Depending on where you live in New England, you got either a big hype about “many, many inches of snow” or a load of actual snow last weekend. We got snow, but it wasn’t the hassle I was anticipating. I was really looking for an excuse to avoid the shower. I was disappointed when I woke up Saturday morning and could open the front door. And it took only about 20 minutes to shovel out the car. I was hoping to have to hunker down in my jammies all day. So was Joel.
He decided to get up and get out of the house and make a run to his favorite cheese shop in Wellesley, Massachusetts — Wasik’s — and then pretend that we were snowbound. His son Jacob made fondue (he’s such a cool kid — he really will eat just about anything and loves to cook). Amy made mulled cider.
There was prosciutto (Canadian and Italian). Great cheese. Fruit. Bread. Honey. A biodynamically grown Gruner Veltliner wine. A roaring fireplace. I didn’t do a thing except eat, pontificate, and plan food trips to exotic places like Thailand and Patagonia. I didn’t get to stay in my pajamas, but it was still a very good day.
Read more of Annie’s Eating New England.
There used to be an excellent cheese shop — it was actually called The Cheese Shop — across the street from the newspaper where I worked in Peterborough, Ontario. Quite often my colleagues in the Composing Room would make a lunch run over to get cheese sandwiches for lunch; the variety of cheeses available meant that our lunches were far more exotic than in most industrial settings.
Several years later, after I left town, the newspaper moved its offices out to the suburbs and building housing The Cheese Shop burnt down (I can’t remember what the order of events was). Imagine all that wonderful cheese melting away to nothing; such a crime.