Straight Outta Comte

On Valentine's Day last year, I was earning my bones working one of the busiest days I had seen at any retail store much less a cheese shop. I recounted in last year's post how an unyielding 6 hours of cheeses sales was my sink-or-swim introduction to real cheesemongering. Since leaving the retail cheese world, there have been a lot of weird tasks and rituals that my muscle memory misses.

Pulling the cling wrap tightly around an oddly shaped wedge to create a perfect wrinkle-and-bubble-free display for the case (I imagine the cheese thinking it's getting tightly tucked into bed). Creating the perfect crisp folds in the butcher paper to neatly wrap a purchased slice like a Christmas present. Wielding a giant knife cleanly and straightly down a firm aged wheel with the weight of your whole body to cut a (nearly) perfect quarter-pound. Tasting the first nibble from a freshly cut wheel, the insides of which haven't seen the light of day in months or years, yet which nature intended to go directly into the darkness of my belly after their first seconds of freedom. Processing the first waft of controlled dairy spoilage that hits you when opening a refrigerator filled to the brim with cheese.

Even then I knew this year would be much...quieter, but equally exciting. While I might not have many delicious cheeses to spend my evening with, I'd have my real life human forever-Valentine. I was wrong. I got to have both.

Thanks to...
THIS:

And THIS: 

I had ALL this cheese in my fridge because of some very special friends I'm lucky to have made over the last three cheese-filled years. An entire shelf stuffed with cheese from Cato Corner, Black Sheep Creamery, and Bedford Cheese Shop. A package at my doorstep with whole wheels set aside from larger batches especially for me. Another shipment containing a curated-with-love selection of four delicious slices of domestic and European cheeses I could never find within 1,000 miles of here. A whole loaf that someone (maybe everyone) remembered was my most favorite bread ever (Amy's Bakery Potato Onion Rye), which I would always poach to take home at the end of the night's wastage.

That's love.

Once again, I could wield giant knives to cut open wheels and taste the first slice. I could trace back the creases a friend had used to meticulously fold a wedge of cheese. I could pull that saran wrap tightly around the remaining portion of bread. I could let my tastebuds have their very own Valentine's day, romancing an amazing piece of three-year-old raw milk Comte that I'd be hard pressed to find again for a long while. Best of all, my fridge smells like cheese -- and love -- when I open it.