Rotten Time

I just realized, while I was eating a grilled Camembert sandwich, that it is the season of decay even when it comes to food. In the winter, I eat my whole year’s worth of very ripe cheeses, older wine and liquor, and aged breads like stollen and panettone. I like my Camembert with a hint of ammonia and my Stilton crumbly and frightfully looking. I want my colheita pale and rich and my whisky dark and dense. And for the holidays, I eat my stollens and panettoni made in November. It is all very appropriate, I think, since there should not be much fresh food in the winter. But if I think about it carefully, all these things are very unnatural and against all sanitary rules. We know that milk products go bad quickly and not consume them if they look, smell or taste even slightly off. But my favourite unpasteurized cheeses look deadly, smell putrid and taste thoroughly rotten. As for the alcohols, well, who knows what had crawled into those musky barrels all those years ago. Even the breads, we normally want them fresh, but these breads ask us to wait for them to mature, to go almost stale. Aside from being seasonal, is it not awfully seductive that they at once defile nature and thumb their noses at science? It is almost like consuming death while laughing at it. Meanwhile, I had better go chase down the reminder of that Camembert before it runs away.