Slim Beyond Fadiman's Reason


I stumbled on Clifton Fadiman when reading about food trivia. He is the one man who might have endorsed my opinion on food. Unfortunately he is not with us anymore. Before, I reveal more about his relation to these essays, I have to say that I am completely and terribly at loss for words when it comes to my favorite subject. Yet, this is my earnest attempt to address my views on the infamous issue – FOOD.

IF IT’S NOT CREAM ITS CHEESE

As a kid, I learnt about one kind of cheese that was to change my outlook on American life forever. KRAFT. Breakfast never came to me without the classic dialogue “Nothing in India is as appetizing as American food full of milk and cheese.” As such, I stumbled on a lot of things that were supposedly unavailable in India although I never stepped out of my country. I learnt to love spaghettis and soufflés and everything that was abundant in milk and cheese.
Naturally, I was tempted to believe that America, the land of opportunity was in fact a land of opportunity to load oneself on hunks of curdled varieties of milk.
This was a time when the internet was still off limits. Pedias came in the form of books and trivia knowledge was far from reachable. And yet, my love for all things American inspired me to find food trivia beyond satiable limits.
On the political front, I learnt the most curious question that tempted me into a life long career in politics. Charles de Gaulle once remarked about France, “How can you govern a nation that has 246 varieties of cheese?” Puzzling indeed.
On the economic front, I learnt that to make a pound of cheese, a cow must first eat three pounds of food. Not that man needed an excuse to be tempted by beef, but eating a well-milked cow is only viable, if not anything else.
And from a climatic perspective, I noted that Mariolles were so pungent that heat waves emanated from it.
Oddly, it is only today that I found one remark by an man unknown to me until now, in my most familiar area of insight- the news media. Late Clifton Fadiman, an intellectual host on the radio once said "Hmmm Cheese--milk's leap towards immortality.”
That said, this is about my leap towards immortality. To the world where cheese is abundant and mounting rapidly. Is it not natural for me to wonder what the “real” American food tastes like when its imitations in India were so succulent?
In the year 2003, I traveled to the United States with my husband. I was mostly frightened and slightly enthusiastic about living in a world where everything I loved was to be obtained easily and will no longer have to wait till a distant relative comes home one a year on visit.
On the way to the United States, we halted at the Amsterdam Airport. I was both tired and down in the mouth. And still, the Amsterdam airport is not one to be overlooked. My husband and I lugged our baggage around walked through an endless stretch of airport stores. Nothing caught my fancy as much as the cheese stores.
I grabbed boxes of fondue, parmegiano reggiano, fontina and gouda. If not for the lack of space in my hand baggage, my entry into a new country might have been a lot cheesier.
If there is anything that lived up the American dream, cheese it is. Only now, I look forward to traveling to countries of its original habitat –italy, france, germany, Greece, the middle-east, spain and africa. They all claim to be the originators of cheese.

WIKIPEDIA SAYS: The exact origins of cheesemaking are unknown, and estimates range from around 8000 BCE (when sheep were domesticated) to around 3000 BCE. Credit for the discovery most likely goes to nomadic Turkic tribes in Central Asia, around the same time that they developed yogurt, or to people in the Middle East. A common tale about the discovery of cheese tells of an Arab nomad carrying milk across the desert in a container made from an animal's stomach, only to discover the milk had been separated into curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach.
Folktales aside, cheese likely began as a way of preserving soured and curdled milk through pressing and salting, with rennet introduced later— perhaps when someone noticed that cheese made in an animal stomach produced more solid and better-textured curds. The earliest archaeological evidence of cheesemaking has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2300 BCE. The earliest cheeses would likely have been quite sour and salty, similar in texture to rustic cottage cheese or feta.
From the Middle East, basic cheesemaking found its way into Europe, where cooler climates meant less aggressive salting was needed for preservation. With moderate salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for a variety of beneficial microbes and molds, which are what give aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors.

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