So it is bad enough that I am currently spending five days a week in a different country than juli , but then! I bought a block labeled "Pizza Cheese" at the friendly local supermarket and it was cheddar.
Most continental Europeans would profoundly disagree
Hopefully not, because I used the word "analogue" to be clear as to what I was speaking about :) What I mean to say, is that there are American-made cheeses of comparable quality and similar type to most European cheeses I can think of, the exceptions being rare and noteworthy. The question being answered being that of the quality of American cheeses. As to the quality of cheese available in America, again: it has never been impossible to find very good European imports, with exceptions for cases where law and regulation get in the way. Whether the goalposts are on the quality and variety of domestic production, or are instead on the availability of real cheese from continental Europe (whether PDO or not), I think that the United States does pretty well. I think we've talked about both sets of goalposts without mutual comprehension of which is at-stake, and that that typifies a lot of European discourse about the state of real foodstuffs, i.e. aged or fermented ones with a lot of emphasis on process, i.e. beer, cheese, wine, and bread, available in the United States.
I agree that time is probably a factor, what with longstanding stereotypes, but then we hear rather more from the English about the non-existence of American cheese than from Americans about the quality of British Food, and I'd say that the changes in degree and their place in time of the two do not support that imbalance probably :)
As to what the average state is in the United States, it's so hard to say. Is it Wal-Mart? Is it the average of the grocery stores in the town I live in? Is it what's available if you go looking to get cheese? The English perspectives I most frequently hear seem to be rooted in two sources for perceptions of cheese available in America: gas stations and fast-food restaurants. Yes, that's a pretty dire situation. But it's also my experience that most people don't shop well when travelling, and tend to convenience stores, chain restaurants, etc. On that score, I'll take the state of the United States over that of, say, the Netherlands or Germany just about any day :) But I am also the sort of person who always hits supermarkets when travelling, so I am a bad test case for what it really looks like. I know when I lived in Hawai`i it was painful to hear and encounter tourists forming opinions of local food on the basis of what was available in the tourist zone, and what they got from convenience stores whose audience was tourists. The spam musubi in an ABC Store is awful and overpriced; the spam musubi in any hole-in-the-wall filthy convenience store is twice as good and half the price. That sort of thing.
Agreed, although a couple of the more exuberant commercial cheesemakers in the Comox Valley seem to be at risk of producing a whole bunch of products it's hard to differentiate, whose defining features are that they've added a bunch of things to make it sound interesting, but which don't actually make it taste interesting. (Which is popular in much of Oregon and bits of northwestern California, too.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2017-04-10 07:08 pm (UTC)Hopefully not, because I used the word "analogue" to be clear as to what I was speaking about :) What I mean to say, is that there are American-made cheeses of comparable quality and similar type to most European cheeses I can think of, the exceptions being rare and noteworthy. The question being answered being that of the quality of American cheeses. As to the quality of cheese available in America, again: it has never been impossible to find very good European imports, with exceptions for cases where law and regulation get in the way. Whether the goalposts are on the quality and variety of domestic production, or are instead on the availability of real cheese from continental Europe (whether PDO or not), I think that the United States does pretty well. I think we've talked about both sets of goalposts without mutual comprehension of which is at-stake, and that that typifies a lot of European discourse about the state of real foodstuffs, i.e. aged or fermented ones with a lot of emphasis on process, i.e. beer, cheese, wine, and bread, available in the United States.
I agree that time is probably a factor, what with longstanding stereotypes, but then we hear rather more from the English about the non-existence of American cheese than from Americans about the quality of British Food, and I'd say that the changes in degree and their place in time of the two do not support that imbalance probably :)
As to what the average state is in the United States, it's so hard to say. Is it Wal-Mart? Is it the average of the grocery stores in the town I live in? Is it what's available if you go looking to get cheese? The English perspectives I most frequently hear seem to be rooted in two sources for perceptions of cheese available in America: gas stations and fast-food restaurants. Yes, that's a pretty dire situation. But it's also my experience that most people don't shop well when travelling, and tend to convenience stores, chain restaurants, etc. On that score, I'll take the state of the United States over that of, say, the Netherlands or Germany just about any day :) But I am also the sort of person who always hits supermarkets when travelling, so I am a bad test case for what it really looks like. I know when I lived in Hawai`i it was painful to hear and encounter tourists forming opinions of local food on the basis of what was available in the tourist zone, and what they got from convenience stores whose audience was tourists. The spam musubi in an ABC Store is awful and overpriced; the spam musubi in any hole-in-the-wall filthy convenience store is twice as good and half the price. That sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-10 09:00 pm (UTC)Besides which: there are some excellent domestic cheeses being made (and here-enjoyed!) in Qualicum and Courtenay.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-11 06:44 am (UTC)