Everything you need to know about me in an anecdote...

Months ago we went to visit my Dad who lives near Bega, which is famous for cheese.  I love to visit the cheese factory not just for Bega cheese, which is mass produced and available at every supermarket in the country, but for the one-off cheeses they make with excess milk in the Spring that you can only get at the factory, and also for the boutique cheeses they source from smaller cheese factories elsewhere and sell on site.  These cheeses rarely make it back to Canberra - they're almost always on the cheese board at my Dad's house the very night we buy them.

Anyway, sometimes you get lucky and there's something totally obscure and different.  This time it was canned cheese.  Made for the Middle East where it gets really hot and things go sour quickly, canned cheese is Halal and proudly marked as "The Great Australian Cheese", "MADE IN AUSTRALIA" and "Bega - PROCESSED CHEESE".  Yum!

I'll admit I was mildly curious but in all honesty, I harbour a deep belief that cheese should never come in anything metallic be it foil* or, for the love of all that's holy, a CAN.  But it was 50c a can and I have a best friend I like to torture, so I bought two tins of the stuff for her.  Needless to say, it did not make it onto the cheese board.  It did, however, get left on my Dad's bench when we packed up and went home.  I know this not because I was missing the Satanic little hockey pucks of gastronomic doom, but because I got a phone call that started with, "Rebecca** there is CHEESE in a CAN on my bench.  Since I don't buy things like that, I assume it's yours?"

Being Dutch and a true cheese afficionado, he refused to touch the stuff and a month later he placed it on my bench, carefully wrapped in its plastic baggy so it didn't make contact with his skin. "This," he said, raising his eyebrows and dropping his voice to the "Disappointed Daddy" range, "is yours, I believe?"  I assured him it was for Kat and he brightened visibly.

It was only a week later that curiosity got the better of me and late one night I cracked one of the cans just to see what it tasted like. Unsurprisingly, it tasted like awful KRAFT cheddar and not even the addition of plum paste could save it.  The other can went into the fridge where it's been for six months, waiting to be delivered to the unsuspecting Kat von Z with just the right dose of unholy glee.  And then this morning I woke up, realised I had nothing to feed my children on their sandwiches and had to use the wretched stuff.  The little blighters acted like I was trying to feed them nuclear waste byproducts.  James point blank refused to eat it, going so far as to spit the first mouthful out and feed it, along with the rest of the sandwich, to the dog who was under the table, announcing, "I NOT LIKE IT and I NOT EAT IT."

Charlotte chewed it thoughtfully, winced as she swallowed as though it had been salted with crushed glass and informed me that, "it's not really cheese unless it has mould Mama" in her very reasonable "I like that you tried" voice of condescension.   Little epicurean rat fink.

Anyway, the more I thought about this cheese in a can episode, the more I thought that it really does tell you an awful lot about me.

*  Sorry KRAFT, your cheddar = FAIL.
**  My Dad never, ever calls me Rebecca unless I have majorly fucked up.  Usually I'm just Rebow.