Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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6 UCW FEBRUARY 1-7, 2017 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Right now you are probably asking yourself, "Self, what is happening in the fascinating world of aerosol cheese?" I'm going out on a Limburger and claim you have come to the right column for answers. Today's contribution to world lit will update you on the perilous state of cheese in a can. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, there is trouble in processed cheese land. The bad news is that sales of aerosol cheese and imitation cheese are down 9 percent since 2011. One of our great American inventions, aerosol cheese is in danger of a Feta worse than death. The original Neanderthal ancestor of aerosol cheese was something called Squeeze Cheese. Squeeze Cheese came in a plastic tube like toothpaste. You squeezed it from the bottom of the tube into the bottom of your cardiac arteries as part of a tasty snack. This was fairly low-tech cheese. As Robert Frost pointed out, nothing low tech can last. Squeeze Cheese was environmentally safe but boring. It did not create holes in the atmosphere as it used no propellants, just brute force to squeeze the cheese out of the tube onto your Saltines. The Wall Street Journal article got me wondering about who came up with the idea of putting sprayable cheese in a can in the first place. Was there a Johnny Easy CheeseSeed lurking somewhere in the history books? There must be a food genius who brought forth the trademarked Easy Cheese upon the land. Who was it? Many great men have made their mark in science and literature and then went on to food science. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his best selling cookbook, Tender is the Pot Roast after the Great Gatsby came out. Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when a Braeburn apple fell on his head. In the ensuing moment of clarity after a momentary loss of consciousness, Sir Ike invented gravity. Using the profits from his patent on his gravity invention he bought a bakery. Like Thomas Edison, after many trials and failures, Ike finally invented the Fig Newton. Fig Newtons have long graced school lunch boxes thanks to Ike. School children munch on Fig Newtons while reciting Newton's famous first law: "Gravity. It's not just a good idea. It's the law." After extensive internet research, I determined Clark Griswold invented Easy Cheese. If you read it on the internet it must be so. Clark was working in the Food Preservatives section of a cheese lab deep in a Chicago bunker when he invented Easy Cheese. Clark sold his formula to a conglomerate which ultimately sold the patent for sprayable cheese to Nabisco. In 1965 Nabisco released Easy Cheese unto a hungry American public yearning to eat spray cheese, thus fulfilling Clark's vision of cheese product in a can. According to Wikipedia, Nabisco's ad for Easy Cheese promised "instant cheese for instant parties." You can spray the cheese into little pyramid shapes on all manner of crackers. You can make little orange snakes out of Easy Cheese. For romantics, you can spray your Beloved's initials in Easy Cheese on a piece of toasted French Bread. Put it on shrimp. Put it on pancakes. Put it on your dog's nose — he'll love you for it. Nothing is more heartwarming than watching a dog lick Easy Cheese off his nose. Extreme cheese buffs even spray Easy Cheese directly onto their tongues without the fig leaf of a cracker. Mainlining Easy Cheese, that's America's quick ticket to Nirvana and curing opioid abuse. With all the rancor of the recent Presidential election, wouldn't it be great if Trumpsters and Anti-Trumpsters got together, linked arms, sang "Kumbaya," and had an Easy Cheese instant party during half-time of the Super Bowl? We could make America great again by uniting us all in our mutual love for Easy Cheese and football. It could happen. It needs to happen. As Dionne Warwick almost sang: "What the world needs now/ Is Easy Cheese, sweet Easy Cheese/ No, not just for some, but for everyone/ Lord we don't need another inauguration/ There are pollsters and pundits enough to ignore/ Enough to last until the end of time/ What the world needs now is Easy Cheese, sweet Easy Cheese/ It's the only thing there is just too little of." I have a dream where people are not judged by the color of their skin or by their political party but by their ability to share a plateful of Ritz crackers dripping with Easy Cheese. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Ask not what Easy Cheese can do for you. Ask what Easy Cheese can do for your country. It is for the common Gouda. OPINION Another Cheesy Column by PITT DICKEY PITT DICKEY. Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910.484.6200. Easy Cheese — instant cheese for instant parties. 910.867.8700 1400 Walter Reed Road, Suite 130 (All American Freeway & Owen Drive) HOURS: M-S 11:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. • Sun. 11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Buon San Valentino! Come celebrate that special day with us! Authentic Italian Cuisine Pizzeria & Restaurant