Goat Cheese

We are the proud record holders for the most teen sleepover parties during this pandemic. Mentally healthy as it may seem, gathering activities like sleepover are often skipped when Omicron strikes us. Our family, and that of my daughter's classmates, are heartily convinced by what Priya Parker has written in the book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters.

We didn't want to deprive our children of chance to meet friends. And then, wonder of wonders, we had invited one, two and even three buddies of my daughter to come for sleepover. You can imagine the way we experimented with breakfast choices. Once we prepared Cantonese sponge cake and dim sum. It turned out that my daughter's friends from Greece and France didn't find our choice match their taste buds. And that's fine. Teenagers are mature enough to be grateful and yet honest enough to tell their preference. Telling the truth seems reasonable enough but then it is far from the truth for grown-ups.

I'm reading a psychology book about collective illusions. I learned about the author's joining a summer wine and cheese taste party in his postgraduate days. That was a story when he met the Ivy League stereotype, a guy called Ambrose whose last name was followed by the Roman numeral III. Ambrose wore a navy-blue tailored suit with a crisp white pocker handkerchief, topped off with his usual bow tie. A wealthy and cultured guy, that is. Smart, yes, outstanding, maybe, but never aesthetically wrong. As Ambrose entered the party, he quickly pinged his wine glass with a cocktail fork to call for attention. "Hi, everyone!" he announed with an air of superiority. "Just wait until you taste this! It's a rare vintage from a family friend's vineyard in Sonoma. I recommend getting a fresh glass." Everyone in the party dutifully followed and received a few ounces of the ruby-red wine. They took a sip and looked at the others, all of whom nodding their approval. The wine actually tasted like weird rancid vinegar. Ambrose was satisfied, that’s for certain. He remained so until a statistics professor, a true wine afficionado, arrived and took a taste. The professor immediately spewed it out onto the glass. "This is corked wine," the professor stated matter-of-factly.

"Corked" wine is tainted with a molecule known as 2,3,6-trichloroanisole, which makes it smell like anything from a wet dog to a dirty restroom.

That brings me to another story when it's my daughter's turn to have pajama party at her friend's house two weeks ago. They made their own salad breakfast. The host family served goat cheese with salad, and many of them talked about how delicious goat cheese can be. In fact, everyone liked goat cheese that morning. Everyone, that is, except my daughter and her close friend. My daughter averted their eyes, took the smallest possible nibble of goat cheese with a sheepish smile. After a few swift kicks under the table, two of them confessed how somebody can think less of goat cheese, and then laughed out loud.