I’m thinking something about the bottles of amino acids and cheese starting enzymes (vegetarian, natch!) raised some red flags with one of the many people whom I imagine pokes through our mail before it gets here. So I did go to the rather hippy-dippy, but informative site of and soon after I had spent $80 bucks for a cheesemaking kit which promises to make me an assortment of cheeses beyond those that are easy to make at home, such as paneer and ricotta.įive weeks later, I have no cheese kit. YemenEm: That’s actually a very good idea. Your best bet it so make your own cheese. Or if you have ever heard of any cheese, short of a Kraft single, that could make it here and still be delicious?Ĭheese lady: No, nothing would make it that far, sadly. YemenEm: I KNOW! (Someone finally understands!) I am dying for some good cheese and calling to see if you guys have any cheese hard enough to survive at least two weeks in a box. YemenEm: Hi! So I just moved to Yemen and there is practically no cheese here. Our conversation follows.Ĭheese Lady: Hi, Cowgirl Creamery, where our chairs are made of cheese and we eat them throughout the day. A very nice and dairy-rich sounding woman answered. At that point, I really just needed to hear the human voice of a fellow cheesehound so I called their number. I went to the website of Cowgirl Creamery, one of my favorite purveyors of fine artisanal cheeses and learned that they don’t ship overseas. So while ordering from a company located considerably closer to Yemen, such as Dubai, seems like a good idea, it would have to go to Virginia first and by the time it arrived in this cheeseless desert, it would probably more closely resemble a McDonald’s play toy that had been nuked for 30 seconds in the microwave than anything I would want to crawl in bed with and eat. Our mailing address is in Dulles, Virginia. I spent about an hour Googling various cheese companies to see if their products would withstand the three weeks of transit time to get to my mouth in Yemen. One day, a week or two after I arrived, I got home from work and my salt and deliciousness blood levels (which are pretty much directly tied to LDL and blood pressure, go figure) must have been low because I was dying for cheese. As for cheese in the grocery stores here (at least the one store I’ve been too) it’s not good, as I’ve previously posted. There is a cheese plate on our room service menu and it contains cream cheese, to give you an idea of how dire the situation is. I knew when I moved to Yemen that there is no Whole Foods, no Trader Joes, no Korean grocery story on the corner of 16th and U (which actually has a not too bad cheese selection), and that cheese isn’t a big part of Middle Eastern diets, with the exception of feta. And an equally wise use of my monthly calorie allowance. I think Mr.YemenEm would agree: It was a very wise use of government per diem. I spend $150 of his money on Cotswold with chives, white cheddar with cranberries, Humboldt fog, chevre, and a ridiculously creamy Camembert, among others. He picked out the wine, I picked out the cheese. YemenEm and I went to Whole Foods for a wine and cheese party we threw at his apartment in DC in 2010. One of the most fun shopping trips of my entire life – and this includes all those shopping trips where 16-year-old YemenEm spent her entire Century 21 receptionist salary on skanky Forever 21 outfits – is when Mr. Or how cheese makes almost every recipe exponentially more delicious and is more often than not the answer to “Hmm, it’s okay, but something is missing in this dish, right?” If cheese wasn’t responsible for so much joy, then it wouldn’t be the word that people say in order to bring smiles to faces for photographs. Oh, the excitement of seeing a gourmet cheese display at a party and how I’m willing to look like a fatty with no manners because at least a quarter of that wheel of brie was meant to be one with my belly. Simple words cannot express how I feel about cheese. Well sometimes I ask “If you had to pick, would you rather never eat cheese again, or never eat bread?” Or “Never eat cheese or never drink alcohol?” Or “Never eat cheese or never see your loved ones again?” I’d have to say, in almost all comparisons, even booze, cheese wins. Who probably aren’t reading this anyway). You know how people sometimes ask “If you had to pick, would you rather be deaf or blind?” (Which is a dumb question, because obviously you’d pick deaf.
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