So what's with the cheese? I mean, cheese is intended to go on TOP of things like pizza, burgers, or lasagna. You might dip nachos in it if you're feeling like more than the usual salsa dip. You could grill it in a sandwich or spread it on a bagel. I used to consider myself a bit of a cheese snob because I eschewed the standard fluorescent-orange cheddar for the "fancy" natural-colored white sharp cheddar.
What about the REAL cheese snobs? How can the French consider that cheese is sufficiently interesting, in itself, to warrant a course of its own during a meal? That last is a stereotype that is mostly true. Most restaurants and families at home offer cheese before desert. Much is made over the number of different cheeses in France, with numbers anywhere from dozens to thousands depending on how you do the counting. How can we even imagine that kind of variety when most of the cheese we encounter is either mozzarella, cheddar, or, well, SQUARE?
I certainly wasn't prepared, but I can now testify that there is, indeed, an incredible variety; some if it is rather pungent, and while most is delicious, some varieties are an acquired taste. Roquefort in particular has as strong a scent as its reputation suggests. Mind you, many French people don't like it. That or they say, "Well you don't eat it ALONE! It's best with bread, butter and red wine." Taste in cheese is very personal, everyone has their favorites, and not liking one variety is not a shameful or unpatriotic thing. My wife likens it to how Americans have their favorite brands and flavors of chips out of the dozens of varieties available.
What seems silly to us is so only because we don't have such a wide variety available to choose from. It is genuinely silly to obsess about cheese in a world where you have so little, but an abundance of difference opens up the possibility of appreciating those differences.
