Cheese #1 – Havarti

My New Year’s Resolutions are always rubbish and I never do them. One resolution that’s popped up time and again, only to be ignored year after year, is to write some kind of diary. I now have many diaries of what I’ve done between Jan 1st and around January 18th, at which point I usually get bored/forget about it, filing it away when I rediscover it around May-time. Maybe one day, when I’m dead, they’ll write a biography about my life, which will only have information from the first 3 weeks of each year of my life. Of course, that doesn’t count the years before I could think and write and stuff. Anyway, where was I? Yes, resolutions and diaries. This year my ONLY new year’s resolution is to become an EXPERT in CHEESE. I’m gonna try a new cheese each week and then by the end of the year, people with cheese-based queries will be able to approach me comfortable in the knowledge that I will be able to answer them with suitable aplomb. I’m going to write about my cheese-expert-quest here, so it may just serve as some kind of diary too. For example, I might say something like I bought cheese A1 today on my way to town where I went shopping. On the way there I saw girl B2 and boy C3, we chatted, it was nice. Etc. You see? Anyway, that’s the intro over with, you should all be up to speed, now here goes…

Cheese #1 - Havarti

I bought this from Howells in town where I went shopping.
It was the first cheese that I saw that I didn’t recognise. It is a white/pale  yellow cheese with a green rind. I took £2 worth from the lady there. Immediately, upon wandering around town with the cheese in my pocket, I noticed a sizable smell. Quite sweaty it was. On my way home I bumped into Mark Attack and his ladyfriend, Josie. I didn’t want them thinking that my body was responsible for the sweat smell so I immediately told them about the cheese in my pocket. They were suitably shocked at the pong. Got home and researched the cheese, obviously. It turns out that Havarti is a Danish cheese that was named after the ‘experimental farm’ where it was ’discovered’ in the 1800s. Personally, I don’t like the sound of an ’experimental farm’ and I don’t think cheese should be ’discovered’ either. Cheese is just made isn’t it? Discovering it sounds like they might have just found something growing on the back of a machine they were using to see if they could make Cows
speak Danish or something. Anyway, I tasted it and here is my summary:
OH MY GOD THAT IS DISGUSTING! It was a good few minutes ago that this happened so I’m gonna try another
bit now. AAAAAAAAARGH! Rarely has something disagreed
with my mouth so much. It tastes bitter, really bitter, it
tastes like it smells too. All sweaty. It reminds me a bit of
Parmesan, but really, really strong Parmesan. I genuinely
wanted to spit it out, it was that bad.So, there we are. My
first step on the way to becoming a cheese expert and my
mouth currently feels like it needs some mints or a good
sorbet or something. I didn’t expect this to be an easy ride
and it seems I was right.