Up Hill and Down Wensleydale

So this week just past I turned 42.

Apparently 42 is not just the number after 41. It has “pop culture” significance.

It is the angle of degrees at which a rainbow appears.

The three best-selling music albums – Michael Jackson’s Thriller, AC/DC’s Back in Black and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon – last 42 minutes.

Titanic was traveling at a speed equivalent to 42km/hour when it collided with an iceberg.

The world’s first book printed with movable type is the Gutenberg Bible which has 42 lines per page.

On page 42 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry discovers he’s a wizard.

And of course….In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the number from which all meaning (“the meaning of life, the universe, and everything”) could be derived.

Regardless, I still had to work on this momentous day and was desk-bound with a large and unyielding document. To cheer me up and mark the special day, friend and colleague Rachel B brought in a chunk of Wensleydale infused with ginger which we demolished in my office.

This cheese is the ultimate fusion – Yorkshire wensleydale and Australian buderim ginger.

Wensleydale cheese was first made by French Cistercian monks from the Roquefort region, who had settled in Wensleydale. They built a monastery at Fors, but some years later the monks moved to Jervaulx in Lower Wensleydale. They brought with them a recipe for making cheese from sheep’s milk.

The flavor of Wensleydale is suited to combination with sweeter produce, such as fruit.
In Yorkshire, apple pie may be accompanied by white Wensleydale, giving rise to the saying ‘an apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze’ and it is often eaten with fruit cake or Christmas cake.

Sweet and savory indeed.