Tomme d'Abondance (French raw milk)

All those froofy-sound­ing French gruy­eres tend to inspire patri­ot­ic dis­gust for the very sin­cere self-impor­tance of every­thing French, even though they rarely dis­ap­point, taste-wise. My prob­lem with this gruyere is that it demands too much from me. I look at it in my lit­tle cheese draw­er, and it prac­ti­cal­ly demands that it be served in a par­tic­u­lar way, at a par­tic­u­lar time of day, with a par­tic­u­lar atti­tude, on a par­tic­u­lar plat­ter: "Eh! Mon­sieur! You're not going to slice me on zis cut­ting board, are you? The one on which you just sliced zat apple?" Umm, yeah, I didn't buy you so that you could make me feel inad­e­quate. What is pre­vent­ing me from grat­ing you into a fine pow­der and feed­ing you to the yap­py Amer­i­can mon­grel with which I live? Eh? Eh? In any case, I some­times appre­ci­ate the extra work involved in mak­ing this cheese hap­py. So what if it doesn't go well with Lagu­ni­tas Dog Town Pale Ale and MTV 10-Spot shows?