Know that feeling when you wake up and all you see is grey?
Well, the good news is that you do not have to rush to your optometrist but probably live in Vienna.
This city that has been ranked the most livable in the world 9 times in a row by the Mercer consulting agency also provides you with a free education in grey colour-coding. And eventually, so much grey brings on the Blues.
In fact, by the end of the winter you most likely have become an expert in all colours grey and in a last expression of your inner Blues, the grey humanoid silhouette you became might have started to mumble the different colour-codes of each distinct shade of grey.
Before going completely crazy over this, Gustav and I headed to the market following the motto of beating someone with his own weapon – Blues vs. the Blues it was!
Being smart shoppers and knowing that in serious defense situations one can never have enough allies, we strategically picked friends from sunnier, happier places as well as some tough soldiers from the more wet, grey and cold front.
We picked lots of them, in fact – and our armada didn´t let us down.
Three cheeses immediately caught our playful heart: the creamy Gorgonzola, with a mild and sweet taste, lets you form little, sticky balls, while the Bleu de Basque has a bouncy texture and the Swiss-made Jersey Blue an elastic, springy touch.
The fine, melting and slightly crumbly paste of the Bleu de Brebis with its elaborate, luxurious and somewhat moldy undertones, the barny smell of the Fourme d´Ambert of Frances Auvergne region as well as the pronounced, sharp and almost metallic taste of the cave-bred Roquefort by Gabriel Coulet, and the hint of garlic and flour in Beppino Occelli’s Verzin – all of them lifted our souls to a more colourful scenery.
A Piemonte-bred Erborinato pleased us with a complex and bound-together taste that slowly revealed its herbal beauty and the at first crumbly and dry texture turned into a mouthwatering experience. The Spanish based Valdéon, with its brownish, grey, blue-dotted paste and dark brown rind even managed to guide us through an almost liquid herbal, citrusy and coffee-like adventure.
Finally, to make sure that Vienna won´t get us down anymore we went for the tough guys originating from the cold and wet – a British Stilton, whose brownish tightly closed rind held together the savory and tangy paste, and a Cashel Blue whose metallic, moldy smell and powerful, sharp, harsh and foamy taste truly made us forget about the world outside.
So, we don´t know where you live and which grey window views you might encounter (every. single. day.), but if that happens we can assure you that a nice boost of penicillium will bring the spring a little closer.
And, let´s be honest, who doesn´t want to spend a cold, grey afternoon belly-up and surrounded by friends?