Don’t worry, after this they’ll all be short. Below is an extract from The Joy of Snacks – now bendier and bluer than before. Thank you for being here!
In season one episode two of Schitts Creek, we have not yet taken the Roses into our hearts and tucked them there forever. We have absolutely no idea how much crying lies ahead of us, or how much humanity it’s possible to pour into an 18-minute episode. It still just seems like something fun and silly to put on when you feel like an empty potato sack. And it is! Because in the same way that life steals all your potatoes, life is the funnest, silliest thing of all.
In the previous episode we met the Rose family and we saw them get evicted from their grand old home. We heard that the one asset the government had allowed them to retain was a town Johnny once bought David for a joke (‘The joke was owning the town! That was the joke!’). We saw them schlep their overblown belongings to a motel that smelled ‘like a gym bag’ in the joke town. That episode set us up, but in episode two, we start to get into it. What is this schitty creek like? What kind of folks are here? How will this money-mad (awful?) family fit in?
At this point, the Roses are still toying with a clutch of highly tenuous routes out. Acceptance hasn’t come yet. Alexis thinks ‘Stavros’ is coming to get her (and only her) but he decides to go to Diddy’s white party instead. Johnny is fixated on getting his deeds signed by Roland Schitt, the mayor, so that he can put the town on the market and bust out of there. Roland knows no one is going to buy it but invites (or forces) the Roses to dinner at his house so he can sign them anyway.
It’s at the Schitt home that a cheeseball is unveiled – by Jocelyn, Roland’s wife: ‘I hope everybody likes a cheeseball!’ she says, without self-consciousness. ‘It’s the treat that keeps our love life percolating.’ The cheeseball is a large, nut-covered orb around which the dynamic is arranged. It’s a symbol of where the Roses find themselves and how horrifying that is to them right now. When Johnny takes a cracker to it, the ball does not relent. The cracker snaps. And then, while the Roses sneer at the impenetrable sphere, Jocelyn asks, with kindness, about David’s career as a gallerist. Obviously, David can’t be bothered to engage with small-town folk about his highfalutin life, but he offers them a crumb: his gallery used to work with Janet Kempfluugen.
. . .
He drops the name in the way that people do when they expect you to know their world inside out but couldn’t give two shits about yours. To two blank Schitt faces, he explains: ‘She would walk into the space wearing a clay mask of a fawn, remove her clothing and breastfeed members of the audience. It was a commentary on income inequality.’
And it’s clear: Jocelyn is not the joke. The Schitts are not the joke. This small town that happens to be the Roses’ only refuge is not the joke, and neither is the cheeseball.
I’m not from a culture of cheeseballs (triangles, yes) but (as I’m sure you will have gathered by now) I studied Media Studies at A-Level, so I have always understood what they represent: something low, something to pour scorn on. After all, no true connoisseur of cheese would roll it into a ball. We take care to brew our coffee in AeroPresses and finish everything we make, sweet or savoury, with a flurry of Maldon sea salt, so as if we’d be seen dead rolling cheese into balls. There’s just no way anyone’s doing that chez Kempfluugen.
And yet when I saw that cracker succumbing to Jocelyn’s hard ball, I knew I needed more balled cheese in my life. I ordered what is now one of my favourite books: Great Balls of Cheese, by Michelle Buffardi. On the cover is a soft cheese owl, with plumes of flaked almond feathers, carved carrot feet and the kindest black olive eyes. And inside there are ‘more than 50 irresistible cheese ball creations for any occasion’.
There’s a caterpillar made up of multiple herb-coated balls arranged in a wiggle. There’s a Christmas tree covered with parsley pine needles, studded with pomegranate baubles and topped with a pear star. And there’s a pimiento cheese chick with a perfect almond beak. The nacho cat is Kempfluugen tier art: she has ginger carrot stripes, chive whiskers, and nacho ears. And she sounds delicious, too.
And that’s the thing – these balls all sound good. The beer pretzel ball is loaded with Cheddar, shallots, ale and hot sauce, and covered with crushed pretzels. And the lox bagel ball just makes sense – it’s a one-ball wonder of cream cheese, smoked salmon, spring onion and capers.
At the heart of every cheeseball in Great Balls is cream cheese. And to that you might add other soft cheeses or grated hard cheeses and any number of genius mix-ins. At the end, you roll the cheese ball in its coating, which might be nuts, seeds, crushed crackers or herbs. A word of warning from Buffardi: ‘If you’re bringing a cheeseball to a party, keep the ball and the coating in separate containers and assemble just before serving.’ Dedicate yourself to this snack, please.
Jocelyn clearly worked hard on her cheeseball (and the rest of dinner) for people we all knew wouldn’t appreciate it (and for her husband, who does appreciate it, and who she loves in spite of the way he uses a whole hand to rummage in the communal fondue). But why was her cheeseball so hard? She overloaded it? She chilled it too enthusiastically? Or it wasn’t really a cheeseball at all, but a gesture of open arms and a comic device (I got an A).
In the introduction to Great Balls, Buffardi says:
‘Somewhere along the way, “cheese ball” became associated with the “uncool” – a term reserved for bad jokes, ugly gifts that beg to be regifted, or hideous patterns on a tablecloth or skirt. But the appetizer that is literally a ball of cheese deserves much more respect.’
In season one episode two, the Roses do not respect the cheeseball, or its providers. They still need to be exposed to a lot of love before their nutty outer shells will start to relent to the many crackers of the Creek. But what is amazing is the way they are all so instantly themselves. David is perfectly, phenomenally scathing and Alexis describes the motel as ‘cute’ and the diner as ‘kind of sweet’ while plotting never to eat or sleep in them again. Johnny tries to rally the troops and get a handle on things, while palpably losing it (‘This place is a dump, it’s a dump, you know what? It’s a hellhole!’), and Moira keeps busy with her wigs and her special brand of melodrama (‘In hell, there’s no bellman’). As we rattle through the episodes, these characters do not become different people to accommodate the plot; they are there all along, four hardballs softening up, episode by episode.
Over six seasons, they teach us how to leave judgement at the door. This show, which seems to have a knack for finding people when they need it most, is packed with more delight, empathy, kindness and jokes than I can comprehend, multiple re-watches later. And this is the sort of table I want to set, too – a judgement-free zone, filled with delight, empathy, kindness and jokes. So, it makes sense that I’d want to put a cheeseball in the middle of it.
Look, there’s no cheeseball at David and Patrick’s wedding as far as I can see – that would make this protracted metaphor so neat that someone else would’ve written about it already. But we don’t get to go to the reception, do we? So let’s imagine. What if Jocelyn rolled her most spectacular cheeseball yet? What if it was in the shape of a love heart? Or Mariah Carey? What if she took it to the venue in two separate containers – one for the ball and one for the coating? You just know that when they arrived, sodden with tears and shimmering with love, Moira, Johnny, David and Alexis grabbed a cracker apiece, without thinking twice.
(Recipe below)
Photo by beloved Ella Miller.
Honey, mustard and onion cheeseball
Leave your judgement at the door, then, and let’s roll. Here’s a recipe for a cheeseball – not a joke, but a great snack which happens to be spherical. Clearly, I owe Michelle Buffardi everything for this. But inspiration comes from all around and as such I also drew from one of my favourite packet snacks: Snyder’s Honey, Mustard and Onion Pretzel Pieces. The resulting cheeseball is a savoury fandango, smothered with pretzels. It’s a gesture of open arms, a thank you for being here, and a delicious centrepiece for your snackfest.
Serves 6
180g cream cheese
1⁄4 shallot, very finely chopped
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
2 teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
50g Cheddar, finely grated
45g salted pretzels, crushed (and lots more whole pretzels
to serve)
1. Beat together the cream cheese, shallot, mustard,
honey and Worcestershire sauce until even and smooth.
2. Mix through the grated Cheddar.
3. Pat and roll the cheese mix into a rough ball – it might
feel a bit wetter and looser than other things you’ve
balled in your lifetime, but you’ll be surprised how nicely
it shapes up. Chill it in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
4. On a dinner plate, roll the ball of cheese in the crushed
pretzel coating just before serving.
Hiilarious. Now I want cheeseballs.