The stinky cheese post.

Hello friends!

I am here today to discuss something I have discovered about the Midwest that troubles me, and that I need to share with like-minded individuals, which I can only assume that you are because you subscribed to this. (This assumption I am making is absurd, as you will soon find out. But perhaps you will find this amusing!)

I am concerned about the absolute lack of stinky cheese here. This is a problem, one I was not expecting. Let me explain.

Right before we moved to central Illinois, I stopped off at my old doctor’s office for a complete workup. I had heard that there is a doctor shortage out here (I did not realize how serious it is! but getting a routine appointment is tough, I’ve learned), and plus I love my old doctor, so I was happy to do one last checkup with him.

I waited until what wound up to be the last minute to schedule my appointment, and so the only thing he had available was at 7:30 in the morning on the day before he left for vacation for a week. I went in and as part of that, got a full blood screening for everything.

I got the results the day after the appointment, but that meant my doctor was on vacation. So for over a week, I had to sit with the information that all of my lab results looked great — except for one marker. Under my cholesterol screening, there was one result that was really high, and all I could think of was, Oh no. I am moving to the cheese capital of the United States right when my body is screaming out “please stop giving me dairy.” I was despondent. This seriously crushed me more than I ever would have expected, and I spent that week trying to wrap my head around this new reality I was facing. No cheese. This was not a reality I wanted to live in.

This was, of course, until my doctor came back to town and read my panicked emails and wrote back (I’m paraphrasing here): “You idiot. That’s your good cholesterol. Your cholesterol overall is fantastic for a woman your age. You are absolutely fine. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Zoom! I was elated. Cheeselandia — here I come!

I should have come plummeting down to earth one night in July when I was in Normal, IL at a really cute little wine-and-cheese bar, where I told the waitress to pick out two of their stinkiest, sharpest cheese to compliment my wine. I trust you to make the pick for me! I said, thinking I was talking to a fellow traveler.

“Stinky cheese? What do you mean?” She was very young — probably one of the college students who lives here, just making some money to pay for her school. I tried a variety of adjectives to explain what I’m talking about — you know, funky, umami, ripe? She just looked at me completely blankly. I chalked it up to Gen Z stare, and didn’t worry too much. I ordered a few things randomly on the menu and they were ok, but I was disappointed. I didn’t get that funk that I wanted.

Illinois is all about corn. Wisconsin is all about cheese. But to be fair, Wisconsin isn’t that far away (farmers from there come to vend at our farmers market all the time), and farmers in Illinois do, in fact, produce cheese. So any way you look at it, I really thought — in my naive, East Coast brain — that by moving here I would be surrounded by some of the best cheese in the country, maybe the world. I was so excited. And listen, we do have some really good corn here, but cheese? Not so much. Everything is super, super mild. Picture cream cheese, but more solid. Which, I like cream cheese but you know… variety, people.

There’s this whole thing about Midwestern food — how bland it supposedly is, how weird it is — that people on the East coast make fun of. I have to say for the record that I have eaten at several peoples’ homes and have yet to encounter Jell-o salads or other strange atrocities. Everything I’ve had has been absolutely fine and delicious and not at all different than the East coast. I just assumed that was a myth, and in several trips to different local restaurants here, my assumption was encouraged.

If anything, the food I’ve come into contact with in Bloomington restaurants has been a little, well, weird, but in a way I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve been joking about how baffling many of the restaurants are here — instead of having a straight-up Korean or Indian or whatever restaurant, the food in any particular establishment seems to be a blend of a ton of different cultures along with the resident chef’s own creativity. Good luck picking a place if you’re an outsider based on the name and the decor, but also if you’re willing to take a chance, you might get something really good.

Case in point: at one local place I got a dish which I will now describe — and get ready, because it takes a few different turns. It starts out with a pair of Malaysian pancakes (you know, the flakey, multi-layered ones?). Then, in between — like a quesadilla, or a grilled cheese sandwich — a thick layer of mild cheddar cheese, and also a hash brown. On top, they sprinkle curry spices (the chef, who I met, is Indian) and the whole thing is served with a side of — wait for it — ranch dressing that you’re supposed to dunk it in as you tear off pieces of it. Baffling! Also, delicious. I mean, you can only get through a few bites before the richest thing you’ve ever eaten becomes way too much, but that’s ok — it means you have leftovers for a week. It’s great. A little weird, but great. Can’t get it anywhere else, that’s for sure. I value creativity, so I love this.

There’s also a great spice shop in town. This place would be huge by NYC standards, but middle-sized for Illinois, and they have aisle after aisle of all kinds of obscure spices and condiments and it’s fantastic. Just tons of completely challenging tastes from different cultures and parts of the world, and there’s always eager chefs in there buying things and asking for little tastes and smells to pick out what their next little treat will be.

Except, cheese. They have a counter with a whole bunch of locally produced cheeses, but when I asked the guy working there what kind they’d recommend for something truly stinky, funky, ripe flavor, he just sort of chuckled and shook his head. “We have a gouda with scorpion peppers, but that’s the closest we have.” (I bought it — it was fine, and as advertised. Not stinky at all, but with a bit of a bite to it due to the peppers. Ho hum.) I should have quizzed him more, but I was early on my Midwestern cheese journey so I didn’t realize this would necessitate more of a conversation. I will return with more questions.

Is Limburger not a genuinely Midwestern creation? Come on, you people know how to make something funky, I swear. And upon looking into it, Wisconsin is the one place left in the US where one, solitary farm still produces it. I’ve never had it, but I would happily try — if only I could find some. I only know it from cartoons — from Bugs Bunny and friends recoiling from its sweaty sock flavor, supposedly. But good luck finding it anywhere near us.

I never really realized how much my personal palate is informed by having an Italian grandfather and a Ukrainian grandmother, and how much garlicky, onion-y, fermented, sharp food I just regularly consumed even as a kid. We have an elderly neighbor here who is quite sweet — she has two little dogs who like me, so I go over to our shared fence and pet her dogs and chat with her every evening. One time I was sautéing some onions and garlic that she mentioned smelling, and I made a reference to manicotti (which I know is Italian, but I think of as being more Italian-American in my version, just based on the recipe being plastered on a million Prego and Ragu boxes and bottles), and she indicated she had no idea what I was talking about. “I don’t eat too much ethnic food,” she said, and I had to steady myself to avoid falling over.

There is no stinky cheese here — not at the supermarket, not at the farmers market, nowhere. At a picnic for our department, I quizzed my colleagues like an absolute cheese-obsessed lunatic for any sort of information as to why. And while they politely entertained my questions, I got essentially the same reaction as I did from the waitress in Normal. They were humoring me and being very, very polite, but they didn’t quite get it.

A few days later, on an absolute lark, I sent a couple of them a video by cheese expert Liz Thorpe, formerly from Murray’s in NYC. Liz is fabulous — she has a whole slew of videos where she talks to you about different cheeses, and I love her way of describing them. So I sent this on, and I figured I’d get the sort of reaction you get when a co-worked sends you a 20 minute video on a topic you don’t really care about. Namely: oh thanks! I’ll be sure to check that out. Sometime. (And then of course you never do.)

Instead, they both watched the whole thing. One of them watched part of it, then pulled her daughter into the room and watched the whole thing over again with her because she thought it was so interesting. They were fascinated — perhaps slightly horrified, but still interested enough to watch it with an open mind — and the next day at work we all talked about it. It was just really, really cool. Also I know what I’m bringing back to the office after my next trip to NYC (I’ll be sure to pack it up really well for the flight).

Anyway, I think I have now identified a huge hole in the marketplace out here and I’ll be resigning my new position to go make stinky cheeses. Just kidding… luckily I really like the art kids out here, so I think I’ll just skip to teaching art.

One last thing to share with you — back on Labor Day weekend, there were rumors locally of a Nazi march coming to Bloomington, to our neighborhood in fact. I was pretty freaked out by it, I admit. But if you want to feel better after several days of some pretty grim US news, I encourage you to read this story. Basically: no Nazis showed up, but over 100 counterprotestors did, and they did at 6:30 in the morning on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, which I think is absolutely extraordinary. I know from organizing for so long how hard it is to get anyone, anywhere to show up for a protest/counterprotest, and to have so many people show up at the crack of dawn on a long weekend is so impressive. Plus their signs were a riot (there’s one in the link above).

I hope you’re doing really well!

xo - Amy