Sabotaging my diet, one cheese at a time…

For the last 2 weeks, I basically lived at FCI.  It’s not all bad though… wait, where was I going with this?  Just kidding…

Right now, FCI’s restaurant, L’École, is carrying 3 cheeses from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont.  I tasted them while having dinner one night at the bar on the recommendation of Matt, one of my favorite bartenders and fellow blogger.  He began the “sell-spiel” about beautiful 22,000 state-of-the-art cheese cave, yadda yadda yadda, family owned, yadda yadda yadda… Uh, Matt?  You had me at “cheese.”

I love cheese, I’ve always loved cheese.  I once gave up cheese for a month and lost 7 lbs.  The next month I went back on cheese and made up for all the cheese I’d missed, so ended up being net +3 lbs after all was said and done. I’ll even eat delicious, runny cheeses with a spoon instead of with bread.  Yet even with all this, I wasn’t prepared for Jasper Hill’s cheeses.  The washed-rind Winnemere was perfectly salty, just a touch of sweetness, with just a hint of tangy pungency at the back of your throat.  I’m a rind lover; there’s this crazy numbing effect that I love.  And a washed rind has that added hint of grittiness.  The Bayley Hazen Blue… damn.  That’s a good blue.  It was creamy, just a little nutty, and the perfect amount of blue funk that I can’t get enough of.  One of my younger disasters was going on a salad diet… loaded with blue cheese.  Who knew cheese was fattening?  It was literally like a chunk of blue cheese to every piece of lettuce – at least 50% cheese.  This blue cheese, the Bayley Hazen, made my whole body hunch over on itself, giving up to the perfection, and my jaw fall open while I sighed, “huhhhh,” with delight (showing a mouthful of cheese and bread off to everyone like the lady I am).

from left to right: Winnemere, Constant Bliss, Bayley Hazen Blue

And then…  oh, and then…  the Constant Bliss.  Constant.  Flipping.  Bliss.  Creamy, salty, pungent, sweet aftertaste deliciousness.  And it makes my mouth tingle – not in that I’ve just eaten a mango way, either.  It’s apparently named after a soldier who died in the 1700s, but I truly believed it was so-named because of its ability to instantly transport you (rock on, Trekkies) to Utopia.  I crave this cheese constantly.  I’ve had it about 5 times in the last 2 weeks.  And I’m CHEAP.  C-H-E-A-P.  So buying cheese as part of course vs. buying my own damn chunk is unheard of for me.  Yet after a frustrating day of work (not that I have any…), I just wanted my Constant Bliss fix.  I slithered up to the bar, twitching, not making eye contact with Gene (another fantastic FCI bartender with a rocking Brit accent).  He knew what I was there for.  We both knew.  “Back again?”  Yeah, Gene.  Yeah I am.  “So soon?”  Come on, man.  I just need my fix.  I’ve had a bad day.  Just once more.

Today, I go to Murray’s to stock up for the week.