On Saturday Oct. 17th, Randi and I took a 3 hour ride NE of Toulouse, through some incredibly scenic rolling hills.
We went to find the cheese of lore. A cheese that has been sought out, in these caves, since the time of the Romans! We went to Roquefort-sur-Soulzon.
We went deep into the Société des Caves de Roquefort and saw rows and rows of cheese balls in racks. They explained to us how in traditional French cheese making, the cheesemaker leaves a local loaf of sourdough bread, teeming with starter cultures, in underground caves rich with penicillium roqueforti. He lets the bread get moldy, then grinds up the moldy loaf, and mixes the breadcrumbs with the curd of the milk. The cheeses are then aged in the caves where the bread went moldy, further encouraging the development of blue veins. Most cheesemakers today use a penicillium roqueforti that is made in labs, because it makes for more consistent veining, if you will. I'd just like to know who was the first guy to say to his buddies..."hey, check this out. I found some moldy bread I left in a cave and I decided to put it inside some sheep milk cheese...and then eat it! And don't mind that sharp, acid-like taste...you'll get used to it. The whole thing is totally normal. It's totally normal man. Mold is good!" Who was this gutsy, forgotten, culinary genius!!We also saw our first 'cheese light show' (set to music), a cheese documentary and a
cheese musuem. The light show was very dramatic, showing spooky images of cheese makers of the past right onto the cave walls. The documentary was so stoic that it was hilarious to us. There was a guy taking huge nose hits off a hunk a cheese and then appeared to be contemplating the meaning of life. The cheese museum was cool. We found a little sheep purse for Estella there...it looked like a giant version of her little 'piggie' :) 
They also had hallways full of old posters from Roquefort. Here are two of the Societe Roquefort sales ads. The first one, with the sultry cheese-peddling temptress, is from the 1950s and then the mustache guy is from the 70s. I think he had a very 'Menard's guy'-like gig going...he had many years of of him shown in their ads. He looks like he may have had the same delivery pitch as the Menard's guy but for cheese. "Get all your stinky Roquefort cheese...at Menards!"That night we were traveling without a hotel reservation (walkin on the wild side) we stopped at a wayside picnic area to contemplate where to go and break into our fresh roquefort cheese. DAM! that's good sh*t. We decided to go to the bigger town of Millau, since there would be a few choices of where to stay. The plan was to see the Millau Viaduct on Sunday but it came into view way before we reached it.
Wow. C'est incroyable!! It's the highest bridge ever built, with the tallest pillar being just 125 feet shorter than the Empire State building. It actually looks like an animation of a bridge, in some futuristic movie. We ended up staying at the inexpensive Hotel Club for just 60 euros. It actually looked like a nice place to stay in the summer, with a pool and tennis courts. We asked the pencil mustached young guy at the reception desk where we could get some dinner. He seriously asked us "are interested in good food or bad ?". Huh...we went with 'good'. Bad food doesn't sound good at all. The guy seemed a little light in the loafers and slightly Norman Bates-like but I tried not to think about it. We were tired and happy with our day dedicated to cheese!
