I know I'm not BU because cheese is involved, and cheese is NEVER unreasonable.

[AgentZigzag]

I bought my husband a rather splendid cheese knife for Christmas.

I know, I know, an extravagant gesture on my part, but after 11 years of being a non-cheese knife household I saw an opportunity to add to the social climbing rungs, with the added bonus that cheese was involved.

With cheese and crackers being a family favourite luncheon, the knife has been used on numerous occasions already, but to my dying shame, a huge gap in my cheese eating etiquette has been revealed.

Obviously I can't talk about this in RL, but I know you won't judge me on my ignorance.

My problems are:

-One cuts a slab from a particularly nice stilton, and horrors - it crumbles into twenty pieces how does one get them from the platter to the plate? Picking them up one at a time using the forked end of the knife only draws attention to the faux pas by hogging the cheeses from the hordes waiting for them.

-I have also been left with a smoked Austrian cheese dappled with stilton and looks as though it's a month old and moldy So after cutting one cheese, how do you stop the knife infecting the next cheese you cut?

I would naturally have asked our butler about these nuances of cheese eating, but we had to turn him out without references recently, and the under butler who has taken up his duties doesn't cut the mustard

Please help.

Most cheese is not unreasonable. Blue cheese is unreasonable. Smoked cheese (anything smoked, in fact) is unreasonable.

[Facts]

So ... YABU.

OP, it is difficult to get a decent butler these days.

But smoked Austrian cheese? That has no place on a cheese board imo. Bleughhhhhh

Wipe with a napkin between cheeses?

lick the knife eeuw emoticon.
wipe the knife with a White linen napkin

I know! You need to buy several more cheese knives. :) Or just not buy yucky slimy squishy cheeses.

You need a set to tackle a range of cheeses www.strawberryfool.co.uk/prod3956/coloured-cheese-knife-set

Crumbling Stilton is usually a sign of the piece not being big enough

You also need more cheese knives - one normal, one blue and one pungent/smoked.

Or just serve one enormous cheese rather than lots of smaller ones?

For some reason this puts me in mind of the first thread I ever read on mn which was about 18 pages long and was about whether it was acceptable to serve previously cut up cheese (ie not perfect triangles of Brie) when inviting others for lunch ::fond memories emoticon::

Isn't it like sugar tongs and tea spoons? - you have one knife for each cheese, and then a knife of your own at your plate? is common as muck and also the only one in the house who eats anything other than edam so just attacks cheese with bare hands and bites lumps out in uncouth feral manner

You put it all onto your plate so no one sees teh faux pas. Then eat the evidence.

Sorted.

OP you have made a classic beginners mistake.

One cheese knife is not enough!

You need a set, with different knives for different types of cheese. This should reduce the stilton crumbling AND save the cross contamination of different types of cheeses.

Next - garlic graters and olive spoons.

Camembert and brie I'll agree to being unreasonable TVK but only because they're French and we're still celebrating the battle of Agincourt

I'm not sure about wiping on the napkin between each cheese sounds a bit plebby Although we do send out our laundry to a lovely woman in the village so washing the stink out wouldn't be a problem.

I'm drooling at that set AnnoyingOrange

But Pombears uncouth solution is tempting...mmmm pombears and red leicester.

I found a container of cheese sauce granules at the back of the cupboard. Looked like mini-catlitter.

Every Other Cheese Is Reasonable. Fact.

Camembert and brie (and in fact anything which can move off the cheeseboard independently) have their own board because they don't have to go in the frig and in my parents' house go in the larder; therefore they have their own knife.

Hard cheese also goes on it's own cheese board which can go in the frig and will have a couple of cheese knives.

But, I agree with others about your quandry with the stilton. Cut larger pieces and it shouldn't crumble!

Nah - knives are for Ammerchewers. You need one of these:

That wouldn't slice Stilton very well though.

Due to lack of a cheese knife, to my eternal shame , we use a table knife or just break chunks off. Oh dear, that felt like a 12 steps moment. Is this why we don't have fabulous dinner parties and marvellous friends who entertain us with stories of sking in the French Alps or parties aboard yachts?

But we don't have problems with crumbling stilton by being greedy fat pigs cutting bigger pieces (as others have pointed out already, I shall go now).

You're right PP, that would make for a very unfortunate crumble situation, one I would reluctantly be forced to have to eat all the crumbly bits from

-One cuts a slab from a particularly nice stilton, and horrors - it crumbles into twenty pieces how does one get them from the platter to the plate? Picking them up one at a time using the forked end of the knife only draws attention to the faux pas by hogging the cheeses from the hordes waiting for them. Cut it on the fecking plate!

-I have also been left with a smoked Austrian cheese dappled with stilton and looks as though it's a month old and moldy So after cutting one cheese, how do you stop the knife infecting the next cheese you cut? Bit of spit and a quick polish on your hoodie

HTH

Stop cutting the cheese.

Have a slab each.

Knife stays nice & clean

HTH

Childishly giggling here at 'cutting the cheese'

We have a lovely set of cheese knives, which I can't be arsed to use which do different jobs. As an alternative, you could just eat all the Stilton yourself, then there wouldn't be any crumbs to worry about!

Brie and camembert are very reasonable cheeses! As long as they are not too stinky. But blue cheese and smoked cheese are very unreasonable. Especially smoked blue cheese.

Blessed are the cheese makers. :)

Agent - this should help. It even has diagrams!!.

Alternatively, you could just go for dairylea triangles & processed cheese singles.

Cheese strings!