Paula came over one night this week armed with an assortment of intense cheeses the likes of which I have never encountered all at once and the combination of which I expect I won't ever see again. We had six cheeses--each of them unique and most of them actually edible!

On the easy side, we had Charollais Affine--a dense goat cheese whose wet chalk texture I haven't encountered since my first night alone in Paris almost a year ago. It was wonderful.

From Vermont we enjoyed a wonderful Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen blue. It was pungent and flavorful, without being overpowering or too blue.

Moving on to Italy, we had a pasteurized cow's milk cheese from Piemonte called Castelrosso. It had a grey rind, and had a wonderful texture--the texture one thinks of as "cheese." It was more like cheese then any of the other cheeses. It was a little it nutty and a little bit rock and roll.

Delice de Champagne was described on its package as buttery decadence! And it was buttery. It was melty and yellow, with a white rind. We both thought it was perhaps not quite as ripe as it should be, since it wasn't quite as oozy and decadent as we expected. Delicious, nonetheless.

The last two cheeses were very difficult guests indeed. When Paula unwrapped the Pave d'Auge, Affinage, I distinctly smelled sour, rotting, wet wool. Musty, musky, and manky, the aroma was definitely the smell of distant death--like the faint smell of a dead rat rotting under the neighbor's stairs. The wrapper insisted that this pungent cheese offered the flavor of bacon--but I would more likely describe the taste as Homeless Person Armpit. It was revolting, and after the second bite I declared that I am simply not sophisticated enough to enjoy this caliber of cheese. Sorry, Paula, but no can do.

The last selection, it seems, is the very object that gave meaning to that clever old phrase "cut the cheese." The Stinking Bishop it was called, and he hailed from England. Sold in a plastic container, as soon as we removed the lid the whole world wrinkled its nose and asked "Who cut the cheese?!"--this was followed by mass protests of "PUT THE LID BACK ON!!!!" In fairness to the Bishop, the taste on the tongue was complex, warm, and not at all shitty. In fact, the Bishop and I were friends before the night was over. We'll never be close, the Bishop and I, since he's got to live with the Lid On, but I have a certain grudging respect for any cheese that tastes delicious despite offending the nose.