More Cheesy Insight

When I was little, I was told that the moon was made of cheese. It was believable for three reasons:

1) it looked like cheddar cheese when it loomed low on the horizon, then more Swiss-like as it escalated up into the night sky,

2) my older brother told me that it was, and since he was in school, he must have known,

3) if it was made of tofu, no one would visit.

I was almost six years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon's surface. It was July 21, 1969. Neil and Buzz must have gone crazy with all that cheese, washing it down with copious amounts of Tang. I remember watching the lunar landing on our television set at home. Both mom and I were quite emotional, but not for the obvious reason. You see, the NASA landing pre-empted Another World, our daily soap opera, and we were not amused.

I'll bet dollars to donuts (pennies to Beavertails) that you didn't give much thought to the image that I posted this morning. Is it a sunrise or a sunset? Take another look and then take a guess. Go ahead punk, are ya feelin' lucky?

Well, guess what...you're wrong.

I took that image at 10:45 p.m., at the edge of my lake, in the dark. The only light source was the moon. Those are moon rays which were enhanced by zooming the lens during a long exposure. To most people, Moonrays are silly little light sets that herd them from their sidewalk to their home, assuming their GPS doesn't do it for them. They're also particularly useful for guiding drunks to your doorstep. On the upside, it keeps them out of the flower beds. There's nothing worse than getting up in the morning, only to find a drunk college student asleep on your prized dahlias.

Shoo, frat boy, shoo!

If the moon is indeed made of cheese, at least I know where the cheese comes from...the moon. The same can't be said for Sussex cheese. A big part of my hundred mile diet is cheese and butter. I've been a loyal customer to the Sussex brands of cheese and butter. Last Friday I found out that the so-called Sussex brands are made in Ontario. Once again, there goes the hundred mile diet. I have since boycotted the Sussex brands.

The Sussex brands, owned by the G.E.Barbour company of Sussex, also make the über popular King Cole tea. I'm not naive enough to think that royalty, say King Frank Cole, makes the tea, so why should Sussex cheese contain Sussex milk?




I suppose that the ginger in Sussex Ginger Ale isn't grown in Apohaqui either. Sigh. I could figure that out on my own, but it never occurred to me that Sussex cheese wouldn't be made from local sources.

So you're trying to tell me that my Buffalo wings aren't made of buffalo meat? And they don't come from upstate New York? Get out!

I pity people doing the hundred mile diet in Buffalo, New York.

Sussex has always been a dairy town, though some of the lustre has been lost in recent years. When they put in a WalMart, it felt like the town had been kicked in the curds, yet Sussex has a lot of old-time charm left in her. There are still plenty of dairy cows dotting the pastures that shoulder the town.

I'm lucky that there's a well run company called Armadale Farms, on the outskirts of Sussex, who are doing a brilliant job of making local cheese (Gouda, Swiss, Edam, feta, quark), butter and yogourt. These Dutch-Canadians are my new best friends and I'll continue to buy their products long after the hundred mile diet officially ends on July 31. As for Sussex brand cheese, I won't be buying it until the cows come home.