December 20, 2008
Rethinking the Cheese Ball
History has not been kind to the cheese ball.
Early on, this classic party food earned an ugly reputation it’s been mostly unable to shake – an orange softball filled with garish industrial cheeses, smacking of an untraceable sweetness and coated with stale, often soggy, nuts.
Not exactly food to get your guests going – except for going out the door.
“To me, it was it was one of those things you saw at a party, and after a few people had dug into it, it looked like a train wreck,” says Kemp Minifie, executive food editor at Gourmet magazine.
So bad is the cheese ball’s rap, food writer Amanda Hesser several years ago wrote in the New York Times magazine that “cheese balls tend to be associated with shag rugs and tinsel, symbols of the middle-class middlebrow.”
But surely they can be more.
Artisanal cheese balls. I think not. A cheese ball is a cheese ball. A gobbet of gunk.
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8 Responses to “Rethinking the Cheese Ball”
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Let the cheeseball in. A thoughtfully prepared cheeseball is totally kickass.
Why must it be spherical?
I heart a cheeseball. your post was making me salivate.
Stop up your innards, you don’t watch out. Just gum you right up. And turn you into a snot factory.
Of course it doesn’t have to be spherical, Sheila. As an alternative, it could be shaped like a log. Would you find the Artisanal Cheese Ball more appetizing if it were presented as an Artisanal Cheese Log?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
the best snot and poop blog around
On account of those cheese balls. And logs.
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