I went home for lunch. I had a not-quite ploughman's lunch (not quite because I don't drink beer and I don't think my late-afternoon students would appreciate my having eaten a whole raw onion)

But I did have some cheese. Ilchester smoked applewood cheddar, to be exact.

I do think it is the very best cheese in the world. And I am not alone in that assertion. (N.B.: Again, scantily clad ads. I guess it's a "lad's site.")

The Kroger's in Sherman has a decent cheese counter - some Swiss and German cheeses, some French cheeses, and lots of British or Irish cheeses (it seems to me there's a not-inconsequential expat British population in North Texas).

So I've been expanding my cheese palate. I tend to avoid the French cheese, as it's mostly the veiny kind, and frankly, bleu cheese scares me a little, allergy-wise. (I react badly to miso, I might react badly to the mold in cheese. And yes, that's what makes bleu cheese bleu. Also Stilton. And Maytag.) The German and Swiss cheeses are fine, but my real love is for the various British and Irish cheddars and kins-to-cheddar.

And the Applewood cheese - best ever. None of the bitterness that some cheddars have as an aftertaste, a wonderful smoky flavor redolent of really good bacon (but without the stomach-upsetting properties of bacon for me), a lovely texture. Just good cheese. I don't eat a LOT at a time, but with really good cheese, a small amount is just perfect.

So I had the other serving of egg-and-lemon soup I made this weekend. (One of the easiest soups in the world: you heat up a couple cups of chicken broth, dump in 1/3 cup cooked rice, then while that heats, you beat an egg with a tablespoon of lemon juice until the egg is frothy. The only tricky step is that you have to 'temper' the egg by slowly adding the warm-but-not-boiling soup to it, and being sure to stir well when you add the egg mixture back to the soup. And not let it boil after you've put the egg in). But egg-and-lemon soup is delicious and it's one of the things I tolerate well when my stomach's iffy.

So I had my soup and cheese and an apple and some milk. And I had jam butty for dessert. (I also have a jar of Branston pickle (actually Crosse and Blackwell's is the brand) on the shelf- another hallmark of the ploughman's lunch, but I didn't open it yet; I'm waiting for my tum to be less iffy.)

I like the name "jam butty." It's not anything fancy - just plain old bread (I used some kind of rustic white bread from the store) buttered and with jam spread on it. It's supposedly a common dessert that people in Cornwall and other parts of south Britain ate if they didn't have the funds for a "proper" dessert. But it's good, and probably more nutritious and filling than a lot of desserts are.

I'm also contemplating another food to try when I've got more energy to cook (and my stomach's back 100% to where it should be - my mom and I were talking last week about rutabaga and it occurred to me that I can sub it for carrots in things. (I have a mild food intolerance to carrots - I can eat small amounts, like would be in a serving of Branston pickle, but to eat a normal serving, I'd be kind of in distress the next day). And from there, I was looking at a recipe I have for beef stew (which calls for carrots) and thought how I could sub rutabaga in there.

And then I thought: I could make pasty stew. (no, not pasty like paste, pasty like pasty, the food)

(Incidentally, "pasty" is pronounced "pass-tee," with a short a. Not like the, ahem, burlesque undergarment).

Pasties are one of those things that you might not know if you don't live somewhere with a large Cornish/Welsh population. They are a big thing in the U.P. (it is kind of a mascot of sorts up there).

It's essentially a beef hash inside a pastry crust. Traditionally, the crust is more "strong" and less "short" than pie pastry (these things were carried as lunch by miners), but most people now make something rather like pie crust to wrap them.

They are probably the sort of thing that, badly made, are one of the things that give British cuisine its bad reputation, but I do love them (at least when they're made properly). They're very much a "winter" food.

The "traditional" recipe (according to my family, and of course, isn't the PROPER tradition whatever a person's family did?) uses diced (NOT ground) roast beef, potatoes, some onion (but not too much), salt and pepper, and very importantly, rutabaga.

Oh, there are pasty recipes that claim you can use carrots, but they're not the same. It has to be rutabaga.

So anyway, I thought: I could make a pasty-flavored stew: stew meat is not that far off from the beef you put in pasties. And then potatoes, and onion, and some parsley (some pasty recipes call for it). And rutabagas. And if I wanted to simulate the crust, I could float dumplings on the top. Or even bake rounds of pie paste and set a round on top of the bowl of soup when it was served.

It's an idea I like. (I never make pasties for myself; they seem like too much work. And I'm not very good at making pie paste.)

Pasties were also apparently known as "tiddy oggies." And there's a belief that in Cornwall, some were baked half-and-half - with a meat mixture in half the pasty, and jam or fruit in the other half. That seems unappealing to me; I'd rather go without any kind of dessert-like substance than have gooey fruit juice leak into the meat and potatoes side.

(I also don't like the modern innovation of sweet pasties; that's a pie, not a pasty).