I am the cheese snob, Part II So, yes. A couple days ago, I said stay tuned for Part II. But stuff happened. Bad stuff. There was a storm. And then... And THEN there was the Great Internet Outage of 2006. For three whole days, we have not had Internet/email/sanity access in this household. You know what though? Except for not delivering to you what I promised, it wasn't all that bad. Oh yeah, and not being able to vote for the Next Food Network Star. That, my friends, was cruel and unusual. (Come on, Reggie! Guy's too much like Emeril. We already have an Emeril. Don't need another, thanks.) And you know what else? Part II isn't really all that interesting. Maybe it is, I don't know. You see, since I live in my head, the stuff in there doesn't seem all that exciting to me sometimes. But here goes. So, yeah. Cheese snob. It all started with the Kraft vs Borden, but then I met Chrissy and Tommy. After college when we all had real places to live and could buy actual groceries, I somehow discovered that neither of them liked those processed singles wrapped in plastic. Eh?! Not like them? But what do you do?! "We buy it from the deli!," Chrissy told me. Huh. I figured I'd try it. And now... other than grilled cheese, I cannot eat those wrapped singles on anything else. I shudder to think of one on a sandwich. Recently, to deepen the snobbery a bit, I swore off parmesan cheese for Parmigiano Reggiano. See parmesan can be made anywhere and with any process, but the real stuff -- the Parmigiano Reggiano -- is made only in certain areas of Italy and has to be aged at least 24 months (among other restrictions). Unlike it's imitators, it has a granular texture and has no additives but salt. I bring this up because last week, I had lunch with a friend, then had to stop to pick up some dinner on the way to work. I wanted spaghetti with marinara sauce and some parm to put on top. (I make a great version myself, but didn't have time to go home and cook.) But I couldn't buy a block because I couldn't grate it at work. The only grated I could find was DiGiorno. So I bought it. And it didn't taste like ANYTHING. All I could think about as I was eating that pasta was the block of the real stuff I had at home. Try this sometime... slivers of Parmigiano Reggiano on thin slices of fuji apple. Add a glass of wine and it's heaven I tell you. I bet you'll be a convert too.