Kraft Singles (cheesy lover)

A blend of cheese, milk products, and hydrogenated vegetable oil, made in Belgium, and bought from a local shop.

Busy with tiling the kitchen floor, I don’t have time to nip out to Borough market for today’s Cheesy Lover, and have to get my caesin fix from the corner shop.

My cheese comes exquisitely packaged in a bright blue wrapper, which tells me that it will be delicious on toast, with beans, or in a sarnie. My kitchen’s not quite functional – and anyway, I hate baked beans – so I tuck into it straight from the packet.

Inside the wrapper, there are five perfect cheese slices, each encased in their own plastic sleeves. The cheese inside’s a pale peachy-orange colour, and with a sticky texture – some of it comes away on my thumb when I press it. The aroma’s got a slight milky sweet-and-sourness. I tear off a corner of cheese – it’s pliable and sticky, like soft chocolate ganache, and quite difficult to handle, clinging to my fingers.

The cheese is soft and melts readily, coating my teeth and the roof of my mouth. It’s initially sweet, with a slight tang, and quickly develops into a sour-milk flavour. The other predominating taste is that of salt.  The inital milky flavour dissipates very  swiftly – before the paste clinging to the roof of my mouth has melted – but a chemical aftertaste lingers for some time afterwards.