Memories

There is a time in everyones life, when the waistline gets too big and it becomes all too comfortable in that easy routine that they call life. They have "no time" for anything but to slump upon the TV of live and let it flow in. So before Thomswoon gets to obese and struggles to fit into those skinny jeans he has fled to wordpress greener

http://onemanandhischeese.wordpress.com/

They were the best of times, they were the blurst of times....

So with this final post I say goodbye, arrivederci, totsiens, adjö, güle güle, hüvasti, 작별 인사, comiat, збогум, αντίο, beannacht! Thanks for the memories....

On Your Whey....

"She sends me blue valentines,
"To remind me of my cardinal sin.
"I can never wash the guilt,
"Or get these bloodstains off my hands,
"And it takes a lot of whiskey,
"To make these nightmares go away.

Tis the season to be merry, or at least mildly contrary. The lovers love, the indifferent conceal to to be indifferent and the lonely listen to good music and thank the lord that they don't have to make the dash to the vivo down the street and make an empty purchase of dead flowers. Cut down in their prime only to wilt in the mouldy vase of a dissatisfied lover. Flowers. The symbol of no more. Propped against a gravestone, thrown to the unfortunate next to be wed and the gift of man who no longer cares. Tis a meek existence....

He drinks himself into a stupor, only realising in his inebriated state what a waste he has made of his life. Tied down to a woman he is indifferent about for the sole reason of his lack of backbone. His perpetual fear of being alone. His resentment for her grows, every movement she makes is multiplied in his mind. The scratch of her nails along her supple neck sounds like 100 fingernails scrapping down a blackboard and every several seconds a nail breaks and not only does the sound send shivers down his back but the sight of the brittle polished nail shattering sends him over the edge. He jettisons out of his chair and towards her. Unable to take this torture anymore he stands above her, knuckles marbled white and red and what does he do? Nothing, just stands and takes it...

*Onemanandhischeese doesnt condone domestic violence.

But for all you romancers who are blissfully in love on this day, that celebrates the death of the martyr Mr Valentine, hope is not gone. In todays society of heavy social drinking many women might be worried that the full romance of the evening may not be met. But worry no longer ladies as Austian brewers from Brauerei Egg have come up with this....

Cheesy beer. Well not exactly, whey beer. One of the main by products of cheese making whey can pose a tricky waste product as you can just wash it down the drain as it is quite acidic. So this Austrian brewer has decided to ferment and use it in his beer. Possibly why it has a low alcohol content is while there is still some sugar in the whey, in the form of lactose, for a more alcoholic brew dextrose can be added to help the ferment. The lack of whey products on the market is peculiar, as it is claimed to have a similar probiotic content of the ridiculously expensive yakult. Why not crank it up another level distill the whey. It is said that the alcohol in Baileys comes from fermented whey, but when I got in contact with Diageo they had nothing to say on that matter but did let me know of their fabulous product range. Its like hitting your head against a wall trying to get information from any large company the paranoia is insane. Sooner or later God is gonna cut them down....

Like hitting your head against a wall, or at the least a drinks tray...

Laboratorio Artigianle

"Ice cream is exquisite, what a pity it isn't illegal"

The words of Francois-Marie Arouet, who soon would be known to the common man as Voltaire. A French writer, poet and philosopher his sharp tongue would get him into trouble time and time again. Voltaire, like many other encyclopedistes during the French enlightenment would gather at the brasserie by the name of Cafe Procope. The men of fashion would spend hours guzzling down caffeine laden coffee alongside ice cream and sorbet served in the finest porcelain. But as exotic as ice cream may have been back then, it has become part of our daily life. Whole isles at the unsupermarket, the jangle of the ice cream bus, memories of fallen scoops in a windy seaside car park, ice cream is part of our life. But times they are a changing. What is your favourite flavour? Vanilla? Mint choc chip? Rum n raisin? Cookie dough? Dull. Dull. Dull. Why does the flavour have to be limited to the weather in which we consume our ice cream on the grey beach? Japan just shock things up.

Fish, curry, garlic, ox tongue, chicken wing ICE CREAM

They never seem to disappoint. From gastronomical delights to the exit of those gastronomical delights into the high tech sanitary basins, from insane Japanoise androgynous bands to unspeakable pornographic offerings they have a mind set like no other. DA DA DA DA DADA, DA DA DA DA DADA......

Just waiting for zebra ice cream now. After all the chaos and mind twisting logic of the Japanese give me a tropical zebra ice cream sitting in my South African beach house. Wilderness for miles, eyes so mild and wise.

Milk it...

Never has such a piece of work been talked so irrelevantly without citing its influences. In the time I have been waffling about cheese this and cheese that and cheese the other. I have rarely mentioned the said milk. But what wonderful magical animal excretes pure cheese?

Exactly, that collective "none" has put shame onto my neglect of the raw materials. The essence, the original, in the beginning there was the word. But what of milk?

There is a fear of milk. We are always waiting for it to die. We are wary as every time we grab milk from the fridge the first thing we do it sheepishly whiff the opened jug. The relief on our faces it has lived another day. We show no trust to the milk we buy from the supermarkets and correctly so. Why does it go bad several days before if says on the label? Is it the collective fridges throughout the country are of a poor quality? No it is the milk that is of a poor quality.

This man bes a Mr Louis Pasteur the pioneer of milk as we know it today... pasteurised. People run and hide under their bed when they are confronted with raw milk. But run no longer. The reason the pasteurised milk is going bad is because its TVC (Total viable count, ie what bacteria is in the milk) is of a high level. Raw milk has been proven to be kept more hygienic as the producers of pasteurised milk think once it is pasteurised it is infallible and can be abused. Most counts pushing the legel limit of 100000, but raw milk counts could be closer to this....

So lets up rise. This cleaner milk is deemed unsuitable for human consumption?! Do we need to be wrapped up so, should we not have free choice, without having to travel many a mile to find some raw milk by a farmers gate? Let us drink in celebration of the milk....

"Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer. "

Not so Mr Schwarzenegger, why limit ourselves. Milk should negotiate its way towards alcohol. Head to The Korova Milk Bar. Sit on the nearest naked lady and pour yourself a cold one from her nipple. Drink the milk with knives in it, it will sharpen you up as...

"No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness--or so good as drink"

Jackass

When you think of things of great wealth one of the last things you would think off would be a donkey. Many a time as I strode through the pouring rain to make it through to a one on one with the goalkeeper only to have my boot catch the muddy turf and fall flat on my face. DONKEY! DONKEY! DONKEY! they would chant as I lay there, the mud hiding the tears on my cheeks. It hard to imagine that they are making a reference to, maybe the fact that the donkey was once responsible for the wealth of the Egyptians due to it being the means for transport of precious metals carried from Africa by donkeys? Or maybe it was them parodying my twisting silky dribbling referring to the donkeys carrying silk along the 'Silk Road' from Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean, but I feel they were using it in the vain of the derogatory slant it has become. But fear not donkey lovers as the worth of donkeys is again to rise....

DONKEY CHEESE

It has taken the throne as the worlds most expensive cheese. I have touched on this before in the usual roundabout way here, but there is a new king in town and that king is 'Pule'. Pule comes from the Serbian word for 'foal'. Cue donkey fact....In the desert environment a donkey is able to hear the call of another donkey 60 miles away, they have far larger ears than horses.

But back to the cheese... This donkeys cheese comes in at a whopping £1000/kg. But whats so special about these donkeys I hear you say? Nothing really it is just that there is a terrible yield from donkey milk due to the very low percentage of fat and protein available. No wonder the coachman in Pinochio set up Pleasure Island. But surely everyone is a winner, you get to play pool, drink, smoke, fight, gamble and then when you have made enough of a 'jackass' of yourself you turn into a donkey and produce some of the most expensive cheese in the world. This is basically a metaphor for my life....

Another reason for why the cheese may cost so much is the danger that surrounds the milking of the donkeys. Due to there cautious and untrusting nature they are forever bucking their legs and this would be hazardous during milking as they would be forever kicking off their milking clusters. This could lead too many pathogens such as escherichia coli and salmonella getting into the milk through fecal contamination. ie Pony crap....

Death By Cheese....

"McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed

There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head"

Financial crisis isn't the only thing that Ireland has in common with the Greeks, they also have some exceptional mythology. An underrated mythology if you will. Its got everything a good myth needs. Deceit, seductive ladies, death, moider! Like a good Saturday night in Galway.

Mr Shane MacGowan references an old tale of woe for Cú Chulainn. Trouble began for poor Cu Chulainn before he was even born. His mother was called Deichtineand she was the daughter of the King of Ulster. She was out with her father one night in search of a wondrous flock of beautiful birds. A snowstorm ensues and they take refuse at a near by house. The lady of the house goes into labour that evening and Deichtineand helps to birth that child and just like a 50s horror film there is a crash of lightening that preempts a mare in the stables giving birth to 2 colts.

A joyous evening for everyone, as the storm rages on outside. As dawn was breaking and everyone resurfacing with megalithic hangovers only for the parents of the new born to have disappeared so Deichtineand mothered that child unfortunelty only for the child to fall sick and die.

The god Lug appears to her and tells her he was their host that night, and that he has put his child in her womb, who is to be called Sétanta. Her pregnancy is a scandal as she is betrothed to Sulatam mac Róich, and the Ulstermen suspect Conchobar of being the father, so she aborts the child and goes to her husband's bed "virgin-whole". She then conceives a son whom she names Sétanta. Later changes his name after killing a dog. Jeremy Kyle eat your heart out.

And what a stunner he was not only was he a head turner his beauty could melt snow. I'm sure he would have had no problems with the ladies. He could walk up to the tallest and blondest girl, he would say....

It is the Greek mythology though that ties this all into cheese this very eve. Queen Maeve of Connaught meet an untimely demise at the hands of some hard curd. She was slain by her own nephew. She was bathing in the waters of Lough Ree when after hours of practice killed her by firing Tanag though a sling shot. Tanag being a hard pressed cheese. What a way to go.

Unfortunately many of the indigenous cheeses from Ireland have been lost over time. They had a Fraisce Grotha which translates as compression of curds. This would have been a fresh cheese. There are others to many a few Millsen, Gruth, That and Mulchan. But what they really strived at was butter, which would be buried in the bogs. Whether this was to preserve or to make it rancid is unclear.


Looks good. As traditional as an Irish wedding or a horse riding thorough a council estate....

Teller of Untruths, Your Trousers Have Combusted

It's 12:36 PM on a leafy suburb of any given generic city. All to be heard are the fleeting cars on the duel carriage way nearby. Then a bell echoes around. Starting in the marble corridors and making its way to the cochlea of a child. It is now time for the sacred ritual that is kids lunchtime. The yard is full. Groups of boys and girls scream, running around with not a care in the world. But then one boy tries to exaggerate a tale of his to gain some playground respect. But hes pushed it too far. The dreaded chant bellows out creating a silence and all eyes gaze upon him....

"LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!"

But what does this mean? Why are his pants on fire? Is it literal or maybe just a good rhyme? Well legend has it, it originates from the fact that lying is considered an immoral act that is punishable by spanking. Henceforth one who lies bottom will be hit causing his or her pants to be on fire.

And well we all know who are the biggest liars and contradictors of the lot? Not the poor school child trying to navigate the social maze of primary school, but the GOVERNMENT!!!

They need to get their stories straight....

Here is an article from the NY Times about the government scaremongering about fat and then pushing cheese sales.

Now neither of these are necessarily bad things. But they need to put their message across differently. People shouldn't just be worrying about their fat intake, but looking at their all round health. Be active, eat healthily, have some sense, instead of frightening people about fat they should be encouraging educating ourselves so we can make informed decisions not just be told eat less of this and more of the other.

Cheese does have quite a high fat content, but its has its advantages being calcium rich. But were not expected to eat 100g at a time. Its not going to kill you unless you have one of these a day....

Then it would be goodbye friend...