You may have read the title of this post and had an involuntary reaction of some sort. You can blame my virtual friend Mike. He is the source of this news.
Yes, the Piedmonte town of Bra, known for its connection with Slow Food, its connection with truffles (yet another of the sexually provocative funguses) and its funny little name, is producing a festival of cheeses next September. You should plan to go. There are over 160 cheeses in Piemonte and they need you to eat them. Otherwise funguses will.
But this reminds me of a story. Yes, we were in darkest Sardinia, where an archaeological expedition had amassed its first set of volunteers. After plying them with cheap wine, the staff, of which I was admittedly one, required the newbies to recite the most embarrassing story they could think of that was actually true, or could be recited in a way to make us all think it was. The one I remember, probably because it involved a breast and some warm and stinky artisan cheese, began with the volunteer in her youth attending a college party when her stomach happened to be as empty as a politician’s brain. Upon reaching a formidable table groaning under the weight of many of the world’s finest cheeses, she suddenly decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to eat some of it and save some for later, which lead to the fingering of a round of Camembert nearly the exact size of her bra, which, she asserted, was not quite as full as she might have liked anyway. In any case, I suspect by now you have realized her course of action. Yes, in a quiet moment she slipped the round of Camembert neatly into the (I believe right) cup which cuddled it like a hairless kitten badly in need of a bath. (The heart throbs, does it not?)
To make a long story compassionately short, she left the party in a state of boredom and fell directly asleep in her hovel, having forgotten the warming round of cheese clutched to her bosom. It was (evidently) not pretty—to her at least, even when unmolded carefully. Perhaps crime doesn’t pay. Perhaps it is, like mistaken war, simply messy, as described by the protagonists at least.
In any case, she should have gone to Cheese Bra. She could have been a star.
And just in case you haven’t had enough Cheese Bra, there is actually a cheese called Bra.
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