Cheese It's Good!

    When you think of countries that are famous for their cheeses you probably think of France or Switzerland and rightly so; France produces more than 500 different types of cheese and the Swiss gave us that holy stuff. When it comes to purveyors of fine cheese England often gets left off the list. That has to be a mistake and I hope that this post can convince you to add England to your mental list of places with good cheese!

Exhibit A: Cheddar Salad Sandwiches 
     As a devout disciple of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I came to London expecting to find a lot of boring, stale sandwiches being sold at coffee shops and quick stop type places. After all, Adams has been right about plenty of other things, why shouldn't I believe him about this? *snickers*  Luckily, this does not seem to be the case. The sandwiches I have come across here have all been quite tasty! However, most of the ready made things that you find at campus cafes and the like are the tuna/chicken/egg salad varieties. I am no fan of mayo so those are all immediately out of the running. But wait... what is this? Cheddar Salad? Cue the Heavenly Chorus of Voices! (But ignore the picture of Spongebob). White bread, tomato, lettuce, and British cheddar... all good! British cheddar is white and a little bit stronger than the standard cheddar cheese in America. I would say it's something like the medium sharp cheddar from Wisconsin but not quite, maybe it's a little creamier? What ever it is, it's delicious and at just £1.90 at the uni's cafes it's a new staple of my diet.

perhaps my favorite lunch standard

Exhibit B: The Ploughman's Lunch
     The Ploughman is a pretty standard lunch offering for many pubs in London. Before I left, the seasoned travelers in my life who had been to London before and experienced the pub food for themselves all told me that it was just one of the weird things that pubs try to pass off as lunch; "just a hunk of cheese and a pickle" they said. But for someone who makes a habit of eating a loaf of bread and a block of cheese (preferably straight off the block) and calls it dinner this seemed like a great lunch idea!
     One day I ended up at a local pub near my school with some friends for lunch and the ploughman was on the menu so of course I had to order it. I got three big chunks of cheese (brie, stilton, and British cheddar), a small bit of salad (the generic British term for any type of lettuce-y thing), a few odd garnishes which stayed on the plate, a whole basket of breads and cheeses, and a pickle (sweet not dill).

The cleverly named pub.

A standard Ploughman's Lunch. So good!

Exhibit C: Wine and Cheese Festivals
     So this may not be exactly English cheese specific but still... there was cheese and it happened in England so I say it counts! Last weekend there was a cheese and wine festival in Southbank, the very down town part of London where the London Eye, Parliament, and Big Ben are. Sarah saw it in Time Out and we decided that it would at least be a fun place to stop by for a bit. When we finally found the festival tucked away behind Royal Festival Hall we were a little bummed to see how crowded it was. It wasn't a very large festival by any means but there were tons of people there, so many that it was quite difficult to walk around amongst the vendors' tents and see what there was to sample. However we did see several people with huge trays of cheeses and breads so we decided to make getting one of our own the goal. We had to ask some one where they got theirs and then wait in a rather ungodly que  but we finally walked away with a plate full of four different cheeses. The man at the booth rattled off the the long, fancy names so fast that I honestly have no idea what any of them were but they were all delicious! I don't know anything about wine and the few sips I've had in my lifetime haven't been my type of thing at all so Sarah and I decided to split a cider. We found a place on the side walk to sit and enjoy our purchase in the fall air. That made for a good outing!

Can I say delicious again? Delicious!

     We've all heard of "the freshman 15" where college freshman gain 15 pounds from eating starchy cafeteria food all the time. I never had that. However I don't think I will be so lucky as to escape the foreign 15 the traveler's 20 Britain Belly quite so easily with all this cheese around!