Thursday, May 31, 2018 10:46 AM

The guy in line in front of me at the cheese counter is talking a long time. It's worth the wait, though, since cheese is always cheaper and often fresher straight from the deli. I'm waiting for the cheap cheese. He's getting the more high-end stuff, ten to fifteen times as expensive. He points to various cheeses in the case and asks about them in Russian. The worker takes each out, unwraps it, slices off a bit, and gives it to him to taste. He gets everything he tries. When it's finally my turn, I ask in Hebrew for two hundred grams of the yellow cheese, sliced. The worker pulls it out and says, "It's only nine percent fat. Light." She says "Light" in English, though, come to think of it, Hebrew may have absorbed the word. She slices off the right amount. Rather than just wrapping the whole thing together in butcher's paper then in plastic wrap as usual, she gets fancier. She reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a sheet of clear plastic, stronger than wrap but more pliable than cellophane. She lays one end of it flat on the table, puts one slice of cheese on top, then brings the rest of it down, moving the top of the plastic in a zigzag, placing a single slice of cheese in each fold. She then wraps that in paper and puts the whole thing in a clamshell plastic box. I would have been OK with the simpler wrapping. Maybe she figures that the overpackaging will make it taste richer. I doubt I'd be able to tell the difference.