In Los Angeles, I threw one party a year.
Every October, a small group of women would squeeze into my apartment in their witch hats for my annual ‘Witches Whimzy’ party. I’d crack the windows to let in the eighty degree October air and we’d stand around pretending, with varying levels of commitment, that fall was a thing that was happening. I’d set out an assortment of Whole Foods snacks on the kitchen counter - peanut butter filled pretzels, boo chips, Annie’s organic gummy bats, hummus with vegetables, Justin’s peanut butter cups, sometimes a frozen pizza thrown into the oven, then sliced into quarters. Sparkling apple cider. Popcorn.
It was nice. Easy, low-key. A gathering where nobody had to be ‘on’ or impress anyone. We sat on the floor or the sofa, grazed off paper plates, refilled our sparkling cider, talked about work. The next day I usually felt a bit flat - the low-grade aftermath of several hours of continuous snacking on a variety of processed foods that tasted fine in the moment and then sort of...sat there. Plus the inevitable crash after days of preparing for a party and then spending the party eating chips standing up.
That was the full extent of my hosting experience before we moved to France.
What happened next was, let’s say, an adjustment.
The cheese incident.
Our first proper French dinner party - not a casual gathering, a real one, twelve people around a long table, at a beautiful countryside chateau, courses arriving one at a time - was going fine until the cheese.
The board came around. My husband, trying to be polite and not take too much, cut himself a small slice of the 30-month aged Comté. He left a bit of the rind on the remaining block, which seemed reasonable. The board continued its way around the table.
When it got back to the host, she picked it up. Looked at it. Set it back down. Then looked around the table.
“Who cut the cheese like this?”
My husband, to his eternal credit, raised his hand immediately.
She looked at him with the patient but firm expression of someone about to correct a very basic error, possibly for the last time.
“You don’t mess with the cheese in France,” she said. “Let me teach you how to cut it.”
And she did. There are rules. Many rules. Specific, deeply held, non-negotiable rules about how to cut each type of cheese - rules that vary by whether the cheese is round, square, triangular, a wedge, a log, or a wheel. The governing principle, the one Sean had violated, is this: you always cut the rind away with your piece. You never leave excess rind on the shared block. The rind belongs to whoever takes the last piece, not to the communal cheese, and abandoning it there is considered, well, inconsiderate.
The host softened after delivering her verdict. She took pity on us. She gave us the full rundown, detail by detail, while the rest of the table either listened politely or pretended not to notice what was happening to the poor, naive Americans. Sean took it well - seventeen years as a teacher will do that to you, always open to a good lesson.
We did not know any of this before we moved here. We know it now. We will never forget it.
If you're new here, I'm an American writer living in a small château in rural France with my husband and two children. We moved from Los Angeles. Once Upon a Castle is where I write about the life, the renovation, the cultural education, and everything France keeps teaching us that we didn't know we needed to learn. Paid subscribers get Castle Diaries, where I document the renovation in real time. Come stay a while.
