Cheese songs and cheese name bans

1. There was a good interview with me about cheesemongering here. They somehow found an out-take photo from my book cover photo shoot by the awesome Myleen Hollero.

2. I love the little Comte man. But everytime I see this image:

I start singing this song, substituting “Comte” for “Police”.

It matters to me what Joe Strummer would have thought and I don’t think he would have approved.

3. The worst thing about that is that – except for the chorus my Comte song makes no sense. Why would the cops be chasing the Comte man? It is not like the internally coherent, “Buffalo Taleggio/Dreadlocked bison/Refrigerate on arrival/Refrigerate for survival” version of the Bob Marley classic I sing whenever we get Quadrello di Bufala in.

4. As for the current controversy regarding the EU wanting to reclaim cheese names, these three articles sum things up well:

The Guardian, The American Cheese Society and Lincoln Broadbanks from “The Better Cheddar”

But I would add that the people hurt most by this would be the largest US cheese companies. Most small-scale producers figured out long ago that naming your cheese after the European was a fool’s game (with some exceptions like Mozzarella. Cheddar is especially a joke in this case because they way that Cheddar is made in the US was invented in the US.). If Kraft comes out in favor of small producer issues — like making sure raw milk cheese can stay legal at 60 days aged — I would feel a lot more strongly on this issue.

5. Let’s just look at a cheese rind now: