It’s National Cheese Day!
Cheese is one of the world’s most influential foods, but it has a function even beyond the culinary.
Some people claim that they can tell the future through cheese.
There’s even a term for this – tyromancy – and Saveur.com calls the history of cheese-based fortune telling “un-brie-lievable.”
Though in a way it’s not that different from other types of divination.
Take reading the tea leaves, for example, or reading fortune cookies.
Centuries ago, people would sometimes swish flour and water around in a bowl and then interpret the shapes they saw.
There was “pulling the kale,” in which people would, as the name makes plain, pull up kale plants to look for signs that would tell them what their future spouses might be like.
We’ve turned toward a lot of foods and drinks to look ahead.
The first known mention of tyromancy was about 1,900 years ago, though the guy who brought it up, Greek historian and diviner Artemidorus, thought those who told the future through cheese were flim-flammers and shouldn’t be trusted.
Lots of people ignored that advice, especially in the Middle Ages, when tyromancy was at its peak.
People would use whatever cheese they had available, but the best ones for fortune telling were ones that had variations on the surface, like Blue cheese with lots of veins, Swiss cheese with holes, or crumbly farmers cheese.
Then, a tyromancer would study the shapes: maybe they could solve a crime by seeing the perpetrator’s profile in the cheese.
A woman might carve her potential suitors into cheese curds, and whichever one turned solid first was destined to be her husband.
Tyromancy mostly faded out in the early 20th Century, though it still has its fans especially in certain corners of social media or in specialty cheese shops.
Gotta say, though, I live in America’s Dairyland and this is the first time I’ve heard of tyromancy.
How about somebody bring over some fondue and tell me about the future of the show?!?
Some of us love to take part in triathlons, and some of us get tired just thinking about all that swimming, biking and running.
Those of us in that second category might enjoy the race today in Des Moines, Iowa, called the Nice Tri – that’s T-R-I.
It’s a third of a mile’s worth of running; you don’t have to have running shoes.
Plus there’s a 50 yard swim, with floaties welcome, and a quarter mile ride on a bike or anything else with wheels.
And you only have to complete these if you feel like it!
The Un-Brie-Lievable History of Tyromancy (Saveur)