Transient Transplant

My love of cheese runs deep.  Ask anyone who really knows me and they can likely come up with some specific and telling stories.

I went home for Christmas and my friend and her fiance brought me out to a restaurant specifically to get a cheese board.

My aunt got me a wheel of blue cheese that I transported from Indianapolis to Seattle with a cooler and ice packs in my luggage.

There are more stories like this that I don’t care to go on about, as it would take hours of your life that you would never get back.

But since I received the wheel of blue cheese, I got my father to cough up his homemade blue cheese dressing recipe that I typically would only receive and find in what he calls his “death cookbook”–a compilation of recipes that will only be passed down after he dies.

And so it happens that I have been inspired to perfect the art of making blue cheese dressing.  I now possess zero kitchen skills, but I make a killer salad dressing.

Getting a wheel of blue cheese is not something that I was worried about making it through, though most people would likely find it a daunting task living alone.  Most people would consider sharing.  I saw the wheel and thought, “Challenge accepted.”

I convinced myself to buy more vegetables to use as a vehicle to eat the blue cheese dressing so I’m not just taking a spoon and eating it like soup.  I’ve also convinced myself it’s super healthy because of my vegetable intake being increased exponentially.

I make salads at work and people say to me, “Oh, that looks so healthy,” which they never have before in their lives because I bring in 99 cent frozen foods or cans of soup most of the time.

But now I have a vehicle for eating a ton of cheese and because it happens to be on a salad, people are going nuts over it, saying things like, “I wish I could be that healthy,” or “That looks amazing.”

I take the compliment, knowing that being the girl who typically eats frozen mac and wheels like a child doesn’t glean much positive kitchen commentary.

I laugh to myself as I get daily compliments, wanting to say it’s the only thing preventing me from inhaling a whole vat of dressing.  But I want to make kitchen conversation, so I smile and say thanks and mumble something about wanting to eat more greens.

When I say it’s an addiction, it’s far from a joke.

I don’t get cravings for chips or junk food.  I get cravings for cheese.

I recently read an article that popped up in my Facebook ads about how cheese is as addictive as crack.  Don’t get me started on how I’ve never posted anything about cheese on my Facebook page, but apparently its creep factor knows the darkest secrets of my heart.

I don’t really buy the argument (obviously I clicked on the article and read it) as it was clearly written by someone who has never had a drug problem, but likely someone who has no self control when it comes to cheese like myself.

But I’d be lying if I told you that I haven’t name checked that article when I feel the heat for my love of cheese.

“See it’s fine.  I have a problem equivalent to a crack addiction, and there is no rehab for dairy,” I texted my friends, knowing they would call bullshit immediately but feeling like at least I could lie to myself and claim an excuse for my lack of self control.

Once in my apartment in college, my roommate walked in on my cutting off slices from a brick of cheddar and eating them in the dark as my midnight snack.  I still can’t live it down to this day.

My friend in New York sent me a message with a picture of a three tiered cake made of different kinds of cheese.  I told him that would be at my wedding.  He told me it was more appropriate for a cat’s quinceanera.

A friend from Seattle told me she would take all the cheese from my refrigerator so that I could cut my habit.  I told her that was the most hateful thing she’s ever said to me.

And the stories go on and on.

In the meantime, I’ll just settle for putting copious amounts of blue cheese on salads at work and eating up the compliments about how healthy I’m being and how jealous they are.

They should be jealous of my newfound blue cheese dressing skills.  Not so much my “healthy lifestyle.”  But I’m happy to keep up the illusion as long as they’ll buy into it.