Today my friend Lisa brought by a gift. Though the package contained several things including a coffee cup, hand sanitizer, and candy, my eye was quickly drawn to the tea towel with the words FOLD IN THE CHEESE scripted across it.
The line refers back to my favorite scene of the show Schitt’s Creek where Moira Rose is attempting to teach David how to make her mother’s recipe for enchiladas. As the scene progresses, it becomes clear that she never made this recipe and is unable to provide any real assistance beyond criticizing her increasingly stressed son.
The scene culminates when she reads the direction for him to “fold in the cheese.” He asks what that means, and she merely repeats the direction as if it were self evident. I mean, how can one not know how to fold in cheese? As the conflict escalates, the audience can see (and David sees) that she has no more idea what this direction means than he does. Finally in frustration, David announces, “I can’t fold broken cheese.” And he leaves the room and Moira Rose with her bowl of unfolded cheese. If you haven’t experienced the joy of this scene, you can watch it here.
This scene has always spoken to me, because of all the cooking directions I learned from my mother (who, unlike Moira Rose, was an experienced and supportive teacher), the one thing I could never wrap my head around was folding. How does one take a liquid and a solid and crease them? How do you practice doughrigami with a spoon? I would do the actions that she told me to do, but I never understood what was the purpose of this, or what it had to do with folding.
Today when I come on the direction to fold, I always remember my mom teaching me, and my utter lack of understanding. The funny thing is that I could easily look online and read (and watch videos) of the reasons and techniques of this skill, but I don’t want to. I would like folding in cheese (or anything else) to remain a gap in my knowledge and a regular reminder of my wonderful mom.
Be safe, be strong.
Touching.