Cheese Story
Tonight at about 1 AM, I was wandering through Harris Teeter with my friends Matt and Whitney for something to eat. I noticed something strange when looking through the exotic cheeses. Some of the cheese had a massive discount.
Really massive.
Fourteen pounds of cheese for fourteen cents! I couldn’t believe it. Matt found the other half of the wheel of cheese for eleven cents, too! We wandered around a little more, picked up some Hebrew National blanketed beef pigs, and hit the U-Scan. When I scanned in the cheese, laughing like a moron, the U-Scan clerk came over and checked on it in disbelief. We exchanged a little confused smalltalk, but he let it go by. I mean, if it’s on a printed label, it has to be right, right? There was something else strange about the clerk, though…
Your cashier: Moo?! And yes, I paid with a real quarter.
Apparently, the cow gods were smiling on us, and this was their way of letting us know they were watching. My cashier was Moo. Moo. So next we drove home with fits of excited laughter. We didn’t really know if the cheese was any good, so we were honestly just going to drop it off a parking deck if it was nasty.
25 pounds of cheese. For $.25.
We put the cheese back together at home. Twenty-five pounds of cheese. For a quarter. Or just over a quarter with tax. Whatever. We smelled the cheese and didn’t know what to think. Smelled like old cheese, so we decided to take a few glamour shots of it.
Cheese with size comparison to egg.
Heroic Matt, with the cheesy spoils of victory. Or the spoiled cheese of victory. Or whatever.
So now it was the moment of truth. We cut open Matt’s half of the cheese and carved a little chunk off. We looked at each other with hesitation, and downed our pieces simultaneously. Surprisingly, it was good. Really good. Like what you would expect from actual exotic and high priced cheese good.
I can’t believe we’re not vomiting!
We were pretty stunned. Having just acquired twenty-five pounds of delicious cheese for a quarter is no less than incredibly lucky. If you believe cheese and luck have much to do with each other, that is. I do now, but that goes without saying.
Matt and Whitney basking in the cheese’s cheesiness.
So out of curiousity, I looked the cheese up online. It’s Beemster Classic Extra Aged Gouda. Sounds nice. But could it really be worth anything?
Classic.
Apparently so. Amazon has it listed by the pound at $13.99, which would put our haul at $350. Which, need I remind you, we bought for a quarter. Every other place on the net seems to offer it for about the same price, but I never actually found a place you can order a whole wheel. Maybe it costs a little less, who knows.
What I do know is what kind of cheese I’ll be eating for the next couple months.
Update:
Vishal wanted an update, so here’s an update. The cheese is still delicious. It goes well on Club crackers. I’m going to be hacking off a couple ten degree pieces and giving them to select cheese aficionados in the office. My roommate Eric says the cheese is a little salty for Gouda, and I agree. But it’s still damn good. Also, Matt, I just thought you should know that I’m glad you have some cheese to go with your whine. Har har.
Update 2:
I was hacking off some pieces of cheese for Lou and David this morning, and found the original price tag for the cheese.
That has got to be the most expensive thing I’ve ever seen in a Harris Teeter.