The Power of Cheese

Cheese.  Soft cheese.  Hard cheese.  Old Cheese.  Smelly cheese.  Cheese in a sandwich.  Cheese in a salad.  Cheese as a snack.  Cheese before dinner.  Cheese after dinner.  Italian cheese.  AND French cheese.

I've received a lot of flack in my life for my love of grilled cheese sandwiches.  My friends have said more than once upon entering a restaurant. "Do you think they're going to have a grilled cheese on the menu?"  It's not the only thing I eat, you know.  Well, maybe it is.  Kind of.  If I go to a Mexican restaurant, I get cheese quesadillas.  If it's Italian, it's a cheese pizza.  And in France, my favorite lunch is what I refer to as a "smashed sandwich" which is really just 5 kinds of cheese on a long piece of bread and smashed to toast on a grill.  (And voila!  A French panini or really a French grilled cheese.)  A French grilled cheese is not a Croque Monsieur.  This has a tiny sliver of ham which is impossible to pull off.  So, in MY opinion, a French grilled cheese is really a cheese panini, which was given it's name by you know who.

Anyway, I may have discovered the grilled cheese of grilled cheeses last weekend in the Czech Republic.  I didn't write Prague because it was not in Prague.  I did everything I could to get out of Prague and I found my real grilled cheese in Kutna Hora.  (Okay.  I'm happy to have gone to Prague and to have seen another Disneyland town like Mont St. Michel.  But to spend more than a few hours to feel the "magic", as one friend that loves Prague put it, seemed like too much).  Now, back to the more magical item, the grilled cheese.

I was traveling with a 14-year old friend and I knew we would both be struggling with the menu.  Then I found the grilled cheese and smiled.  I informed my culinary equal and we ordered two grilled cheeses and two french fries.  (They're French, right?)  We were happy.  But we were even happier when they arrived.  Okay....really it was me that was so happy when they arrived.  It was GRILLED cheese.  No bread.  Just two big slabs of cheese.  My partner was confused.  All I could say was that it was like a couple of giant mozzarella sticks!  Then she understood.  Makes sense.  Grilled cheese.  She asked how we were supposed to eat it and I told her with a knife and fork.  Then she pointed at the three little piles of different colored stuff on our plates and in true kid-to-kid fashion said, "I dare you to eat that."  Guess what?  I'd already had a bite.  Maybe I'm more like an 18-year old than a 14-year old.  I'm growing up over here.

Back to the surprise slabs of cheese.  The menu said nothing about a sandwich, so why was I convinced grilled cheese was a sandwich?  How often do we make this mistake of preconceived notions?  Adding something to something else just because you think it should be there or because you're used to it being there?  Having an idea about the way something should be and not giving it a second thought and in the end it really isn't what you thought it should be at all?  And guess what?  Sometimes......it's better.