Curd Your Enthusiasm at “The Bloomy Rind” (Sorry for the Cheesy Pun)
This guest blog was written by the illustrious Dave Bruns, my peddling partner to “The Bloomy Rind,” an artisan cheese shop in East Nashville. We biked a long whey, almost ten miles back and forth, for our midday meal due to our infatuation with cheese. His witty writing is quite gouda, so maybrie you too will become enraptured by his tale of our quest for mouth-watering goodness.
Cheese is the greatest thing on the planet. It bleus my mind that the white stuff that comes of the pink dangling things under a cow can be transformed into such a wide and delicious array of delicacies. I have always had something of a love for cheese. As a child, I could not wait for the Easy Cheese that filled my stocking every Christmas. But like cheese, my taste got better with age. While I still enjoy a good slurp of Easy Cheese every now and again, I much prefer a good brie or camembert (I really enjoy soft cheeses; not this one, however).
On a recent BCM SPOTS trip to Chicago, Ann and I decided to go to a lovely place called Eataly. Little did I know that upon entering that incredible establishment, my life would change forever. They had everything you could ever want to eat and more. They had octopus, rabbit, bread with oranges and olives in it, and pasta made with squid ink. But the best thing of all was the cheese. They had just about every sort of cheese whose name presently slips my mind. Along with our cheese we got a baguette that had olives in it. The olives made the bread rather salty, but the smooth, creamy, succulent, mouthwatering cheese was udderly magical.
Upon our return to Vandy, we both felt that there was something of a hole left in our hearts. So we did a little research and discovered that we have a cheese shop of our very own here in the great city of Nashville called The Bloomy Rind! Unfortunately, The Bloomy Rind is not particularly close to campus. In fact, it’s roughly 4.6 miles away. Now this normally would not be a problem, except that neither Ann nor myself have a car here at Vandy. We had quite the journey in front of us, for one does not simply walk to The Bloomy Rind. There were several travel options: walking (I again refer you to the previous link to demonstrate that walking was not an option), busing, or biking. But the bus can be scary, so we decided to bike.
But I don’t have a bike, so I had to borrow a roommates’. Ann and I were off! But it wasn’t long before trouble struck. In an effort to dodge a family on the sidewalk, I jumped from the curb and landed with little grace: the rear tire exploded on impact. Fortunately, we were only a minute away from our starting point, the BCM, so we went back and were able to exchange my roommate’s crippled bike for another friend’s. Again, we were off.
Before we knew it, we found ourselves at a place called The Turnip Truck. It was basically a grocery store for hipsters. Ann got herself some strange tea drink that she forgot to shake. I got some water from Iceland that took pride in the fact that it had an unusually high pH (it claimed to be 8.88, though I am not sure if I believe it).
Anyway, from there, The Bloomy Rind was only a few minutes further down the street, and at long last, we arrived at our destination. Upon our entrance, we were struck silly with the plethora of raw meat. It turns out that they are partnered with a thriving sausage outfit. We walked around the store’s small front room for a while, looking at cheeses and other various sundries. After a while spent looking at their wide assortment of chutneys, we walked to the front counter and confronted with a pretty serious decision: what cheese to seize. They had a wide variety of bleu cheeses and aged hard cheese, but we settled on a soft cheese. Luckily we have similar tastes in cheese, otherwise it could have been much more difficult. We decided to purchase “Carolina Moon,” which is a camembert from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as well as a baguette to pair with our cheese.
Now we were faced with the difficulty of hauling a two-foot baguette and block of cheese all the way back to campus. The bag we got was less than adequate, and as it dangled from my handlebars, it kept hitting the front tire. To keep that from happening, I put it on the very end of the handle. But that was accompanied with another difficulty, for the bag was now brought into close proximity with the many signs that lined the sidewalk. Of course, I managed to smack our bag of goodies on one of those signs and it exploded. Miraculously, the bag managed to keep the baguette. Luckily, the cheese was in Ann’s purse, which also contained all of my stuff, as my pockets are not particularly trustworthy.
We arrived back at the BCM, ready to devour our newly purchased cheese like the cookie monster eat cookies. We cut up our baguette and slathered our moist, delicious cheese all over it. We feasted like ravenous Vikings. Every bite was an explosion of flavor. There were literally fireworks going off in my mouth. Literally. White-hot sparks were erupting from my head. We shared it with our friend Daniel and the BCM director Thom (pronounced “Tom;” I know, it is tempting to pronounce the H) and they agreed that it was the best thing that had ever crossed their lips. Thus, out journey was a success. The cheese is now safely at home in our bellies. Now we wait for the future and the many cheese adventures it holds!
