Thanksgiving movies and cheese

[gordonzola]

About 2 AM on the morning of Thanksgiving I awoke stuffed up with a bad cold. I had to blow off the sibling and children hike around Lake Lagunitas and stay in bed watching football. Well, I watched football after I broke a big rule I had set up for myself: never watch a Mike Leigh movie on a family holiday.

I’m typical in that I do tend to get depressed around the holidays. Not incapacitated, but noticeable to me. One year for x-mas day jactitation and I had a movie fest with the theme "dysfunctional families". It was fun when lots of other folks were there, but a late night viewing of "Meantime" pushed me over the edge from ironic distance to seriously unhappy. I vowed never again.

If you haven’t seen a Mike Leigh movie, he is an amazing director. He concentrates on family dynamics and class. The cinematic effect of many this-is-my-horrible-childhood movies is autobiographical and individual. "My dad was the most abusive drunk ever." "My mom did more prescription drugs* than yours." Mike Leigh’s films go beyond the personal wallow /squirmy voyeur formula into intense examinations of family, limited options, and people working within their confines and abilities. "High Hopes" is one of my favorite films ever and "Life is Sweet" pretty amazing too. "Secrets and Lies", his kinda breakthrough movie, pulls its punches at the end, so if you’ve only seen that, try another.

But I woke up stuffed up and with just "Career Girls" and the Metallica therapy movie on hand from Green Cine (local Netflix-type company). My head hurt too much for metal . "Career Girls" was awesome . I don’t know why I put off seeing it for so long. Basically two women, housemates and best friends in college, reunite after not seeing each other for six years. It’s about fragility, sacrificing friendship, masking neurosis as best one can, hurting people by accident, still feeling pain from things others don’t remember, and the limits of friendship. It wasn’t as brutal as many of Leigh’s other films but I still ended up calling my friends afterwards, some just to hear their voices on their voicemails since I knew they were gathering for the holiday and away from phones.

I did eventually drive to my parents house with $75 worth of cheese that I ate despite the fact that I knew I wouldn’t be able to breathe afterwards. It was good. For those playing at home I bought the following:
L’edel de Cleron – The best faux Vacherin Mont D’or out their right now. Pasteurized milk but still oozy, earthy, rich, meaty and covered in bark
Fromager D’Affinois – basic brie
Italian Muscato – Cow milk cheese aged in wine. One customer called it "floral". anarqueso said, "Yes, if by ‘floral’ you mean boozy!"
Tumalo Tomme --Semi-soft raw goat milk cheese from Oregon. Tangy and milky. Any Wipers fans out there? Everytime I cut this I get that "Romeo Roam" song in my head.
Basque Pilota -- Basically an Ossau-Iraty but with 50% cow milk to give it a richer taste. One person called it "Basque Velveeta" because of the texture but that was not meant as an insult. Melts in your mouth. We sold 1000 lbs. of this in two weeks and we are all quite sick of cutting it.
Bravo Farms Chipotle Cheddar --Central Valley cheddar with smoked hot peppers. It’s really cool looking too, all marbled like fatty meat.
Humboldt Fog -- The best of the local goat cheeses. Again, it looks really cool and they use sarahshevett’s milk.
Rogue Blue -- The limited edition blue from some of my favorite cheesemakers. Wrapped in wine-soaked leaves this might be the best American Blue. Pungent, creamy, rich, salty goodness.

Once again, the cheese was the best part of the meal .



*Ever seen "Postcards from the Edge"? That was a bad movie. Carrie Fisher painfully confronts her mom in the final scene with "You gave me wine as a child.** That’s why I’m addicted to drugs and sleep with horrible men!". It’s like she lost the dysfunction competition with Christina Crawford.
** or something relatively minor like that

Comments

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

We included a bit of Fog on our cheese plate too..
Ours was a good one, I hope yours was too.
And again, thank you for your support.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

awwwww, no need for thanks. Just keep those somatic cell counts down. ;)

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

Ya know, that is one test Mary does not do. We have talked about it, but she checks for overall plate counts, not specific enough.

Hmmmm

[jette.livejournal.com]

I had a dream! About Cheese! I dreamt that one of your cheesemonger comrades (not Dairyerre or Anarqueso, but a leftie cheese woman just the same) was selling me a big old chunk of this cheese that looked like a torn off hunk of pain au levain as a Christmas present for swaz. In my dream it was totally normal to buy cheese and put it in a box with wrapping paper and ribbons for under the Christmas tree. This was a fancy boutique cheese counter with wrapping services. But right when I was about to give her my credit card, there was a RIOT! A big huge riot at the cheese counter. People were fighting over the best cheeses.

Then the dream ended. You were not in it.

[jette.livejournal.com]

The point of the dream, of course, is that CHEESE IS EVIL. ;-)

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I think the message is don't put off your holiday cheese shopping until the last minute. And there is a cheese that looks like that.

[jette.livejournal.com]

Perhaps what the dream meant is that swaz wants cheese for Christmas!


What kind of cheese looks like that? It certainly looked like good cheese in my dream.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

That is an awesome dream!

[jette.livejournal.com]

I think you should make that dream a reality. Start a cheese-giving trend. Call upon congress to declare a "National Give Your Spouse and/or Partner Cheese Day." You can sell special greeting cards. The sky is the limit.

[thetathrees.livejournal.com]

my coworker's son works for rogue. they are yummy. she gave me like 3 lbs free on time. we also enjoy the humboldt fog, which jason's store gets....we even saw it at the foofy store in NC, methinks. I'll have to try the basque pilota and tumalo tomme....

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

You likely won't find the Pilota. If you don't get an ossau-itraty which I like better anyways. But the tumalo tomme is from your neck of the woods kinda.

[susannochka.livejournal.com]

I LOVED Career Girls.
Do your parents know how good they've got it, cheesewise? Your list made me drool. I have got to come in to Rainbow soon, or I may wither away and die from lack of good cheese.

Not to dwell on the sad and depressing, but Katlin Cartlidge died very suddlenly in 2002. I got really sad when I saw her for two seconds in Topsy-Turvy a couple years ago. I thought she was marvelous.

xoxo

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I think they know how good they have it. That wouldn't be my foodie cheese plate, it is groomed to their taste.

I didn't know about her death. She was amazing.

[susannochka.livejournal.com]

Have you seen "Home for the Holidays"? I haven't seen it in years, but I remember liking it, despite the whole dysfunctional family holiday theme and cheesy as hell ending. I love Holly Hunter.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

that's my all-time favorite holiday movie. I didn't even think the ending was so cheesy. It was positive-ish. but they only all had seperate and distinct fond memories. Tellingly, most did not invlove the whole family, but a subset. And I love Robert Downey Jr.

Did you get the e-mail I just sent you?

[rivetpepsquad.livejournal.com]

mine too! i keep recommending it this weekend to people who were experiencing family-based freakouts. it's nice to normalize our neuroses ;p

[susannochka.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have to totally confess to loving the ending. But c'mon, it's pretty cheesy-romantic. I always felt like I discovered that guy years before he was mister big teevee star. Robert D. Jr. is awesome in it.
I got your email; did you get my voicemail on Friday?

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

I Love Robert Downey Jr Too!
But now that he's sober, he's a dud.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

too true. But is he actually sober. It seems like rehab has been a yearly thing for him.

[tuliphead.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting those cheese rundowns; i'm doing cheese reviews for my own reference on my cooking weblog and sometimes i'm not sure if a cheese is sheep or cow or what. i wasn't sure about the Muscato!

unsurprisingly, the Pilota was extremely popular at my own party this year...

i've got the T-day germs, too. hope you're feeling better soon!

[tuliphead.livejournal.com]

and hurrrrr, tumalo tomme... :)

[thisisthenow.livejournal.com]

that chipotle cheddar sounds lovely, but how does it taste?

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

Spicy smokey, like make-up sex.

[thisisthenow.livejournal.com]

gotta git me summa that, then! ;)

[vestalvixen.livejournal.com]

I watched a parrot get fed turkey.

[sparkle-shortz.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Metallica movie yet? What did you think if so? This is the 3rd conversation I've had about it in 48 hours.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I loved it. It's getting its own (short) post tommorrow.

[sparkle-shortz.livejournal.com]

Yay!!!

I totally adored it, so when I made K watch it and she didn't, I was crushed.

[dirtylibrarian.livejournal.com]

I love this movie, too. It is one of my favorite recent documentaries. I didn't even like Metallica and I still was into it.

[sparkle-shortz.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw it with a friend who didn't like them and she at first was like "what have you done to me??" but ended up loving it.

[crabbypattie.livejournal.com]

I love Mike Leigh films because its usually the only time I see working-class families like mine in anything but crime dramas.

[contrary-wise.livejournal.com]

I bought a french raw cow's milk tomme au marc de raisins at the fancy cheese store near my house yesterday. It tastes like it should make me drunk. Would that be similar to the muscato?

[chitinous.livejournal.com]

Glad you're feeling better. I went through a period where whenever I got sick I would watch amazing/depressing 1970s movies -- Deliverance, Badlands, Bonnie & Clyde -- and then I would feel worse. I quit when my roommate's VCR ate Klute.

Home For The Holidays is awesome. The Ref is my all-time favorite of that genre.

when in cheeseland

[rzr-grl.livejournal.com]

Since this is a cheese-heavy comment chain, I feel ok asking:

I live spitting distance from Wisconsin, and am there most every day. It is commonly referred to by everyone as "Cheeseland," as in, "I'm sending you to shoot in Cheeseland today."

Given this, I feel remiss in my cheesy adventure duties. I am cheese-challenged, however. Is there anything which I must seek out and eat during my few remaining weeks in Cheeseland? Or should I just skip it and visit you when I return to SF?

Re: when in cheeseland

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Carr Valley cheeses are great. So are the aged Widmer cheddars and stinky Brick cheese. Rothkase Gruyere yum. And get some of the Pleasant Ridge Reserve if you can find it.

We have all of those sometimes but not regularly, except the Widmer 4 yr which I try to have all the time.