Voyage to the Bottom of the Cheese

SO I GUESS you could call this the logical extension of the plowman's lunch. Rather than just having the cold ingredients, I produced three planks of cheese bread-- one of gorgonzola, one of fontal, and one with a combination of fontal and white cheese-- and had them with a variety of olives and the last of the salami. The beer is Guinness, 'nuff said. As a mid-day repast, it was plenty satisfying, as is the notion of dubbing it the Ex-Plowman's Lunch.

Not that I would do such a thing again. Nor that I never would. I am simply unsure as to how soon I might again have gorgonzola, a cheese which, I quipped to the wife, is not actually named after the mythical monster, although it might as well have been. I love it, but it is some strong stuff. There are great lovers of heavy roqueforts, stiltons, and other pungent blues who consider gorgonzola not just strong, but, actually, crude. So I don't recommend it and I don't not recommend it. Try it some time if you like. You will either burst with joy or run screaming into the hills.

I can recommend today's movie, which was an Irwin Allen film, maybe even THE Irwin Allen film, although that's a hard thing to qualify. I remember seeing this for the first time when I was maybe fifteen or sixteen. When I turned it on, I first thought it was something else entirely, and I was watching chiefly in an effort to figure out whether it was what I thought it was or something else entirely. My Dad wandered through about the time the credits came up, and said "Oooooh! That's a good one!" I have no idea, to this day, if he was kidding or not.

Because it is a hell of a thing-- high concept stuff about the end of the world, conflicting personalities, and how their reactions can spur us to action or make us freeze in paranoia, and Barbara Eden's in it-- but, too, it's a hulluva thing-- flat characters, high concepts that are laid out like Scrabble tiles, and special effects that have all the exhilaration of playing with plastic boats in a bathtub, and Barbara Eden's in it. So I was able to get through it with a combination of nostalgia, fascination, disbelief, and beer. Other ways this might be recommended: after a head injury, while in traction, while feigning conversation with someone you find not at all interesting but to whom you are somehow honor bound to converse with, during oral surgery, or while teaching a film class.

But it was interesting to see, on this viewing, the second, some twenty-something (seven) years later, how many elements Tom Clancy lifted out, and I mean just plain stole, from this movie for use in both the book and the movie The Hunt For Red October.

Formulaics

BEHOLD, the plowman's lunch.



This is, of course, something for which there are many variations, and I have even heard it said (and seen it written) that a true plowman's lunch consists purely of cold mutton and boiled vegetables served with crusty bread. But to hell with that. I think any combination of bread and cheese is the foundation for a good plowman's lunch, and then you can add anything you like. Here, the cheeses-- yeah, that's right, two different cheeses! Color me bold!-- are a gogonzola and a milder soft-cured fontal. The combination is completely fortuitous-- this is what my Dad gave me this past weekend as a belated birthday present-- but it works splendidly. The fontal in this case functions as something of a palate cleanser, in that it helps tone down the lingering taste of the gorgonzola. I mean, I do love gorgonzola, but WOOF! It lingers.



The bread is a take-and-bake from the local grocery chain, which is to say that it is freshly baked insofar as such a thing applies. It is not Fresh Baked Bread. I am not a fool. But it certainly works in this capacity. The sausage, also courtesy of my Dad, is a Genova salami, which provided me with what I have decided to start calling a DOH!ment. This sausage was packed in an inedible casing. So all those smartly cut little discs will have to be peeled individually. Always test the casing before slicing the sausage. The olives, also from the local grocery chain, is a medly of kalmata, prune and green olives (which I call Greeks, simply because that is one place I know they come from, and to distinguish them from the Spanish olives that everyone knows as "green olives), and if you are under the impression that olives only come in two varieties, black and green, well . . . That's fine, I suppose. Nothing wrong with that.



The beer, also a birthyday gift, this time from my brother, is Rogue Yellow Snow IPA, whic also reinforced a previous lesson. Know your brewer. The beer itself is a pure delight (to me), a bitter brew packed to the shoulders with hops, absolutely delicious. But I made a brief mistake in the serving; the big bottle provides two generous glassfuls of beer, and I made the mistake of pouring the second one in two installments, with the result that I infused it with a healthy portion of sediment. The fine folks at Rogue breweries seem to believe that a handmade-style beer ought to have a generousl supply of sediment. Which is fine. I could have done better in the pouring, but it's not the end of the world.


The film of the day has been Nanking. I cannot recommend it. While on the one hand it is very good history, on the other, it's a partially left-handed approach. About 90% of the film is straight documentary, but that latter 10% is what I could only call "characterization," with a handful of very good actors portraying figures from the time, reading from their diary entries. Which is fine, but kind of off-putting at times. And Mark Valley plays someone called The Stagemanager, who juts in on occasion to set the narrative scene. And if all of that doesn't give you pause, keep in mind that this is a film about the Rape of Nanking. Not the most pleasant subject. And while on the one hand I think that it is important to know your history, here's what you most need to know about the Rape of Nanking: 1937, Japanese invasion, six weeks of serial atrocities commited against the citizens of Nanking including summary execution, mass murder, rape, vivisection, etcetera. Ninety minutes is not long enough to catalogue the attrocities, but it is far too long for most people, I am guessing, to be confronted with them.

In a way, the film and the Rogue Yellow Snow IPA are alike: I could caution you against overpouring, but it's entirely unlikely to expect the average person would want to partake of such a thing to begin with.