Cheese…and Whine

No, you can't move in.

Sorry, folks, not a typo.

When I was writing about our trip to Citarella, I noted that I was certain there was a better place to buy cheese within a short walk. There was. Admittedly, the logistics of the day really made it much more sensible to buy all our stuff at Citarella, and maybe an opportunity would come to do some more exploring.

The opportunity came. James decided to host a little gathering for his colleagues. We probably had enough cheese (in hindsight, we certainly had enough cheese), but we decided to add to our stock of cheese. It was time for a trip to Murray's Cheese in Greenwhich Village.

Greenwich Village really is a wonderful place to be shopping for food. There's not only a great variety of things available, but you can get things that are of just impeccable quality (I can impeccable quality in the suburbs of Southern California, but the selection is somewhat more limited).

Last year, we made a trip to Paris. I joked at one point that if a demon appeared to me and said I would live in health and happiness for a further hundred years, but I would have to remain in the fourth arrondissement, my reaction would be "I can cope with that." Likewise, Greenwich Village. I could cope with that.

Murray's Cheese is more than cheese. They have cured meats. They have fresh pasta. There were some women demonstrating ice cream, so there must be some of that somewhere. The cheese selection puts that at Citarella to shame. My guess would be that Murray's stocks about three times as many types of cheeses as Citarella does (on the other hand, Murray's has no produce).

On our way there, James noted that we had plenty of cheese, "but we should at least look." I said that actually buying a cheese would finish out the experience. He concluded that we probably could use a blue cheese.

We went in and looked about. I was still looking when James started working with a man cheese counter. (I was delayed because I was fooling around with Instagram. I've had the app on my phone since about two weeks before Facebook bought them. I've kept meaning to actually sign up, although initially, I assumed that Facebook was just going to fold them in. Not yet, at least. Signing up was more bothersome than I expected, but I wanted to do an Instagram shot in keeping with the contest at the store.)

We tried a pair of blue cheeses. The first was intense. The second one was kinda wimpy in comparison. I asked about a Roquefort, we were given samples. Saltier, sort of in the middle on flavor. We went for the first. Then James decided to buy a soft, ripened, ash-covered chèvre. So samples there, since you bought the whole thing. When we had it later, it was as delicious as promised.

Then some meat. For me, there was only one choice: prosciutto di Parma. There was a domestic version which was just a little too salty and a little damp. Their Serrano ham was wonderful, but I always prefer prosciutto. We got the prosciutto.

As we were finishing up, the gentlemen who helped us noted that he had started a blog six months ago and he was getting about a thousand hits a day. He wrote the blog address on a sheet of wrapping paper. I later said to James as were discussing this that I didn't have the option of handing my blog address to fellow foodies at a busy cheese shop.

I looked at his blog. He's also more search-engine friendly. It's a blog mostly reviewing New York eateries. It has lots of pictures. He's no M.F.K. Fisher on the writing.

Okay, you've had the cheese. Now comes the whine.

A thousand hits a day for that? You do no want to know on the average the number of hits I get per day. The hits on my blog have actually been pretty crappy this week. Sunday? Twenty-seven views. Thirty-three on Monday. You get the idea. While that's low, its not unusual. It beats the day I had just two page views.

I've been recording my daily hits (I get blog stats, which I read with either delight or despair) and according to the numbers, despite the last few days, my daily number of hits is growing. This week has made me wonder if that growth has come to an end. I hope not.

If you enjoy this blog, please help this blog. Take posts you like, and share them on Facebook, Twitter, e-mail them to friends, call up strangers and insist they read one of my posts and comment on it.

I think I'm writing something that is worth reading. Maybe I'm wrong. I have total blog jealousy here.