Ahem: is that my left or your left?

The waiter placed the cheese board down carefully and announced, "On the left is Roxanne and the right Kunik." Poof! In a beat he was gone to attend to another table.

I reached for my knife and cut into the Roxanne. With little or no resistance and little or no drag I cut through a third of the morsel. I put the tip of the knife loaded with bloomy rind and delicate chalky paste directly into my mouth. Maybe a day or two shy of perfect ripeness this cheese still defied everyday physics. One of those moments when you add another adjective to list of what milk can be as a texture. Have I just laid a fine goose down comforter with a 400 thread count shell across my tongue? Were fairies with butterfly wings serenading the clover and grasses before the sheep grazed? Where had those huge dense fat molecules gone? Curious.

I tore a piece of bread to clear my palate and resisted the rose at 11 o'clock. Let me not complicate things. My dinner companion had started with the other cheese. He cut from 9 to 3 o'clock and taken a greater portion of paste to rind ratio. Bad manners dear dinner companion. I held my tongue. Not the time to digress for a minor infraction of etiquette.

I cut from noon to 6 and picked up the firm paste brebis. I wanted to get every bit so I nibbled carefully all the way up to the rind just shy of pushing it in, too. I am still suffering from allergies; I knew I am still impaired but was still cognisant of the felt that lingered in the finish.

My dinner companion stated, "It has that 'thing.' What is that 'thing'?"
"Lanolin," I replied.
"Gimme the menu," I asked.
Where had it gone? Where was it? Did the waiter retrieve it unnoticed? Boy was he swift. I repeated to myself the waiters introduction. "On the left is Roxanne and on the right is Kunik."

We moved on. Our other food arrived. Another round was ordered and soon the table was crowded with new plates: crust topped with canelli beans, pine nuts, tuna and greens dressed with sweet balsamic, beer battered onion rings with a spicy creamy dipping sauce and fried smelts with crisped lemon, chimichurri and spicy aioli hanging out underneath. Quickly the cheese was but a memory.

Cut to this morning. Stove top espresso in my cup and the internet at my disposal. It took me seconds to Google Roxanne and Kunik. And what I discovered put me at ease. Kunik is a mixed milk (cow and goat) cheese made in the Adirondacks at a farm called Nettle Meadow. The existence of fairies in the meadow was not confirmed by the internet but it certainly was not denied. Roxanne is made by Leslie Cooperband at Prairie Fruit Farm in Champaign, Illinois from the milk of her La Mancha Nubian crossbreed sheep named Roxanne.

With relief it was clear; Kunik was on the left (my left) and Roxanne was on the right (my right).