Cheese Karma

Confession time: I can’t eat cheese.

It’s true! While the world turns to cheese in everything gastronomic, I look the other way. When I order a burger or a salad, I remind the waiter, “No cheese, please,” to ensure no surprises. Scanning a menu, I look for two things: One, for something delicious and enticing, and two, for anything that contains cheese. Which I will avoid.

If cheese finds its way into my mouth, my urge is to get it out of there. If, for some reason, it gets into my throat, doors close; I spit it right out. “You’re not permitted in this country,” the stomach sentry says. “You must leave immediately!”

There’s beauty in cheese, I admit

I see the beauty of cheese. I love wandering into a fromagerie, admiring their names, colours, shapes, infinite varieties, and poetry. And, strangely, I like the aroma of a good fromagerie, the dank heaviness, the weighty earthiness. Is this what it’s like to be inside a cow’s stomach? I wonder.

In the pantry, the dear dense cheeses, Cheddars and harsh
Lancashires; Gorgonzola with its magnanimous manner;
the clipped speech of Roquefort; and a head of Stilton
that speaks in a sensuous riddling tongue like Druids.

O cheeses of gravity, cheeses of wistfulness, cheeses
that weep continually because they know they will die
O cheeses of victory, cheeses wise in defeat, cheeses
fat as a cushion, lolling in bed until noon.

— By Donald Hall, “O Cheese” from White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems, 1946 – 2006, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, (2007)

It was always thus, according to my mother. Even as a toddler, I’d spit it out. While my family ate grilled cheese sandwiches for a Saturday lunch, I had grilled peanut butter sandwiches and grew to love them. Eat them to this day! With a pickle!

A few times, I’ve forced myself to overcome this affliction. I pluck up courageously and try to choke down a bit of cheese. But the heaves and gags tell me this is futile. I can’t eat cheese. Never could, never will.

End of confession.

But there is more to this story. A significant case of karma, in fact. A cosmic joke! My cheese story. I’ve told it hundreds of times. I’m writing it down now for posterity.

A cosmic joke

In the 1980s, I was an editor for Enterprise, a magazine for the credit union/co-operative movement in British Columbia. Once or twice a year, I’d travel to a different part of the province to gather information and write profiles of credit unions and co-operative businesses. I’d fly into a city or town, rent a car and drive from place to place talking to managers and presidents. They were delighted to meet an earnest reporter from the big city with a camera and a tape recorder slung over his shoulder.

It was a good job! I met some interesting characters and generous people and saw some beautiful parts of the province.

A great photo opportunity

On the last day of a tour of the Okanagan, one manager suggested I do a story about the Armstrong Cheese factory, then affiliated with the Fraser Valley Milk Producers Co-operative Association of B.C. (later known as Dairyland, now owned by Saputo Dairy Foods). Armstrong was a ubiquitous cheese brand in those days and perhaps still is. I was told the cheese-making operation was a must-see, a great photo opportunity.

“Besides,” said the manager. “You may even get some free cheese out of the deal!”

Making that stop would be pushing my time, though. I had to catch a late afternoon flight back to Vancouver. But I decided to make a quick visit and do a short interview. Regional colour, I told myself. It would make a lovely sidebar to my package of stories. Plus, the Armstrong Cheese management was willing to drop everything and show me around.

“Would you care for some cheese?”

The head cheesemaker and president were proud of their operation. They were eager to put their best foot forward, offering me an artfully arranged tasting board with various cheeses, crackers, olives and grapes.

For some reason, I was too shy to tell them I couldn’t eat cheese and could barely face the stuff. I politely declined the cheese offerings, saying I barely had time to take a few pictures and drive to the Kelowna airport.

But the plant was about to start a cheddaring process. This is what I came to see; I couldn’t leave now!

Cheddaring tables

The plant was a cavernous room with large stainless-steel tables, mixing devices, control stations with flashing lights and a complicated network of cables and pipes on the ceilings and walls. In the back of the room was a pair of large vats for mixing raw milk with rennet. This enzyme coagulates milk protein into curds, the whitish-yellow clumps that form the basis of cheddar cheese. The liquid portion of the milk’s transformation into curds is whey, drained off. 1

As I watched, the contents of one of the vats were emptied by a supported pipe swung out over a long cheddaring table on the plant floor. A pair of floor workers pushed the curds with rakes and shovels along the sides of the table. The whey drained through filters and was squeezed out of the curds. As I recall, these oblong loaves were pressed tightly with molds to fully drain the whey.

There was much more to the cheddaring process, but I didn’t have a chance to see it. I looked at my watch and was alarmed to see there was little time to make my flight. I thanked the cheesemaker and made to leave the plant.

A torrent of curds and whey

But when I was about to leave the plant, I realized I hadn’t taken a photograph. I ran back and asked one of the managers if I could take a few pictures from the platform on which the large vats were situated. “Sure!” he said.

I started to climb a short ladder to the platform when a large hose burst off the conduit at the base of one of the vats. The vat had just started to be emptied to another table, so the line was wide open, and a torrent of curds and whey came rushing at me, pounding into my chest with great force! Gallons and gallons of raw cheese!

The force was so great that I lost my grip on the ladder. The whey was too slimy to hold on. I fell backwards, landed on the concrete floor, and snapped my head back on a rubberized map below the cheddaring table.

Lying on the plant floor

A second later, an employee managed to get to the vat and shut off the valve. I lay on the floor, drenched in whey; clumps of curds pooled around me.

The floor manager and several employees rushed over, helping me up, asking if I was okay. Was I hurt? Shouldn’t I sit down for a minute? Someone ran a few towels over to me.

“I have to go,” I shouted. “I’ll miss my plane!” I was thinking of my wife at home in Vancouver, hoping to see her that evening. I gave no thought to my soaking clothes or that I might be injured.

I was backing the car out of the parking lot when the head cheesemaker burst out of the entrance with a fresh towel and a paper grocery bag full to the brim with a selection of Armstrong cheeses.

Enjoy!

“Thank you for visiting,” he said. “We couldn’t let you leave without some cheese! Enjoy!”

I saw him waving at me in the rear-view mirror as I pulled onto the highway.

I had just over an hour to drive to the Kelowna Airport, return my rental car and board my flight to Vancouver. It was going to be a mad dash. I’m not proud of how I drove and wouldn’t do the same today. I cruised well beyond the speed limit, passing cars like they were standing still. 2

Crusty hair and shirt

It was late winter, and I began to feel the chill on my damp clothes. My hair was still wet, and I had the bright idea of turning on the heater and aiming the fan vents at my face. I reached up to push my hair back and found several small cheese curds still stuck in my scalp. They wouldn’t come cleanly out of the hair, and instead, I smeared them over the length of several tufts and into the roots.

After a few moments, I began to smell. It grew more substantial as my clothes dried. My shirt was crusty and grew stinkier the closer I got to Kelowna. A fine malodorous mess!

I pulled into the rental car lot and threw the keys at the attendant. He told me the plane had paged me for the last few minutes. I waved my ticket at the check-in desk (those were the days!), then ran out on the tarmac, where my plane was waiting.

“I almost drowned!”

Two flight attendants smiled as I took the stairs two at a time to the cabin door. When I presented myself to them, they both took a step back, looking slightly alarmed at my appearance and smell.

“I had a cheese accident,” I explained. “I almost drowned in curds and whey!”

The flight attendants were good-natured. They sat me in an empty row and said I could use the toilet as soon as we’d reached cruising altitude.

When we touched down in Vancouver, I was happier to be back in the safety of home than ever. As I lay in bed that night, I saw the larger picture: it was the great infinity having a good chuckle at my expense.

I was pleased and owed a gratitude of debt to Armstrong Cheese. But you’ll never see cheese in any Happy Monk Bread.

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Postscript: After posting this piece on the Happy Monk website, I looked in back issues of Enterprise magazine (they are now online, to my surprise). Did I write about my “cheese accident” in the article about Armstrong Cheese? It turns out I did not! If I’d had my way today it would have been in the lead paragraph! I think were were concerned it would detract from the proper story of Armstrong, that the cheese accident was too sensational. So there you go: Only now — 38 years later — can it be written!

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