Photo by Janelle Jones.
Have you ever heard of France? They have a lot of cheese there.Some French people even claim that cheese originated there, which is total BS. Then again, so is a lot of what the French say. You gotta take it all with a grain de sel.Anywho, once upon a time in the central/western region of France known as the Loire, there was a plethora of little goat dairies where young cheese-makers would let their flocks graze idly in the pastoral pastures of wild lilac and lavender. This was a beautiful time to be a French person, when the world moved slowly and there was no such thing as Dancing with the Stars or Ebola outbreaks. These goat lovers would produce a myriad of little goat delicacies: some little droplets known as Crottin, little logs known as St. Maure, and little discs known as Selles-sur-Cher.One of the more famous little forms of goat cheese to come from this region—that's known as Berry, to be more precise—is the truncated pyramid called Valençay. These little-ash covered beauts are produced from April until December when all the sweet lady goats have been knocked up by some stinky buck. The cheeses are dusted with either vegetable or wood ash.This practice was once used as a means to protect the young, innocent cheese from flies and such as they aged. Now it's more for show, kinda like how a college degree used to mean something and now it's basically a high school diploma with a few more years added. It is said that these little guys used to be produced in the shape of a pyramid, but when Napoleon passed through the town on his way back from a bummer of a war in Egypt, he had a little (get it, cause he's small) hissy fit and lopped off the top because he was just so over the sight of pyramids.No one knows if that's true or not, 'cause this shit happened long ago, and just like rumors or the internet, you can never tell what's real or not. What we do know of the cheese today is that it's really freakin' tasty, and when aged correctly has a delicate little line of goaty goo at the rind with a dense, velvety center of pure goat wonder.The fun thing about cheese is not only that it's super-tasty, or that it's a crazy-old art form that is forever evolving, or even that its production supports entire communities, but that there are also all these amazing stories that go along with each and every cheese. There is a story behind everything, and even when the story is total bullshit, it makes for a good tale to tell while consuming cheese with loved ones.