“We use real sage.”

     “Why?”

     “Well, because it’s cheaper than that synthetic stuff.”

The genuine Vermont Sage arrived.  Here are our notes on it: 

Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow!  My taste buds come to full flower with the Sage.  There’s a slight burned savor recalling smoked cheese, although not related in any way.  Mildly resinous like that Near East one packed in pine, suggesting the well-saged dressing of a turkey.  A round mouthful of luscious mellowness, with a bouquet—­a snapping reminder to the nose.  And there’s just a soupcon of new-mown hay above the green freckles of herb to delight the eye and set the fancy free.  So this is the veritable vert, green cheese—­the moon is made of it! Vert veritable. A general favorite with everybody who ever tasted it, for generations of lusty crumblers.

Old-Fashioned Vermont State Store Cheese

We received from savant Vrest Orton another letter, together with some Vermont store cheese and some crackers.

This cheese is our regular old-fashioned store cheese—­it’s been in old country stores for generations and we have been pioneers in spreading the word about it.  It is, of course, a natural aged cheese, no processing, no fussing, no fooling with it.  It’s made the same way it was back in 1870, by the old-time Colby method which makes a cheese which is not so dry as Cheddar and also has holes in it, something like Swiss.  Also, it ages faster.

Did you know that during the last part of the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth, Vermont was the leading cheesemaking state in the Union?  When I was a lad, every town in Vermont had one or more cheese factories.  Now there are only two left—­not counting any that make process.  Process isn’t cheese!

The crackers are the old-time store cracker—­every Vermonter used to buy a big barrel once a year to set in the buttery and eat.  A classic dish is crackers, broken up in a bowl of cold milk, with a hunk of Vermont cheese like this on the side.  Grand snack, grand midnight supper, grand anything.  These crackers are not sweet, not salt, and as such make a good base for anything—­swell with clam chowder, also with toasted cheese....

Tillamook

It takes two pocket-sized, but thick, yellow volumes to record the story of Oregon’s great Tillamook. The Cheddar Box, by Dean Collins, comes neatly boxed and bound in golden cloth stamped with a purple title, like the rind of a real Tillamook.  Volume I is entitled Cheese Cheddar, and Volume II is a two-pound Cheddar cheese labeled Tillamook and molded to fit inside its book jacket.  We borrowed Volume I from a noted litterateur, and never could get him to come across with Volume II.  We guessed its fate, however, from a note on the flyleaf of the only tome available:  “This is an excellent cheese, full cream and medium sharp, and a unique set of books in which Volume II suggests Bacon’s:  ’Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.’”