Happy 10yrs to Cheese Sex Death 🎉
10 years ago I started a cheese blog, and now I have moderately elevated cholesterol and a very full heart 🖤
Hello cheese sluts!
Today we celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Cheese Sex Death. In 2015, I launched a blog with the intention of changing the way people approached cheese, transforming the experience of eating it from something exotic and vaguely European to a familiar everyday ritual. I’ve learned so much over the past decade and am unbelievably grateful for everyone who has joined me on this journey. CSD has blessed me with a lot of beautiful memories, but my highest highs involved people telling me how my content has inspired them. I’ve tried to accomplish a lot with this venture, but my goal has always been to help people with their relationship to food.
Personally, my own relationship with food has been tricky, to say the least. As a millennial, the phrase “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” is basically tattooed onto my brain. While I otherwise appreciate Kate Moss’s impact on fashion, she was really fucking wrong about that. The early aughts did a number on us, and here we are 20 years later, living it all over again in the age of weight loss injectables. I don’t think this is the time or place for me to discuss the societal impacts of Ozempic culture (even though I do think there is a correlation between women’s shrinking bodies and the rise of fascism), but these conversations are relevant to my work here.
Here’s the thing: over the past 10 years people have constantly asked me how I “stay so thin” while eating so much cheese. As someone who has generally been at war with my body the majority of my life, you can imagine that this was (buzzword incoming, I’m sorry) triggering. I’d usually respond with a canned script: “did you know cheese is actually good for you? It has all the vitamins and minerals your body needs to stay healthy except fiber and vitamin C, so just pair it with strawberries,” like a sad little traumatized robot.
Now, all that is true. Cheese is good for you! Especially when it’s made from the milk of animals that are feasting on earth’s verdant bounty of flora. But that’s not the point. I developed disordered eating and a generalized anxiety disorder because the early aughts taught me that I was not thin enough. Over the past 10 years, people have thought it was OK to call me out for having a body that differed from the one that they expected me to have. I’m sure they thought it was a compliment, but that question is at best ignorant and at worst fatphobic.
All this is to say that all bodies are deserving of nourishment, and I think it’s more important than ever to experience this as pleasure ritual. Self-care has been commodified to death, but as we lose more of our rights everyday, as our gorgeous planet is wrecked by greed, and as our most precious and vulnerable humans are targeted and vilified, we have a duty to care for ourselves and community now more than ever.
Food gives us an opportunity to experience autonomy and acceptance on a deeply personal level. The ritual of feeding ourselves and each other gifts us with a moment of presence, an opportunity to take a moment and thank the earth, animals, and people who grew, nurtured, and harvested these blessings.
As I’ve reflected on the past decade and plan for the next, I’m understanding more and more that it’s the ritual that drives me to create. I’ve spent 10 years teaching people the ins and outs of cheese 101, and even wrote a book about it. Today, I’m more interested in how the pleasure of cheese can actually help people connect deeper into their relationship with the earth and each other. I don’t know what the next decade will bring, but I’m excited to find out and am so, so grateful for the opportunity to create for all of you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Now, time for a little retrospective because I’m really proud of my little cheese blog baby and she deserves a cute little tribute!
Portrait of a Cheese Slut as a Young Blogger
I launched Cheese Sex Death as a blog on April 1st, 2015. Why did I choose April Fool’s Day as my launch date? Because I was too excited about my new venture to check the calendar. I’m sure a lot of people thought it was a joke rather than the very serious beginning of my new life. At the time, I was unemployed after leaving several toxic restaurant jobs. I had also launched, fumbled, and quit five separate blogs at this point. I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I knew that I had an urge to return to cheese, but not as a monger. I had already spent a year behind a cheese counter, and I wanted a broader reach. I loved writing, experimenting with pairings, and taking pictures, so even though I had repeatedly failed at blogging, I knew I had to try again. But what to call it?
I was visiting my friend in LA with my partner, a dreamy double Pisces with an unwavering belief in this eccentric Gemini. We were all brainstorming a name for my hypothetical blog, when he looked at me, eyes full of stars, and said “you love cheese, you’re goth, and you look like you’re having an orgasm when you eat. Call it Cheese Death Sex!”
A few days later I called my mom with the news of my next venture. She was silent for a few beats than said “honey, Cheese Sex Death* has a much better ring to it.” I’m nothing without the support of my loved ones. Truly. They believed in me from the start, and they still believe in me today.
* I think I should state at this point that my partner, mother, and myself had all recently read Cooked by Michael Pollan, which mentions a website entitled Cheese, Sex, Death, and Madness. So while we thought this was an original thought, it was more likely a memory dislodged from a deep corner of our collective conscious. I do highly recommend that book though, especially the section on Mother Noella, the cheese nun.
A Retrospective
All in all, the past 10 years have gifted me with so many successes, failures, lessons, friends, and moderately elevated cholesterol. I would have done somethings differently, but I can’t say I have regrets. I think the Erika of 2015 might be disappointed that I haven’t met some of the milestones I originally envisioned, but my present self sees a bright future of creative freedom, unshackled by those expectations that were largely vanity metrics anyway.
Here are some of my favorite moments over the years:
The Make Love to Cheese Haiku Contest
For the first several years of CSD, I hosted a contest where people submitted cheese haikus in the hopes of winning a box of chèvre. I’m still blown away by how creative they were! Here are a few of my favs:
This Langres lingers
Tongue, lips, licking, lusting
That lovely longing
—Maureen G
Tie me up with bands
of melting Brie—smooth hot strands
velvet ecstasy
Angele E
La Tur, you purr, you're
Oozing outside-in. Watch me
Suck you off my skin.
—Sara H
Lips part, I'm longing
For your silken smooth embrace
Creamy, sweet fromage
Lips tremble, waiting
For the first taste of you- all
I dreamed of and more.
—Steph F
The Rise of Cheese Church
Shortly after launching, I started reposting irreverent cheese pictures on Instagram every Sunday with #CheeseChurch. Then in 2016, my coworker asked me to host a cheese tasting event for her friends. There were twelve disciples, so obviously I called it Cheese Church. This quickly grew into a side hustle that featured ticketed tastings in restaurants, in-home parties, pop-ups, a virtual 4-part class with Atlas Obscura, and even a small cheese plate business during the pandemic. The lesson plan even served as the basis for my book, which took me on a promotional tour where I brought my Cheese Church tasting class to over 25 cities (including London). A few years ago, I turned Cheese Church into a TikTok series, which is how I grew my following to where it is today.
Baby’s First Meme
A few years in, #CheeseChurch became a video series where I’d taste cheese and post it to IGTV. I should have been doing this on YouTube where I could have actually made money on my content, but lessons lessons lessons. Anyway, I would take audience questions, and at one point Courtney Johnson (one of the most impressive people in the American cheese industry) asked me about my favorite way to eat Parm. Obviously I responded by grating a whole wedge directly into my mouth. @LADBible turned it into a meme, which eventually got millions of views!
The Merch Game
in 2017, I drew a portrait of one of my favorite soft-ripened cheeses: Bent River Camembert. I submitted the drawing to MadeByCooper.com who transformed it into an enamel pin, my first piece of merchandise! After my cheese meme boosted my following, I launched a ringer tee with “Cheese Slut” written across the chest in collegiate font. It was probably my best business move, but they were cursed with inventory instability. Turns out, 100% cotton ringer tees are hard to come by. Anyway, I eventually expanded my line to 6 different pins, a variety of hats (one of which nearly got me a cease and desist), totes, and more.
This week, I’m shutting down my shop because it turns out I do not like being a business woman. Someday, I hope I can bring it back in a way that works for me, but for now, I’m saying goodbye.
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StripCheese
The best event I ever did was a Burlesque themed party, a collaboration with the artist Florence of a Labia. We had cheese-themed burlesque performances, a Raclette station, and a cheese plate in a coffin created by cheesemonger Jordan Edwards. It was all held at a funeral home turned venue in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. Florence hosted dressed as Cheesus, and one of the performers grated Parmigiano all over her nearly naked body, which was beautiful. The event was even featured in the book American Cheese by Joe Berkowitz.
My first book, Cheese Sex Death: A Bible for the Cheese Obsessed
The crown jewel is my beautiful book, designed by the unbelievably talented Jen Quinn. This cheese bible was my pandemic baby, and it taught me so much about what I want to do with this career, which is write, develop pairings, and take pretty pictures. Honestly, she’s probably why this newsletter exists.
Top 10 Pairings and Recipes
There are so many to choose from, but I’d say that these are the ones I think about the most, in no particular order.
Closing out this retrospective with a photo of my biggest supporter and favorite cheese slut, Chandler Muriel Bing. He passed away on the eve of the winter solstice, after a battle with spleen cancer. I truly couldn’t have done any of this without his loving presence in my life. May he rest in peace 🖤
Happy bday CSD! And RIP CMB 🫶
Congratulations on the milestone! And, a long overdue thank-you for driving cheese to my condo during the pandemic, hahaha. Receiving those boxes of deliciousness was a big highlight of that weird time!