Our first cheesy post

Note to self: stop getting so het up about unimportant stuff and spend more time on celebrating the good stuff! Today that’s unpasteurised cheese - no doubt a subject I’ll be returning to often as I am a cheese-ophile. So it’s just as well I live in France these days.

You're Swiss right?
In the ’70’s and ’80’s a wedge of old cheddar, a triangle of unripe Brie and a cube of sad Stiton were considered something rather ‘cosmopolitan’.

In those same days [ the days when Chicken Kiev was considered a bit gourmet ] we were just happy to eat something ‘foreign’ with our English cheese fayre.

The pathetic news is that the last time I was in London, in a relatively pricey restaurant, I didn’t do much better! But I expect greater things these days - I don’t settle for Brie I want Brie de Meaux. I adore my English Cheddar but these days I expect a really superb one such as Keene’s Farmhouse Cheddar and not some insipid supermarket crap!

I was in a rather posh restaurant here in Normandy the other week where the cheese tray consisted of at least 50 cheeses. The waitress (who really knew her cheese!) even suggested to me the order in which I should eat the 5 that I chose i.e. leave the strongest, pure ammonia/rotten socks one ’til last - which of course made perfect sense.

Please, please don’t take your lovely cheese-board out of the fridge just before you offer it to your guests whether at home or at work. Get that cheese up to room temperature to enjoy it fully!

Mix that cheese board selection up a bit too. Cheese Boards chez-moi generally consist of a creamy, ripe Camembert or Brie de Meaux, a nice soft blue such as Bleu D’Auvergnes or Bresse Bleu or Fourmes. A tangy Chevre (i.e Goat’s cheese - with maybe a couple of dried out and ancient Goat crottins too).

I also tend to add a bit of Sheep - a soft Brebis or Ektori, the wonderfully salty harder sheep’s cheese from the Basque region.

Finally I have one or two nice harder cheeses such as Comte or Tomme de Savoie.

Oh yes and I usually add a ’surprise’ guest cheese that I’ve never tried before! We’re not talking ‘Fromage a trois’ in my home people it’s a minimum of 8.

And all that cheese that doesn’t get eaten? It ends up in the potato soup or the old fondue with white wine and Kirsch!

Take your cheese seriously!

Here in France the cheese course is served before dessert and, generally without the biscuit/crackers accompaniment that I love (my particular favourite being Bath Oliver’s). But that’s OK - as long as the cheese is superb, unpasteurised and ‘melting’ in the room’s temperature I’m a very happy little ex-patriate.

In the next addition of the Cheese Blog I shall be discussing how to serve Stilton and my smelliest cheeses of all time.

You’ll have to excuse me now - I feel the need for a snack!

Lifestyle Management Services?

Do you remember the days when everyone just got on with it? Juggled work and play and got that nice lady to turn up once a week to run a feather duster over the picture frames and do a spot of ironing?

Those days are gone it seems - we’re all making so much money that we just don’t have time to do the day to day stuff anymore, so we get a Lifestyle Management Company to sort all the petty stuff for us. Is this good news or bad for those of us in the domestic service world?

Good in my book! Concierge services are springing up left right and center to pick up the dry cleaning and the kids from school without being on a permanent payroll. It’s a bit like having a bunch of part-time staff to do whatever you do not have the time or inclination to do. Heck as a Butler just delegate and charge it to the Household Budget - take it easy!

Many Concierge Services go a lot further - they do the books, book the limo, reserve the table whatever you want. Now, if you have a permanent Personal Assistant he/she could do all that for you too but can you afford a full-time P.A? THAT is the gap that the new influx of Lifestyle Management Companies fill.

Is it good or bad for domestic service personnel - you tell me (post a comment) and how much does it cost to get someone to collect your prescription from the chemist anyway? But if you’re on $200 +++ an hour doesn’t it make sense to delegate the mundane stuff for a lower hourly fee?

Of course it does! So those paltry 18 hours that you have to yourself each week are not taken up by having to run around after your kids, do the shopping, beat up your brother-in-law - pay someone else to do it for you. More free time! Why not pay someone to watch TV for you too? There’s no end to it.

The Butler Bureau thinks is a great new frontier: Pay someone to go to the gym on your behalf - think of the possibilities ! Don’t have time to have an affair? Pay someone to have one for you. Brilliant!

Pay someone else to write a regular Blog - now there’s an idea….