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cheese

Comte

I would like to draw your atten­tion to a lit­tle-known (out­side the Jura-Mas­sif) cheese called comte (but of course it is pro­nounced cone-tay, just because the French can't let a con­so­nant be a con­so­nant). Like many moun­tain cheeses from that area of the world, it resem­bles a gruyere—a lit­tle nut­ty, a lit­tle creamy, a lit­tle tiny bit salty. Once I had it in a lit­tle restau­rant in France near the Swiss bor­der, and i said "ah tres bon!" or some­thing along those lines, and the French woman who served it to us said "Les vach­es! Les montagnes!"and she was right, the cows and the moun­tains made it good. When you ride a bike around there, there are all these cows graz­ing on the hill­sides, wear­ing big bells that make this love­ly hol­low ring­ing sound. It is the sound of cheese in the mak­ing. You can get it at the cheese store in Noe Val­ley where they are so mean and unpleas­ant (except on Tues­days when my friend Arzu works there.) I'm going to put in an order and we can all enjoy it togeth­er. Per­haps in the mountains.

7 replies on “Comte”

So, to clar­i­fy, are you imply­ing that great cheese comes from hap­py cows, and that hap­py cows come from France? Who do you think would win in a rum­ble of hap­py Cal­i­for­nia cows ver­sus hap­py French cows? I think La Vache Qui Rit would kick some seri­ous Cal­i­for­nia cow ass.

I'm say­ing that in France they have some­thing called The Comte Broth­er­hood, or The Order of the Noble Wines of the Jura and Comte Cheese, and that every year a few "well-known per­son­al­i­ties from pub­lic life, recog­nised for their attach­ment to Epi­cure­an prin­ci­ples" are ini­ti­at­ed into the Broth­er­hood. So, since it appears that the French cows have their own sort of pact des loups, i think they could kick some seri­ous cal­i­for­nia ass. plus they come from a place where there is win­ter. every­one knows the cal­i­for­nia cows have been weak­ened by the good life.

Admin­is­tra­tor, stop being so CONTROLLING. You're like our MOTHER. It makes me DEEPLY DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE. Any­way, to clar­i­fy, the plan is: we spir­it our­selves into France, we train their cows in "le guerre des champs" (rur­al war­fare) and "le guerre des cafes" (Parisian war­fare), then we take over the small vil­lages, then stage simul­ta­ne­ous­ly Cow Army Inva­sions of Paris, Lyon, Toulouse and Cannes. The fer­rets may try to form a resis­tance army, but we can crush them with our supe­ri­or air pow­er and cat­a­pult technology.

See, isn't this nice? Some­one posts a thought­ful lit­tle vignette about cheese, we all learn a lit­tle, we make plans. Every­body a winner.

I would like to take a moment to respond to charges that I am being "con­trol­ling" … Okay, so, we had a lit­tle list where every­one could go and post what­ev­er they want­ed. It was called Dirty Sanchez, and, umm, no one ever used it. So I said: Maybe peo­ple will use it if I bound the con­ver­sa­tion with, say, a top­ic. Hence, CHEESE. We all like cheese; we talk about it all the time; it's a good domain for lit­tle nugs of com­men­tary. So when list mem­bers (Leslie) began by post­ing things that weren't about cheese, I just tried to steer the con­ver­sa­tion back to cheese. No big­gie. No harm, no foul. Nugs, not scuds, Leslie.

OK, so, to clar­i­fy, we stage a blood­less coup of "CHEESE" by feed­ing the Admin­is­tra­tor huge por­tions of cheese until he falls into a non-life-threat­en­ing dairy coma. We take over. We re-write the CHEESE style guide. Wait a minute, what are nugs? What about hugs? When do we get to the hugs? What­ev­er. Every­thing I've post­ed has been about CHEESE, and if He Who Walks in Dark­ness is too nar­row-mind­ed to see that, it's his loss.

How long have you lived in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Leslie? After all this time, how can you be unfa­mil­iar with the all-pur­pose ston­er term "nug"? Keep on truckin.

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