When I lived in DC, I used public transportation a lot. It was a breeze to zip from one end of town to the other, from VA to MD, all thanks to the lovely (and clean…ish) Metro system. I loved it. As a matter of fact, there’s still a huge part of my heart that longs to move back there because my 1.5 years of being a law student, going to the Smithsonian any ol’time, riding the metro rails, and other misadventures which are definitely not appropriate for this particular blog constitute some of the best moments of my life.

One afternoon, after classes, my friend tori asked me to meet her for coffee at this great coffeehouse/bar/bookstore called Kramerbooks. I’d been here before, I knew the route (Foggy Bottom/GWU Blue or Orane to Metro center, swich to Red line to Dupont circle)
And headed there with my books in tow. Now, with all the reading I did in my single year of legal studies (which, without doubt is the best academic feature of law school. No math. ALL READING!), I needed the occasional fluffy distraction book to remind me that i didn’t have to outline everything. As I headed to the Foggy Bottom station, I grabbed a CityPaper (DC’s Weekly… like Gambit in NOLA) and figured it would be light entertainment while riding on the Metro.

Go ahead. Make the joke. Then I can move on with m story. You know the words, it’ll be easy:
“Riding on the Met-Ro, oh, oh oooooooooooooooh!”

Okay. Now that that’s out of the way….

I’m reading the CityPaper, and I get to some book reviews. Awesome. One in particular catches my eyes. It’s this “erotic” novel (I use quotes because, to be fair, the word is a subjective one in this day and age. What turns me on may not necessarily do it for anyone else. And no, I’m not starting this as a topic of discussion. Alls I’m sayin’ is that the publisher of the slim volume decided to play up the fact that was some sex in the text.) by a English woman, who chose to use a pen name, lest she sully her reputation. That was laughable. It wasn’t a very long book, 125, tops. And the cover wasn’t conventionally suggestive, like a voluptuous Frazetta-esque vixen, or something like that.

The cover shot was a styled dusky close up of a woman putting some food in her mouth.

Now I know what you’re saying, there are plenty of phallic foods out there where any cheap shot can be had to downplay the outright sexuality of the image, and prey on the subconscious. There’s a whole scene in the first Austin powers movie that plays on that. Girl eats banana, sausage, popsicle, ice cream cone. Bor-ring. There are even foods with fabled aphrodisiac qualities (oysters, artichokes, avocados) which are more reminiscent of the female organs.

But this woman wasn’t eating any of the aforementioned foodstuffs. To be honest, if I hadn’t read the review, and saw this on one of those stacked to the ceiling tables at B&N, I would never have given it a second glance. And, if you aren’t already in the know about the story line, it looks like she could be eating a small morsel of just about anything - a hunk of cantaloupe, one of those yummy Hawaiian sweet rolls, or a piece of pound cake.

So much for judging an “erotic” book by it’s cover, eh?


What made this book immediate required reading was not that it was an “erotic novel” that would be a quick before bed read in it’s brevity.

It gnawed at my impulse-o-meter that I had to find this book at once because it was an “erotic novel” about CHEESE.

Go ahead. Laugh. This was before my culinary pursuits took off in earnest, but I was still enough of a food geek to be piqued by this concept.

Get your minds out of the gutter, because I’m going somewhere with this.

Story thus far: Riding on the Metro, reading city paper, randomly read review of “erotic novel” about cheese.

I couldn’t make this up.

The tome is titled Fermentation, and the author’s nom de plume is Angelica J.

It is a first person narrative about a French woman who discovers she is pregnant during the hottest summer of her life in Paris, which also happens to be made more miserable due to a garbage collector’s strike.

You know that Shell Silverstein poem, “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout”, about the girl who would not take the garbage out? Well, that was what the city was like. Rubbish everywhere, so the heat and humidity were made more vile with the ripe odor of garbage.

Our narrator, upon telling the reader that she is with child muses briefly that she’d always hoped that her pregnancy craving would be a “sexy” food, like oysters (see list of aphrodisiac foods, ahem). But when the time came, all she wanted was cheese.

Now sometime after I read this I found two other fun pop culture-y references to cheese that always make me giggle. One being the Nick Park Animated short of Wallace ad Grommit in A Grand Day Out “Cheeeeeese, Grommit! We’ll go somewhere where there’s Cheese” And then, our heroes take rccket ship to the moon! Woohoo!

And my pal Derek who watched The State and is much more the pop culture guru than I, would do the “Cheese can’t dial the phone” skit and while I must sadly confess that I didn’t know the reference from being super cool, the mental picture of a log of chevre or a wheel of stilton trying to phone home amuses me.

I digress. I took a detour and got off on the wrong side of Dupont Circle to go to Kramerbooks because I figured I’d stop at the bookstore whose ad featured the review. I cannot for the life of me recall the name of the place. How sad. Either way, I got the book, and walked to Kramer’s.

When I got home from the bookstore, I diligently hit the books. First the cases for the next day, and I could get then devour my recent purchase. I figured even though it was small, I wouldn’t’ rush it. Take it one quick chapter at a time.

And it was pretty amusing. Amusing enough that I read it twice. And took copious notes about the cheeses our protagonist chose or was recommended by the owner of the secluded cheese shop where she went to feed her almost-amorous desire for fermented milk product. Her creepy erotic dreams were not the stuff that would fuel my fantasies, but the descriptions of the cheeses as she unwrapped and tucked in were gratifying in the vein of M.F.K.Fisher, or Ruth Reichl. More sexualized? Well, yeah. But I’d be hard pressed to find a sexier account of undressing a wedge of brie on torrid Parisian afternoon.

This is where my cheese education began. Riding on the Metro, Washington CityPaper, random review in an advertisement. And for homework, a trip to the Fresh Fields in Arlington a few days later.

Unlike our protagonist, with the realization that I am with child, I have not wished that I was craving oysters. I love oysters, but unless it’s at Cochon, I’m gonna skip ‘em.

Also, no major cheese pangs. I wanted ham the other day, so Whole Foods was the source for Niman Ranch petite uncured ham and a decent wedge of a cheese that was soft and creamy like brie, but the flavor profile more distinct. I’ll look it up when I get home.

On some Italian bread, the cheese spread like mayo and blessed folds of smoky pork goodness; it was perfect.

I realize this has been a long passage to get to a ham sandwich, but it helps to explain, somewhat, why the pregnancy craving mesmerizes me. I know that the root of the matter is that my body is going through monumental changes, and when you get a pang for something like, um, spinach, it’s basically your bod saying, “Girl, you need some calcium. Eat up, it’ll make you and the baby strong like Popeye! Awwww Yeah!”

Which just goes to demonstrate no matter how much torture or delight you subject your body to – the sleepless nights, unbelievable stress, boozin’ it up, or crappy food you eat because it’s easy at 3am -- when it knows what it needs for our well being, it takes a cue from Captain Picard and insists you make it so.

The sleep demands are random. The food, doubly so.

Engage!