Our first real family tradition

Mommy and I have been wanting for a long time to have some real, genuine family traditions. Making snowflakes doesn't count because that's something my family does. Water hiking doesn't cut it because the kids don't really participate in that. So we were excited when we realized today that we finally have a real family tradition.

Every week or two we all ride our bikes over to a shopping center. We shop for normal groceries and then shop at the Milk Pail market for veggies and CHEESE. Cheese. We all love cheese in epic degrees. CHEESE. Anyway, the Milk Pail has the best cheese selection we've ever seen. And the prices make it taste even better. So we go in, planning on getting just a small block of Wensleydale [<$5 a pound!], and end up with Havarti, French Emmenthaler, Edam, Jarlsberg, Fontina, Wensleydale, Parmesan, all genuine imported, almost all for substantially under $6 a pound. It's like an audiophile walking into a warehouse full of discount-priced professional audio gear. Except the gear is tasty, has lots of addictive opioids, and goes great on french bread. Anyway, we always end up with an armful of wonderful life-prolonging cheeses, a loaf of sweet or sour batard, or rosemary herb bread, and a few plums or nectarines or Asian pears. Sometimes we'll get a small block of some more expensive cheese just for the thrill of it, like the $3 block [at $13/pound] of Parmigiano-Reggiano that has lasted us a month and will last another even though we put it on everything [except, rarely in our breakfast cereal].

Then we ride our bikes to a nearby park and eat cheese, bread, and fruit. This is the fun part. [Cheese!] Today we had Jarlsberg on herb bread with plums. Mmmm! Everybody loves it, it's super cheap [we ate imported Jarlsberg like it was string cheese and went through $1.50 worth of it for dinner for 4], and, you know, it tastes good. The park is pretty and it's pretty much just a great little family tradition.

We're also going to be able to have the Thanksgiving meal we've always wanted. Neither of us enjoy turkey and potatoes [etc.] so this year we're going to have fontina, emmentaler, gruyere and oil fondues with great bread, real meat, cranberry sauce, and fruit. Maybe even some more exotic cheeses if we're feeling splurgy. The whole meal will probably cost $20 and we'll live at least a decade longer just from the latent joy from eating so much good stuff. Maybe even a super-dark chocolate fondue for desert [and pie, of course]. I can't wait!