SC - The Dark Side of Unpasteurized Cheeses?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> News of the Weird(.657)
> 
> LEAD STORIES
> An August Wall Street Journal dispatch from Nuoro, Sardinia (Italy),
> described locals' love for "casu marzu" ("rotten cheese"), brown lumps of
> sheep dairy, crawling with maggots, a "viscous, pungent goo that burns the
> tongue" and whose "wiggling worms (often) jump straight toward the eyes with
> ballistic precision." Though the cheese is banned by the government, a black
> market has pushed the price to double that for ordinary cheese. Some locals
> believe the maggots provide authentication, in that it is only when the
> maggots die that the cheese is inedible. 

Boy oh boy, I now have a new term for my preferred level of sharpness
for cheeses: "maggot-killing sharp", or "so sharp it'll kill a maggot".

It should be noted, though, that if one wants to wax xenophobic on the
subject of maggoty cheese, there's plenty of eighteenth-century English
documentation for whacking the cheese with a spoon before digging in
with the same spoon, to chase the cheese mites [maggots] away from your
portion. And we all know the English do not, never have, and never will
eat anything weird ;  ) .

Adamantius 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com