By Delynda Pilon

I am addicted to the Food Network but after watching it faithfully for several months I am pretty certain there is a secret room at the grocery store where only special people get to enter - and I guess I am just not that special (sob, weep). I mean, I have never even heard of half of the stuff a lot of those recipes call for. For example, miso soup is supposed to taste fabulous and miso is supposed to be one of those super foods - good for you, loaded with vitamins and stuff to lower your bad fat. (Geez, I didn’t even know there could be good fat - where is it stored? The thighs? Belly? Second to last chin?) And it is supposed to be delicious. Problem is I have no idea what miso is.
So I Googled it because Google knows all.
Wikipedia said: Miso is a traditional Japanese seasoning produced by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans with salt and the fungus kojikin.

Okay. Fermenting is another word for rotting, right? Not always a bad word. Even I know fermented grapes can be pretty good. But then you add a fungus (when I think fungus, I think toes.... not a personal issue, but nevertheless, I think toes).
Actually miso soup sounded better when I didn’t know what it was. But I am willing to try anything once.
The problem is where in the world does a person buy miso? And how do I find it if I don’t even know what it looks like? Could be Smurf blue and come in cubes. Could be green and in the fresh veggie department. (Probably not. After all, it is fermented with added fungus.)
But at least I know what miso is. Now, how about if they cook a loquat? Then add a spoon of jaggery? Or tell you to they are about to boil a dozen quahogs?
And don’t even get me started on cheeses. In my home growing up cheese was a luxury and it came in three ways: Creamy (cheese whiz), sliced (also known as squishy) and hard (the most coveted).
After growing up I have cheese in my fridge most of the time - sometimes all three types at once. And, being a woman of the world, I have expanded my knowledge and discovered there are many varieties of cheese like brie, cheddar and havarti.
But when you watch the Food Network you realize there is a whole world of cheese out there.
To find out more about cheese varieties I visited my old and wise friend, Google. It lists more varieties than I can count (okay, so I gave up after a while). Some of my favourites included xynomizithra, hofoingi and milbenkäse.
Personally I think those Food Network chefs use so many different variety of cheeses not for their flavors but so they can seem really smart and well-traveled. See, whenever they use a weird ingredient, like Milbenkäse cheese, they add a little story about how they discovered it while strolling in a little town along the shore of the Rhine. Then they give you a history of the cheese. Then they tell you how it was made.
Before you know it you’ve learned something. And I don’t watch the Food Network to learn stuff, I watch it because I’m hungry but too lazy to cook anything.
However, while doing all this research (ya, right) for this column, I also learned something. There is a brand of cheese I think I am going to have to try just because of it’s cool name. It is called weisslacker. Gosh, I love that name. It even kind of suits me.
Now if only I could figure out where to buy it.