extra-culturey me!

Well reader, I bought the membership to SFMOMA and spent a very pleasant 3 hours enjoying the exhibit Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870. I passed briefly through the (not so great) exhibit on wine and design, and took off. I still want to visit the Eadweard Muybridge exhibit in the next few weeks so we'll see! It was really nice not feeling pressure to maximize my ticket purchase by seeing absolutely everything, that's for sure.

I also went to a magical land called Cheese School - yes indeed, paradise is at hand when such a thing exists! I first heard of Cheese School at least a year ago, but they post classes a few times per year, and all of them sell out. Also, as you might imagine, paradise is not cheap. All in all it took a while for the stars to align. I had to be willing to spend the money (thank you, Mad Money account!) and had to remember to look at their classes while some were available, AND coordinated attending with a couple of friends.

The upshot is I attended a class called Fundamentals of Flavor: How to Taste Cheese. yeah, it was awesome. Our teacher reviewed how to analyze cheese using most of our senses - sight, smell, touch, and taste. We had 12 cheeses to taste, two each of six varieties: fresh cow's milk cheese, young goat cheese, slightly aged sheep cheese, aged Dutch cheese, washed-rind stinky cheese, and blue cheese. We ran well over our 2 hour slot and I could have stayed a lot longer. I am not good at identifying what I am tasting and smelling but oh my - I'm willing to learn!