Monday, Dec. 10, 2012 - 8:21 a.m.

Got a giant chunk of Stilton at Costco.

Stilton is one of those foods that takes me back to a very specific time in my life, even though I never actually ate it until much later. When I was in my late teens, after a fortuitous discovery in the dentist's waiting room, I began my descent into foodiehood by collecting every back issue of Gourmet magazine I could find. So many ingredients and techniques I had never heard of. Stilton was one that came up repeatedly and always sounded good to me somehow even though I had never even seen it at a store and had always regarded myself as hating blue cheese (my experience with it being limited to cheap bottled salad dressing). But it went with steak; it hung around in the company of pears. Not iceberg lettuce. It had to be good.

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