Guns and butter

Mark Steyn ruminates on liberty, lesbianism and cheese-eating:

Well, it pains me to have to say this, but I've never felt entirely comfortable with the whole cheese-eating sneer. As a neocon warmongering Bush suck-up, I yield to no one in my contempt for the French, but, that said, cheese-wise I kinda sorta feel they have the edge.

The Flea is a devotee of French pop music, philosophy and cuisine. But the cuisine I have in mind is of the Norman peasant variety. Cassoulet's concoction of white beans, lamb and goose is just the sort of stick-to-the-ribs fair so welcome after a hard day's tilling of the soil. Chicken calvados makes delectible use of apple liquer once you feel like eating again a week or so after the cassoulet. It is the beers of Belgium, rather than France per se, which impress the Flea as they tend to the cloudy and monastic rather than their plummier French counterparts.

I owe these tastes to growing up across the Ottawa River from Quebec. Depanneurs are corner stores which used to dot the landscape of Hull, Quebec like homing-beacons to the youth of higher-drinking-age Ontario. But cider and cigarettes were not the only attractions of Quebec. The shabbiest corner stores of Montreal featured better red wine, fresh bread and cheese than the best stores in Ottawa (and not only because it is harder to buy good wine in Ontario than in the Persian Gulf). Montreal-style pizza and deli foods of all kinds are excellent and many trips were made for the bagels alone. Employment as a record-store manager allowed the Flea as a young man to have bagels couriered from a branch in Montreal to one in Ottawa. They were still warm when they arrived... Last but not least, Maudite may be the best beer in the world.

That said, the favourite cheeses of the Flea are not French. Lappi is a cherished low-fat Finnish alternative to Edam, Danish Havarti is wonderful on toast and solidly English Stilton is the best of all.