I'm hoping to catch up with Will "The Cheese Dude" Eaves, erstwhile partner in pairings.

2010 at The Cottage.

I'll spare you the lengthier prelude, but last week Calvin began plotting an excellent cheese and beer evening at Pints&union; one of his friends will be a cheesemonger at the cheese shop in the forthcoming Logan Street Market, and while tasting details are yet to come, the point to this digression is a fellow named Will Eaves.

I began scratching my head and thinking about the many years passed since I last crossed paths with Will, with whom I helped stage two, maybe three cheese and beer evenings during the halcyon period before NABC's Bank Street brewing project swallowed my life.

At the time Will was the cheesemonger at Lotsa Pasta, later taking a job at Kenny's Farmhouse Cheese -- and that's when the trail gets cold. It left me curious about what he's doing these days.

Sara Havens was not there and did not hear me explain all this to Calvin, but she promptly answered my question at Insider Louisville.

7 Questions With … Will Eaves, aka ‘The Cheese Dude’

Eaves works at Lotsa Pasta as a pasta maker and sales rep, and before that, he served as the store’s cheesemonger. In between those two positions, he left the company for three years to work for Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese as an affineur (a person who ages/ripens the cheese).

That's a "duh" moment for me. It's probably been a year since we shopped at Lotsa Pasta, solely because the shop's location lies outside our normal migratory patterns.

But the hell of it is that Will has been bringing Lotsa Pasta straight to us, and I haven't been paying attention.

If you’ve been to the New Albany Farmers Market, you’ve most likely met Eaves behind the Lotsa Pasta booth, schlepping everything from lasagna to gouda.

Double "duh".

Okay, so it's also been a while since we browsed the farmers market; perhaps once this year. Echoing Yogi Berra, no one (read: we) goes there any longer because it's too damn crowded.

Resolution: This coming Saturday we'll visit the farmers market and see if Will is there. Lotsa Pasta's muffaletta sandwich is a great favorite of mine, and evidently available at the farmers market according to the photo at IL.

Following are ancient links to previous exploits.

2010:

Will's and Roger's excellent beer and cheese pairing adventure at Campbell's Gourmet Cottage, Monday, January 11.

Recap: Will's and Roger's excellent beer and cheese pairing adventure.

2007:

Program for tonight's Merchant du Vin beer & cheese pairing in Prost.

2014:

How much lactose really is in cheese?

LIVE TO EAT: "In our era of hyper-credentialism, there’s almost no sphere of connoisseurship without a knowledgeable, certified taste expert."

This is a long read and a very good one.

Honey, cider, chocolate, cheese ... beer, wine, spirits ... I'm simpatico when it comes to expertise, with nothing bad to say about any of this. All hail knowledge, and let's all possess a certificate.

However we mustn't forget the power of stories that connect these wonderful food and beverages to the real world. Ultimately this planet is situational; the best experiences aren't always capable of being explained.

The time I dined on a baguette and goat cheese sandwich with a cool bottle of lager plucked from a buffet at the rural connecting station at a village near Pythion in Greece, consumed while seated on a lovely old school wooden bench with a great view of the sidings and rusty idle freight cars, might have been the best lunch ever. After all I can still remember it more than three decades later.

Let's not eliminate subjective joy through purportedly objective quantification. There a place for expertise, but at certain junctures it's nice just to let yourself go.

The Sommeliers of Everything, by Jason Wilson (Washington Post)

Mustard. Honey. Hot sauce. Welcome to the era of surprisingly specific expertise.

... After lunch, there is a tour of Murray’s caves, where the cheese ages. Then we’re led through the tasting of eight more cheeses by Tyler Frankenberg, the company’s customer experience manager, also a Certified Cheese Professional. This tasting is about comparing variations in cheesemaking: the differences between cheese near the rind vs. the tip, washed rind vs. ash, unaged vs. aged (“older doesn’t necessarily mean better,” we’re told). At one point we compare two versions of a funky pasteurized sheep’s milk cheese called Hollander with an aroma that people describe as earthy, mineral, “like mom’s basement” and even redolent of ammonia. “With this one, the bark is worse than its bite,” Frankenberg says.

“It smells like a sweaty sock,” says one student.

“Well,” Frankenberg says, “as we get deeper into this, we have to differentiate funk. There’s a difference between a freshly sweaty sock and this, which is an old sock you’d find under the bed a week later.”

As the class chuckles over that distinction, Frankenberg reminds us: “Remember, taste is always subjective. No matter if a professional tells you, ‘This tastes like wet slate from the Loire Valley.’ ” I’ve heard the same sentiment expressed by almost every taste expert I’ve visited. And yet, every one of these experts has a vested interest in taste being way more codified than subjective.

Indeed, what the rise of specialized taste education, the cult of sensory analysis, and the wine-ification of everything means is that taste is becoming more and more codified all the time. There are good tastes and bad tastes; not only that, there’s a growing caste of gatekeepers in every field who are keeping score on what tastes great, middling and flawed. Maybe this is what morality or philosophy looks like in an increasingly post-religious, post-intellectual, materialistic United States. We are a people in need of an authority, a higher voice, some guidance — even if it comes from behind the cheese counter. Maybe, for many affluent Americans, the sommeliers of everything represent something shaman-like. Listen to me. I am your one true sommelier.

How much lactose really is in cheese?

I'm borrowing the link from Judy Schad, as this is an important issue in the Confidential household. The missus is lactose intolerant, and several years ago, Will Eaves (formerly of Lotsa Pasta) informed us that many cheeses would do no harm, as explained below.

Knowing this has opened possibilities for her. She's still not a prolific cheese-eater like me. If not for the language, I could be a Frenchman insofar as cheese is concerned. However, it makes dining easier.

Got lactose? (Janet Fletcher's Planet Cheese)

... But here’s what many lactose-intolerant people don’t know: When milk is coagulated for cheese, 98 percent of the lactose is removed with the whey. And in all but a few cheeses—high-salt ones like feta—the remaining lactose is quickly consumed by bacteria in the cheese.

“I can confidently say that bacteria-ripened, surface-ripened or mold-ripened cheeses that are not known for an intense salty flavor (think feta) will not present a problem for lactose-intolerant consumers,” Jeff told me. “By the time these cheeses reach store shelves, residual lactose will have been fermented by the microbes in the cheese.”