Cheese, glorious, melancholy, cheese

No one is more aware of the power of food to evoke a memory than a recovering food addict, like myself.

Food can be associated with love, approval, caring and even a time or a place.

Tonight, I ate a small wedge of Blue Stilton cheese labeled STILTON ENGLAND. I purchased it at Your DeKalb Farmer's Market on Friday, and I don't know if it was actually imported cheese or just an imitation. Either way, it tasted pretty good.

I became acquainted with the real deal when I lived in Central London in the late 1990's. I lived in the section called Holland Park, which had the most marvelous cheese I had ever seen and tasted. I love cheese and have declared to the world if I had to pick just one food to live on, it would definitely be cheese.

I did live on cheese and potatoes during one particularly broke month of my life, but although I was put off by potatoes for a while, my love for cheese never wavered.

The Holland Park cheese shop (I don't remember the actual name) had a kaleidoscope of English cheeses, which they do very, very well. Fresh French goat cheese was also available from across the English Channel, and I could not get enough of it. Memories of that time in London, as well of some of my favorite taste experiences, came flooding back as I ate my Blue Stilton tonight. London does have an abundance of incredible food, though little of the tasty stuff is actually English in origin.

Watch me run away from kidney pie and mushy peas. Run away very quickly.

The typical cheese section in my area grocery stores makes me weep with the awareness of lost possibilities. Velveeta is a sin against culinary creation. Packages of American cheese slices should be relegated directly to the trash bin. Or as the British would say, "rubbish bin."

It is with melancholy that I nibbled on my fine, gourmet cheese tonight. I might have to give it up for my health.

A fellow sufferer of liver disease was telling me how dairy and cheese increase inflammation in the body, just as my latest blood work shows my inflammation levels are off the chart. Auto-immune diseases (as well as a number of others) do their damage through inflammation and that's what causes a lot of the pain. My autoimmune hepatitis is rearing its ugly head again with raised liver enzymes, and my energy level has dropped three inches below the floor. The inflammation in my brain clouds my thinking and makes writing a chore. Finally, the Sjogren's always makes me feel bad, though my dry eyes are doing somewhat better.

So, do I give up my favorite food in the whole world, cheese? It might become necessary. I've heard Sjogren's patients also do better on a gluten-free diet, so is there another whole category of food I must surrender?

A dearly departed relative used to sneak forbidden milkshakes though he was diabetic and and on kidney dialysis (that much sugar and dairy are a no-no.) Though he wasn't doing his health any good, the milkshakes did help him enjoy his last days.

What price, then, is cheese? I've seen people in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks still puffing on forbidden cigarettes. Will I be like that when it comes to cheese? And what about ice cream and yogurt? I guess those will have to go too. I am in mourning.

My dog Bijou helped eat some of the cheese rind earlier and now she's licking my fingers as I type. I think that's a pretty good excuse to end this blog.

And a good excuse to stop dwelling on the importance of cheese.