Wine and Cheese

So I'm not sure if this is a Filipino quirk or not, but my dad used to hate cheese. He says it's probably because he didn't grow up eating foods with lots of cheese. Then I remembered that when I mentioned fruit and cheese plates (sometimes Colleen brings them home from Starbucks after work) to Mark, who grew up in the Philippines, he thought it was weird too. And then I thought, whenever I go to parties at work, everyone seems to know the names of many cheeses, like havarti, gouda, and fontina. I only knew about these cheeses from watching the food network. But everyone at work seemed to know them as household names.

Then my parents went on a weekend trip to Carlsbad, near San Diego. They stayed at a nice hotel where they had free wine and cheese available for guests. When my mom asked my dad where he would like to eat dinner, my dad suggested they have the wine and cheese, because it's free of course. And now my dad loves cheese. "Free food is good food," he says.

Now my dad asks my mom to buy cheese when she goes grocery shopping. One night I got home from class to find my dad sitting at the dinner table with the wine glasses out from way back in the cabinets and a nice cheese platter with sliced pears and crackers. He sliced the cheese and pears himself. "Do you wanna try some wine and cheese, Naning?" So I had a small glass of red wine, which we drank at room temperature because according to the wine connoisseur he spoke with at the hotel, "That's the proper way to drink red wine." Haha, my dad is funny.

My mom recently bought a whole cheese platter with aged cheddar, swiss, havarti, and gouda. We've been nibbling on it here and there. Last night Colleen forgot to put the platter back in the fridge. Xena, always on the lookout for new kinds of food, seized this opportunity to try some cheese as well. Apparently she enjoyed it because she ate the whole platter. And helped herself to some stone wheat crackers and sunflower seeds as well.

Haha, my dad doesn't know yet, but when he starts looking for his cheese platter tonight after dinner I'm gonna have to snitch on Xena.