Since one of my husband\u2019s first distinct childhood memories had to do with eating steamers while sitting on someone\u2019s lap, our teenage son\u2019s foodie status should come as no surprise. So when Lucien started to pore over cookbooks\u2014and then food blogs\u2014and to be glued to the TV Food Network, I took it all in stride. His paternal grandparents, after all, always described their travels meal by meal, all other landmarks seemingly incidental.<\/p>\n
His grandmother routinely presents a cheese plate when she entertains; this was the start of my 14-year-old\u2019s cheese fascination. Now Lucien never misses the little basket of sample cheeses available for purchase at our co-op. He spends babysitting wages on exotic cheeses. For me, the gal whose cheese adventurousness pretty much begins and ends with Jarlsberg, his cheese devotion is unfathomable. But apparently, he\u2019s not alone. Last fall, after nearly a year of talking about cheese on a daily basis with one of his teachers, they decided to co-teach a four-week cheese \u201cminicourse\u201d for some K-through-eighth graders.<\/p>\n
About a month before the minicourse began, Lucien got to meet the infamous cheesemonger Matt Rubiner, of Rubiner\u2019s in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, at a friend\u2019s bar mitzvah (Matt\u2019s nephew). Starstruck, my guy was so shy that he barely spoke to Matt Rubiner. However, he did get Matt\u2019s card. Once dates for the cheese minicourse were determined, Lucien overcame his shyness and invited Matt to speak at one of the sessions. Matt accepted the invitation.<\/p>\n
Week one was an introduction to cheese, complete with making mozzarella. Week two: the students cooked two batches of macaroni and cheese, one with authentic cheese and the other with a neon substance to observe the vast differences between the two. Week three: Matt Rubiner, guest speaker!<\/p>\n
Here were the salient points of the class, as told breathlessly by my son:<\/p>\n
No doubt that, for my son, this last part was a life lesson exemplified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One mom observes her son’s cheese devotion and how it led him to his hero: Cheesemonger Matt Rubiner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[590],"tags":[],"coauthors":[596,613],"class_list":["post-9150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ruminations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n