mengwong

Yesterday, over beer and wine at Boat Quay, a young lady and I compared notes about past relationships.

One of her favourite memories come from the bathroom; she was brushing her teeth and washing her face, and her young man was in there with her, showering, and it was all very domestic. She watched him in the mirror.

Usually the mirror is a single-user environment. When you look into the mirror and see yourself together with somebody else ... isn't that romantic? It's very special to talk to someone in the mirror. If you think about it, very few people fall into that category.

There is a photograph from 1995, never digitized, that captures that sentiment for me.

Anyway, I told the young lady: if I ever propose, I will say: "I want to share my mirrors with you for the rest of my life."

She said if somebody proposed to her like that, she would cry.

I am a big ball of cheesey goodness.

And now, it's time to check the mail! We have a letter from fsFriend Benjy Thomas in Atlanta. Hi, Benjy!

You're one of the best people I know for hosting relaxed casual gatherings. Everything just seemed to flow. I'm going to make an effort to start entertaining more on a casual basis (small gatherings, not big parties), so pointers are appreciated.

This would probably make a good blog topic, as I'm sure many of your other visitors would enjoy your thoughts on the matter.

Why, thank you, Benjy, it was always a treat to dine with you.

Could you give some suggestions on the kinds of cheese that you favor for entertaining?

Beyond individual cheese types, I'm sure you have a concise Cheese Theory supporting the overall experience. For example, I seem to remember that there would always be both a hard and a soft, and I'm sure you mixed the flavor profiles as well.

I don't know if I deserve that much credit; unlike fsFriend Jeremy Tavan, who can detect peanut butter in his Tempranillo, my retarded tongue recognizes only eight primary flavours: salt, caramel, butter, lemon, thyme, pistachio, habanero, and Bovril. And cheeses match only three of these! Hence my secret: let the experts do the choosing. In other words, just buy what's on sale.

Absent professional guidance, I default to these standbys. They're ordered from soft to hard, with blue at the end.
- St Andre Triple Crème (pictured above. Hello, Helen!)
- some sort of squishy goat chèvre, whatever looks freshest
- Humboldt Fog, Laurie's favourite cheese
- Arina Goat Gouda
- Parrano, which some consider a miscegenary abomination, but I quite like it
- Old Amsterdam Aged Gouda; best around the five year mark
- Roaring Forties or Maytag Blue

You can see I have a fondness for Goudas and for goats. The last time I passed the cheese counter, two goat's milk Goudas stole into my handbasket: close siblings, Arina more creamy, Midnight Moon more aged, both very good. My excuse: "hey, at least it'll be educational."

Education is easy when you have a great place like DiBruno's within ten minutes of your office. (Hello, Philadelphia!) Sadly, there's nothing quite like that out here in suburban wasteland Silicon Valley. Maybe when I move to San Francisco I'll find something that compares.

Blue cheeses are in a class by themselves. The rule for blues is: pick something that is just yucky enough to disturb the youngest person at the table, but not the second-youngest. It's not just a party, it's a coming-of-age ritual!

When you get home and unpack, remember to let the cheeses come to room temperature. If you're entertaining that night, just leave them out.

Don't forget the crackers, and a bottle of wine around $10-$20, and ice cream that is either funky fruity or respectably rich; anything that tries to combine different kinds of chocolate is hopelessly petit bourgeois and right out.

Whole Foods has a prepared fruit salad for outrageous amounts of money -- that fruit salad alone is reason enough to call them Whole Paycheck, ha, ha -- but there's no beating the convenience when you're clearing the table and need to get the fruit/dessert courses on the table pronto.

Oh, you wanted a dinner party? That means a shim of real food between the cheese and the fruit. My rule for real food is simple: the meal must contain at least seven different ingredients. If you're making, say, steak, you've got three already: salt, pepper, cow. That leaves four. Grilled asparagus with olive oil and pepper, but you can't count pepper twice. Two to go. Mash some potatoes with salt and butter and you're done!

This is Miss Manners talking now, but never, ever skimp on the warez: glassware, flatware, silverware. Women like to see a man on intimate terms with his dishwasher. If you're out of college and still on paper plates and plastic forks, your outlook is bleak: grad school and no girlfriends for the rest of your life.

Speaking of which, it is the girlfriends that really matter. A dinner party could succeed on nothing but water and bread, if you had the important ingredients: enough smart, single people for a critical mass of conversation.