Prima Donna

  

Photo caption: My precious purchases from Caputo's that make me feel like a Euro hipster. Prima Donna cheese with its blue, typographic rind, savory corn cookies (think "Corn Biscoffs"), salami, fig cake (dried figs, almonds and lemon zest...delicious with any cheese or fruit or cured meat), cinnamon date cookies.

When I shop at Tony Caputo's I feel distinguished because I have my own index card in the file box. That card lists the vittles I have purchased (and liked) so that I can remember what to buy the next time I visit. It's a small file box that holds no more than 400 cards. I have to be one of the 400 coolest people on the Wasatch Front.

When I shop at Tony Caputo's I always buy Prima Donna* cheese. I like to read the cheese dictionary that tells me where each cheese hails from and what it tastes of. I pretend I've picnicked on the agrarian hillsides of countries that boast these products. In my dreams I'm usually wearing a fantastically tailored outfit (anything that Juliette Binoche wore in Chocolat) with an equally glorious picnic basket.

When I shop at Tony Caputo's I like to watch the wispy mold attaching to cheese rounds in the cheese cave. I'm doing a few sketches at home and running the numbers to see what a cheese cave would cost us.  

When I shop at Tony Caputo's I blithely note that every imported product comes in a fantastic tin or bottle or bag with neat graphics. I am allured beyond measure by pink and black finishing salts, polenta blocks, flavored oils, unusual preserves and legit frozen pasta. Maybe we also need some boar meat or ostrich filets?

When I shop at Tony Caputo's I notice that the employees are inked-up U of U marathoners with lattes. I prematurely judge them but then flip the coin to madly respecting them after their knowledge of heirloom tomatoes and flavor notes of chocolate surfaces.

When I shop at Tony Caputo's each cut of Europe is wrapped in cellophane, then waxy tissue paper, then brown kraft paper. It's like Christmas morning when I arrive home. I especially love to unwrap my Buon Gusto salami that has been cut so thin it's translucent. (Like the bean Mickey slices for Donald Duck and Goofy in the Mickey & the Beanstalk cartoon.) I save the deli labels and stick them in my journal to remind myself that I've practically been to Europe.

When I shop at Tony Caputo's nobody knows that I've never been to Europe. They might think I'm just another Slavic foreign exchange student that has the authority to speak of watercolored Venetian light, blue Spanish tiles and stony Etruscan walls. That I've raised a white piglet until it became Serrano ham.

When I shop at Tony Caputo's I'm anybody other than an ordinary Missourian in a turquoise v-neck and jeans.

*Prima Donna is a relatively mild style of a Dutch Gouda cow's milk cheese that is aged for one year. As compared to a four- or six-year Gouda, Prima Donna has a distinctly softer texture and a more subtle flavor. It has an ivory rind with a slight rose blush, a crystalline texture, and a sweet, nutty flavor with a caramel aftertaste.