i prefer to buy cheese cut from a block rather than buy the small prepackaged cheeses in the dairy section of the big stores in town but a lot of the cheese i've been getting from the local deli's has been frozen somewhere between the cheese maker and the store showcase. have you ever tried to grate cheese that's been frozen? last week i stopped into one of the local deli's for parmesan and i asked the counter person if it had been frozen and i was assured that it was only refrigerated in the showcase. so i ordered a ½ kilo and it was handed to me on a paper plate wrapped in a meter of heavy duty plastic wrap which i removed for the attached foto. i'm sure i heard the cheese maker groan all the way from italy. awhile back, robinsons had bulk cheese in their deli section that they would cut to order and that was good. later i bought some of that same repacked cheese in their dairy section that was in plastic wrap but it tasted like soap. on my next town trip, a week later, i returned it to the customer service desk and after a 20 minute wait, i was told the dairy case guy wouldn't be on duty for 4 more hours < sigh>. a month or so later, i bought two more repackaged cuts of cheese from the robinsons dairy case and it also tasted like soap. i guess i should be happy that we can get any cheese at all here but... norm : ))~ who's learning how to grate cheese by mashing it with a fork...
the soap taste is probably from the guy that has his little spray bottle in his hand roaming around cleaning the glass on the refs
