Vocal Voices

So I get down to Asda, and head up the breakfast cereals aisle, scanning the shopping list painstakingly prepared by Mrs O this morning.

Carrots (6) - check
Pot of bio-yoghurt - check
2 x Oatilicious loaves - check
Quark - ......... errr..... What?

What on earth is "quark"?

- a sub-atomic particle? What aisle is that in, computing equipment?
- a model of the Ferengi character from Star Trek: Deep Space 9?
- a refined Home Counties duck - ("quark, quark" rather than "quack, quack")?

Thankfully Mrs O is at hand, browsing the paperbacks in the Book aisle.

It's a sort of cheese, she says. And lo and behold, there it is, in the appropriate section.

So I think it's going to be quark on toast for an evening snack when we watch Wycliffe on ITV3 tonight ....

Have you ever heard of the stuff?

Ewwww is it like tofu?

I'd rather have runny Brie or extra mature cheddar

Sounds like it should be waddlking somewhere

We have fresh cheese here - some of which don't half pong

Quark on toast is so neutinotional that you'll be full up before you eat it.

Well, I had two slices of quark on toast. Something and nothing, really - exceedingly bland.

Much prefer brie, like Kaz, or Long Clawson Blue Stilton, which is our cheese of choice at the moment .....

Cheese just has to have flavour, doesn't it?

The market in Castro Verde has two enormous cheese stalls - and you can try a slice of everything, before you buy.

Not the fresh cheeses, but hard, or soft, farm produced cheeses and they are sublime

Goat, beef, sheep a mixture of all two or three, smoked, unsmoked - oh, I'm dribbling

Yummmmmmmmmmmmm

Quark isn't proper cheese, it's just a softish white bit of nothing

LOL at you lot - Quark is a very normal part of daily life in Germany I'll have you know

Mom uses it as a low fat spread on bread with a dollop of jam on top - actually quite nice.

Alternatively as a very tasty and low fat dessert mix a tub quark with some milk so it's similar to yoghurt (maybe a teeny weeny bit runnier); add sugar to taste (not much) and a bit of vanilla essence and then if you want some berries or other fruit - really delicious. Go on try it

It's funny reading this thread because Quark is something I grew up