Cheese

I like to think I'm pretty easy-going when it comes to food - I enjoy most things, but one thing I've never liked is cheese. I don't mind a bit of cheese flavour in things and I can manage pizza (though not the 'four cheese' variety), but anything stronger than that I just don't like. Cheese, to me, tastes and smells like milk which has gone off. Although I know this is a relatively unusual quirk, I've always managed fine in the past - at restaurants, for example, I will avoid any dishes which contain cheese and likewise for products at the supermarket.

But that doesn't work here, because Americans put cheese in everything, and they don't tell you. Your innocuous can of pasta in tomato sauce, which looks just like Heinz spaghetti, will taste of cheese, and when you check the ingredients, yes, there it is about half way down. The meal I have ordered in a restaurant precisely because it does not, according to the menu, have cheese in it will appear at the table covered with a liberal sprinkling of grated cheddar. The stuff is everywhere.

Today I was at the supermarket looking for a sandwich to take with me in the car for later. The choices were beef and cheese, ham and cheese, cheese, or tuna. Checking the ingredients on the tuna sandwich revealed it had - yes, cheese in it. They had slipped it in surruptitiously and tried to hide it from me, but I foiled their game. In the end I bought a ham and cheese sandwich and took the cheese out.

What is it with Americans and cheese?