stringy cheese incident?

Yesterday, Greg and I did finished a sprawling NYT Sunday puzzle, in record time (as he said, "Take that, Will Shortz!"), so now I can't help but think in obliquely descriptive phrases that end in question marks.

I had a little fun with parmesan today. Cheese is fairly expensive here, so it's a real crying shame when a pretty chunk grows mold and you have to let it go. To try and keep that from happening to a new hunk of parm, I took half and put it into the freezer. Of the remaining chunk, I halved again, down to two jumbo-egg-sized lumps. After grating these, I made parmesan/basil/garlic/lemon butter out of one, and decided to store the rest.

So, with about half a cup of grated cheese left, the quandary became: how do I store this so it remains freshest, longest? I had a choice between two tupperwares: small and round or bigger and squarish. It filled the small one with about a heaping tablespoon of overflow. It barely came up to half of the larger one. So, with only the knowledge that air exposure for foods = death, I put it in the small container.

What, you might ask, did I do with the leftover? Well, I wanted to just eat it, but that seemed a little too indulgent. So, as I was right next to my stove, I fired up a nonstick skillet and dropped it in the center. It melted down all tantalizingly bubbly, then cooled into a slightly-crisp-slightly-chewy parmesan cracker. So. Good.

(And that, my friends, is why I'll get fat and have a heart attack.)