presents that is just an empty box in wrapping paper I opened at the mall entrance last December.

Okay, here is the real reason you have to stop. Your so-called cheese is unpatriotic. Really? This is the cheese America gets? This great country that gave birth to the telephone, the car, and Jesus gets your so-called
American
cheese? It seems like every country contributed some important cheese. Even England, which almost prides itself on their nasty, bland food, has Stilton blue cheese
and
Cheddar. Yet all America comes up with is the shiny, gelled orange grease squares?

In summation, your American cheese is tasteless,
fake, and anti-American. If you can’t stop making it, is it too much to ask you to change the name to “al-Qaeda” cheese or “I
can
believe it’s not cheese” cheese? Kraft, I hope this letter will not stop you from coming to one or all of my theater shows.

Your friend,
Jim

By the way, those jerks at Kraft never got back to me. I think I can sue for that, right?

Other versions of cheese:

Vegan Cheese

You’d think with all of our technological advances, we’d be able to figure out a way to make edible nondairy cheese. We can pretend to put a man on the moon, but we can’t create a nondairy cheese that doesn’t taste like rubber? Jeannie has purchased every type of healthy cheese created, and they always make me prefer no cheese.

Cheese Curds

I don’t really understand what cheese curds are. I guess they are like the cookie dough of cheese. Either way, cheese curds sound pretty unhealthy and are a key element of the Canadian national treasure, poutine. In Wisconsin they have deep-fried cheese curds, which taste like French fries and heaven had a baby.

Spray Cheese

We want our food easy. I’ve always found pre-sliced cheese rather pathetic. Nobody likes the double meaning of the term “cut the cheese,” but even I’ve never been too lazy to take a knife to cheese. But we are a lazy bunch. How else would you
explain spray cheese? I suppose there are some people who are, like, “You know I like cheese, but it is just too much work. You have to open it up, take the cheese out, slice the cheese. I don’t have time for that. I have a job! I’d be willing to eat cheese if I could press something and have it just spray out. Maybe if I could write with it. Occasionally, I have to sign some checks to Mayor McCheese, and, as you know, he only takes cheese checks.”

Cheez Whiz

Cheez Whiz is a cheese that comes in a jar that you can keep on a shelf. Apparently jar cheese is for people who are tired of throwing out cheese that has gone bad. This makes me wonder how long it takes some people to eat cheese. “Do you want this year’s cheese or the cheese from ten years ago?” I’m less taken aback that there is a cheese that comes in a jar and more astounded that there is a product actually named Cheez Whiz. The people at Kraft must have been a little surprised the product worked. “Wow, people are actually buying that Cheez Whiz stuff. It was meant to be an April Fool’s prank.” When they came up with the name Cheez Whiz, don’t you think there would have been one person at that meeting who would have said, “This cheese in a jar is an interesting idea, but
obviously
we’re not going to call it Cheese Whiz, right?” It makes you wonder how bad the names were that they turned down before deciding on Cheez Whiz.

BOSS:
Okay, let me hear your pitches for the jar cheese name.

EMPLOYEE:
How about Cheez Squirt? Or maybe how about Cheez Runs?

BOSS:
We need something gross that also communicates easy-to-use.

EMPLOYEE:
Cheez Whiz?

BOSS:
Brilliant. Cheez Whiz it is. Now get back to working on names for that jar of fluffy marshmallow insides.

There are innumerable varieties of cheese. Most of them are too fancy for me to understand, so instead of discussing the rest of them here, I will just continue my research by eating them. There is cheese from just about every country in the world except China. No cheese from China? Maybe tofu is Chinese cheese. No wonder there was a cultural revolution.

CRACKERS: THE ADULT JUNK FOOD

Crackers are the junk food of adults. There are so many different types of crackers for adults to eat while they congratulate themselves for not eating potato chips. Of course, kids like crackers too. My children seem to enjoy Goldfish crackers and those Annie’s Bunnies crackers, because apparently food shaped like animals tastes better to kids. Whenever I eat my children’s Goldfish crackers (to make sure they are not poisonous), I’m always a little relieved they don’t taste like fish. The bunnies don’t taste as good as real bunnies either. Growing up, my family couldn’t afford Goldfish crackers, or, in the less romantic version, my mom didn’t buy them. I remember eating Saltine crackers as a kid. I’d grab a sleeve of Saltines, eat them one by one, and pretend I was in jail. Even as a child I had an active imagination and a strange appetite. People don’t really eat Saltine crackers these days. They are mostly known for being the free stuff you get with soup or what to eat when you are sick. I imagine Saltines will have a comeback. If there are gourmet doughnuts, there might as well be gourmet Saltines. “These are Himalayan Salt Artisanal Saltines and cost ten dollars a cracker.”

When I was a teenager, my mom upgraded the family to Ritz Crackers, which I guess she felt were classier than Saltines, even though I’m pretty sure Ritz Crackers have nothing to do with the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. I wanted her to buy Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos, but when I recommended that we get those, my mother looked at me like I suggested we move to a trailer park. My mom was a classy lady, and Ritz Crackers were more her style. Ritz Crackers do seem less pathetic than a bag of chips or Saltines, but of course they’re not. They are still crackers. Occasionally, when I was out with my teenage friends, I’d buy Cheez-Its, which still remains the worst name ever for crackers. The appeal of Cheez-Its was that they were covered with a greasy cheese powder that was so toxic it would stain your fingers. They were a lot like that other junky stuff I was not allowed to eat at home, but they were disguised as crackers, which had a much better perception than chips and puffs. I think probably it was Cheez-Its that first taught me why crackers actually existed. They are the perfect platform for cheese.