A Winter’s Ode to English Farmhouse Cheddar

I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend. It’s December! And that means exactly one thing to me:

It’s officially The Muppet Christmas Carol season.

A full guide of cheese pairings for each musical number is on it’s way. But in the mean time, if you want to cozy up in a big leather chair with a silly nightcap abd eat a “crumb of cheese” that Scrooge (Michael Caine obviously being the best one) might’ve eaten, might I suggest an English farmhouse cheddar like Montgomery’s Cheddar.

So what sets apart any cheddar from a farmhouse cheddar?

Farmhouse cheddars are wrapped in cloth instead of wax, and made by hand with unpasteurized milk.

This particular cheese also has the added benefits of being made by a 3rd generation master cheesemaker in Somerset (the birthplace of cheddar).

A Muppet Christmas Carol is from 1992 (great year), and like the original non-muppet book, is set in the early 1840’s. Queen Victoria had a giant wheel of cheddar as the “cheese of honor” at her wedding in 1840, so not only is it time period appropriate, you can say you’re eating something fit for a Queen.

If you want to nerd out on what clues Dickens gave as to what Scrooge might’ve actually eaten on Christmas Eve this article is a fun and well-researched read.

Marley’s ghost(s) asks Scrooge ‘Why do you doubt your senses?’

And Scrooge’s reply is: ‘Because, a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’

Why do we doubt our senses?

There is only one instance where I can agree with Act 1 Ebenezer, and that is the idea that a little thing can affect our senses.

A state of being, for example, when I have a migraine alllll my senses are heightened.

The power of suggestion, someone saying “I smell lemon”, so now you kind of do too.

A cloudy memory, forgetting if that herb you like was mint or basil in the watermelon salad?

The condition of your sense receptors, maybe you had the strongest coffee of your life and now your taste buds are fried for a bit.

But even still, that’s not why we doubt them.

One of the reasons I started Trust Your Taste is because I believe starting with something as seemingly small as trusting our experience of what we smell and taste, leads to trusting bigger parts of ourselves.

Scrooge starts to change when he gives into, and trusts his senses. When he allows his mind to be affected by his memories. When he starts paying attention to what’s actually happening in front of him.

Food for thought!

Farm to Fable: How food shows up in storytelling 

”No Cheeses for us Meeces”

Muppet’s Christmas Carol is full of references, and this iconic bit starts as a musical callback to Oliver!’s “please sir, I want some more” when the cute little mice say “please sir, I want some cheese” and ends with the very cute and clever rhyme we love so much. More about this and why I think it low-key represents Scrooge’s entire character arc when I give you my full breakdown of pairings for the movie, but HERE is the BRILLIANT opening number. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Anne-Marie

P.S. - Sunday Scaries

A terrifying AI image to help us all rest knowing AI bots could never replace a real human artist:

This week the prompt was “Scrooge giving a mouse family cheddar cheese”. Enjoy your nightmares of bootleg monopoly man.

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