The publisher Chelsea Green had a huge sale at the end of fall last year. My main goals were The Art of Fermentation and the Growing Things to Eat in a Hotter Drier Land, but I also picked up a few deeply discounted books that caught my eye.
While big books are naturally the publisher’s flagships, it was the selection of interesting quirky books like Cheddar and Landfill that cemented my admiration of Chelsea Green. I am normally quick to unsubscribe from newsletters, but I’ve kept my subscription because their catalog comfortably inhabits the intersection of ecology and personal activity, with their emphasis on cookbooks, natural building, and agriculture.
As in boardgaming, big publishers gobble up the industry but the niche publishers have a brand because they hold a point of view. Their imprint stands for something. Even though I don’t read their blog posts, I stay subscribed because I don’t want to miss hearing about a sale.
As for the book itself, my first thought is that the author was the perfect person to write this book. His role is to be a better version of a reader who would be interested in a book solely about one type of cheese. Like me, he comes from the city but really knows his knows cheese. He’s a professional but not totally divorced from agriculture. A foodie but renowned enough to be judging food competitions. He is interested in the world around us but isn’t a snob. He has opinions but is not dogmatic. His anecdotes nicely captures in the Bay Area, the fun, the cost, the tensions.
His writing style was bit more casual than I expected, but after getting comfortable with his voice, Cheddar was a fun quick read.
The book is highly recommended if you are interested in our society’s tense personal relationship with food. His ruminations on cheddar follow the journey of our nation, from its agricultural origins through factory development into pure full blown mechanization, and then back to the new pastoral agricultural foodie myth.
As with many good non-fiction books, Cheddar is ultimately a story about us.
The last paragraph in my first draft was, “Sure would be nice to get my hands on a cloth wrapped cheddar, but that would involve going into a grocery store right in the midst of a nasty pandemic.” Now that the vaccine has rolled out en masse in America, this statement would no longer be applicable for most folks. However my wife wants to stay in the cave until the kids gets their vaccines, pushing us to the end of the year. So my wait continues.