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).