I drove back from Minneapolis yesterday, making sure to stop in at The Tea Source in St. Paul to buy tea before I left the area. I knew my wife would be disappointed if I neglected to do so.
Although it’s not as hard to get decent tea in the U. S. as it used to be, getting really good tea remains absurdly difficult. We’ve got a well-known tea store here in the Chicago area. Its teas are adequate but they’re unconscionably expensive. The Tea Source, contrariwise, has good tea at very fair prices. We’ve been dealing with them online for years and always make a point of stopping by their physical location whenever we’re in town. I came back with a couple of pounds of tea.
On the way home I took my time as I had on the way there, this time stopping at several cheese shops along the way. Have you noticed how difficult it is to get decent medium brick cheese these days? When I was a kid it was commonplace. The stuff in the grocery stores these days is nearly tasteless. I guess that’s what sells in the mass market.
I have never in my life paid $40 a pound for cheddar cheese. I have learned that it’s not difficult to do. However, 12 year old cheddar is good but IMO not that good. A bought several pounds of cheese: medium brick, 7 year old cheddar, and a curiosity—smoked blue.
Here’s my cheddar theory: Americans actually want American cheese, but the better sort are embarrassed to be seen buying it. But they favor cheddars that mimic American cheese’s blandness, oily texture and melting characteristics.
I’ll note the tea reccomendation; I don’t have much interest in the stuff, but my wife and their family being fairly English do, some of them keeping to the afternoon tea schedule religously.
We tend to visit Wisconsin for a long autumn weekend every couple of years; we stopped in Monroe for cheese last time, though if we’re in that part of Wisconsin my brother insists I go to the New Glarus brewery to pick up a case now that they won’t distribute to Illinois. A lot of interesting towns in the Southwest corner of the state.
The old Cornish buildings in Mineral Point. The Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in Spring Green.
I’ve been visiting New Glarus since I was a tyke. We used to go the William Tell festival there every couple of years.
On the tea subject my wife has taken to drinking PG Tips fairly frequently as an everyday tea. That augments her regular everyday tea, loose Barry’s Gold. And the folks at The Tea Source are very nice, indeed. Almost unbearably gentle and earnest.
Also Mt. Horeb’s Trollway, the Octoberfest parade in LaCrosse, Devil’s Lake near Baraboo, and those who dare speak it’s name, the House on the Rock. We’re leaf peepers, the driftless region has been good for us.