A Bit of Old Cheese

 

        I was still thinking about cheese, and so I was inevitably hurled back to that summer day when I was five and my mother, in response to my question, "What's for lunch, Mom?" said, smiling like the Cheshire Cat, "A Cheese Surprise".

        A cheese surprise!  My mind reeled.  And I could not then stop wondering what on earth this wondrous new dish could be, for at that innocent time of my life I loved surprises and lunch with equal ardor.

        It turned out to be a grilled cheese sandwich.  No doubt it was made with Kraft "American cheese", which I suspect the French, who have the last word on the subject, don't really regard as cheese at all, but which was a food staple in American households like ours in the 1950s.  But what was the "surprise" aspect of this new lunch offering?  Perhaps it was the fact that my mother  was acquainting me for the first time with this type of sandwich.  Or perhaps she had in mind the surprisingly sensual and delightful texture that certain cheeses acquire when melted,-- surely something even ancient peoples discovered shortly after they invented cheese, but which my five-year old self was now in the process of newly discovering. 

        Grilled cheese sandwiches served at home were henceforth referred to as "cheese surprise", even long after they ceased to be surprising.  Still, the name never ceased to charm me.  I've yet to encounter it on any restaurant menu, and perhaps this is why grilled cheese sandwiches served in such establishments seem to me to be rather flat and boring, lacking the zing of  those dished up by my young mother.  But wasn't it a wonderful gift she had, -- she who could make a glory of the most commonplace thing simply by giving it a new and quixotic name!

Maxine F.

Jan. 27, 2021