I am offically a food snob. And I have the certificate to prove it.

I graduated!
And after 30 hours of traveling, one hilarious purchase of a comically oversized Cadbury bar at Heathrow,  persistent, pretentious refusal of all air plane food and one packet of Dr. Kargs seeded spelt crackers I landed in good ol' Dallas, Texas.
People have described culture shock to me after returning from trips to India or Africa but I was slightly unprepared for the level at which I experienced it as soon as my boots hit the Texan soil. Of course this was after standing in line waiting to get immigrated and feeling like a video game zombie that had just been shot in the shoulder-- needing one more shot to be properly taken down.
Why does traveling always exacerbate the offensive qualities in people making them the worst version of themselves. For example Mr. Huge Submarine Pimple never fails to keep me company and one, just one, of my eyeballs becomes horribly bloodshot, oh, and, no matter how much you want to deny it, the issue of farting in such an enclosed space always becomes so awkwardly dramatic.
At any rate I'm back in the US(SR?)-- feeling less like a zombie now and more like an MIB alien: a really strange creature with multiple heads and seven sets of teeth encased in a human body. I don't know which one I prefer. I just know that I would love to not feel jet lagged anymore.
(When I was a kid I thought it was called "jet leg" and so I was really nervous to fly to different time zones because I didn't want my leg to get "jetted". No idea what that meant I just knew it caused people to moan and complain and be awake at weird times. Good to know I've always been a hypochondriac.)
I'm happy to be back for many reasons but one very prevalent one is mexican food. But more specifically avocados. Both of which were requirements today-- of which I can now check off my list.
The local (and about 3 mile long) HEB has a "tortillaria" section of their bakery and the avocados had brown skin and were soft to the touch. Yes I will dearly miss my Sunday farmers market and local fromagerie but lord almighty sometimes a girl just needs everything she expects plus  more in one place. That's actually their tag line. "Everything you expect... plus more!"
So, so long London, England--you treated me well. I shall be back but in the mean time I am fervently awaiting the fine food adventures that await for me in these United States.

Cheeses, Mary and Joseph.

School days are dwindling and exams are approaching. Yet again time has swiftly thieved away the days, hours, minutes without giving even Dora the Explorer the chance to reprimand such acts of swiper-y.
Although the last couple weeks of any school semester, trimester, quarter, sixteenth, etc, will never fail to be a stressful time there was a highlight of last week so bright it must've been the product of a recent trip to the office supplies store:
Tom the Cheese Man.
So, picture this man in your head just based on that title.
Does this man have on a pink and purple bow tie? Is he wearing a tweed jacket with matching trousers? Is he comically lanky, possibly sporting a hooked nose? Does he speak with an accent similar to that of Sir David Frederick Attenborough? If you have answered yes to any of the above then you would most certainly be describing Mr. Tom Cheese Man.
I will quickly just share with you quotes from the notes I was taking during his Cheese Lecture:

-"No cheese, no color in life"
-Learn by standing still
-PEE ON A ROCK, "it's wonderful"
-Flys: total understanding of decay
-"wobbly bobbly"
-"Rot is what we live for"
-"I really like packaging"
-"GOD=COW!"
-Cheese was made to help use up fresh milk
-Little Miss Muffet on her tuffet with curds and whey?
-"Really care about your mozzarella"
-Mozzarella=tomato
-"Fondle mozzarella to liberate liquid"
-PB&J=Norwegian
-"Packaging has eyes!"
-"I need my cheese to smell, they need to be really honky"
-"Bleu cheese love S&M and suffocation"
-Munster="The Great Stinker"
-Goat brie= "ass kicking cheese"
-"ALL CHEESE FART"
-"We hate farting in England"
-Hard cheese= "I can put it in my ruck sack and march to kick a Scotsman"
-Cheddar= "acoustic"
-Parmesan= "gold"
-"Cheese makes you dream"
-"Make people gasp with your cheeses"

I hope you read that in your best BBC voice-over voice, but with an added level of grand enthusiasm.
This man lives for cheese. I can't even begin to explain the passion that emanated from his every wobbly bobbly syllable, seeping from his spindly, animated hands. I have never been thrown so off guard by the use of the word fart-- And trust me I have one of the highest "potty language" tolerances of anyone I know. So you can imagine the sheer joy that overcame me when, at the end of such a long day smack dab in the middle of an excruciatingly long week, such a person can come trotting in to the demonstration room throwing around the word fart, telling us to fondle mozzarella and throw cheddar in our "ruck sacks" all the while feeding us amazing samples of cheese after exquisite cheese.
I was a kid in a, well, slightly smelly, but immensely tasty candy store.

To Cheese-

May it always keep farting.

-H