Saturday night's (Hockey Night in Canada) alright for fighting (game misconduct)

The ice hockey world is abuzz with the news that quietly a new superpower has emerged. This puck pounding nation is better known to be a wide brown land (and that's not because the ice is dirty). Be afraid Canada. Be very afraid. Australia has qualified for the ice hockey world championships!

Before Canada's reign as the preeminent hockey nation ends, the Vancouver Canucks have given them hope that the Stanley Cup might be wrested from the Yankee grasp for the first time since the Montreal Canadien triumphed in 1993.

Clearly Canadian mothers are not familiar with the precautionary phrase "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." In a game which involves a hard rubber disk travelling at speeds of up to 170 kilometres per hour it would seem obvious that eye protection should be mandatory. Recently Manny Malhotra, a key player in this years all conquering Vancouver Canucks, was struck in the eye when the puck deflected off another players stick. Malhotra who was not wearing a visor at the time has had to have multiple operations to save his sight.

Manny Malhotra's injury has been a sobering counter-point to what has been a record breaking season for the Canucks, who for the first time in their forty year history have earned the President's Trophy for the best regular season record in league. Their regular season performance has been so comprehensive that they also own all of the key statistical areas ( best goals for and against, best power play and penalty killing). Impressive as the season has been so far, ultimately this is a grail quest. Only the play-offs will decide whether the Knights of Rain City will retake the Holy Land, retrieving the Stanley Cup from the Chicago infidels. 

Central to the team's success are the identical Sedin twins. Quietly this season they have gone about their jobs. Henrik has amassed a league leading number of scoring assists while his brother Daniel's lead in the scoring race has him poised to follow up Henrik's Most Valuable Player award last year with his own triumph this year.
As with most Swedish products the Sedin twins are too ergonomic for their own good. Much like Ikea people give them a hard time because they are mass produced and they make it look so simple but  everyone wishes they had them in their home as they're incredibly functional and well designed. As with Volvo they are deceptive, not overly loud or built around big engines but they run smoothly, efficiently, safely and retain their value while others around them depreciate. Hockey like the automotive industry also has the element of distrust about foreign built models. Locally made or not when in years to come, people are wondering about what became of this or that Justin Bieber of the National Hockey League every record collection will contain Sedin Gold. This best of, which like Abba Gold is packed full of greatest hits, may be maligned for it's joyful harmonies and its distinct lack of male bravado but somehow no collection is complete without it.
Their hockey legacy will forever be as two S80's cruising in tandem down the ice, constructing plays with over-sized graphite Allen keys while the melodious tones of "The Winner Takes It All" serenade their triumph of Swedish substance over style.

The people of Vancouver are on edge, rising levels of expectation are tempered by the knowledge that within the few years a dingo will steal Canada's baby, as Australian teams such as the Coolongatta Quokkas begin to flood the NHL. The buses in Vancouver proudly trumpet "Go Canucks Go!" because even the bus drivers here know there is only one destination that the people care about and that's the Stanley Cup. As the Sedin twins take the wheel and drive the Canucks deep into the playoffs, the hopes of the province are conjoined with them.

Little Mr Muffet sat on his tuffet eating his curds and whey.

Migneron de Charlevoix, unpasteurised cow's milk cheese from  Charlevoix (Baie-Saint-Paul), Quebec (left) and Petit Basque sheep's milk cheese from the Pyrenees, France (right).

It's true that when it comes to stenographers you really get what you pay for. When Irving Berlin dictated the lyrics to the song that we are familiar with as "Cheek to cheek", he originally intended it to be a homage the American dairy industry. "Cheese to cheese", as it was entitled, would have had the following lyrics had Irving not unwisely recited the words to a close friend who had deafened himself by dancing the grizzly bear and the chicken walk too close to the the orchestra in New York's ragtime clubs (for the record this friend redeemed himself by making Berlin's "White-mould Christmas"more readily accessible).

 

"Heaven, I’m in heaven

And my cholesterol makes my heart beats so that I can hardly speak

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

When we’re out together feasting cheese to cheese"

Recently I discovered Les Amis du Fromage and I would have to say I that I concur with Mr Berlin when I say that I was in heaven. Les Amis du Fromage is the best cheese shop that I have ever been into, it's three hundred and sixty degrees of cheese.

It stocks not only some of my all time favourites like Petit Basque (and it's Pyrenees brother Etorki) but possibly more exciting is the range of Canadian cheeses that they have available. These include local British Columbian cheeses from Poplar Grove and the Kootenay Alpine Cheese Company as well as from Quebec, Canada's provincial outpost for cheese eating surrender monkeys.

If cheeses such as the delicious washed-rind La Sauvagine are anything to go by, it would appear that being of French derivation endows people with super-human abilities. They have retractable, sterilised, stainless steel claws for cutting curds; hidden rennet excreting glands that allow them set vast, vats of milk; from their wrists they can sling a webbing of cheese cloth that allows them to drain curds from any structure and finally they possess chameleon-like abilities transforming from white mould to ash coated to an orange washed rind in seconds. Little is known about how these beings came to live amongst the Canadian population but in a sick twist of fate it has come to light that these dairy demi-gods are rendered powerless but many of the alien Canadian dairy products in particular orange cheese (otherwise known as the Quebecois Kryptonite).

We live in a frightening world full of refrigeration units stocked with substances called Homo, Half and Half or simply 2%. Thankfully while most milk falls a long way from the udder these days, there are still a few remaining strongholds such as Le Amis du Fromage where we can be fortified by the unadulterated, unpasteurised, full fat nectar of the teat.  

Etorki sheep's milk cheese from the Pyrenees, France; La Sauvagine, pasteurised cow's milk from Quebec;  La Besace du Berger pasteurised goat's milk cheese from France (left to right).