The block had gone furry along one face. A blue-green bloom, close and even, the color of something that had made up its mind. It came out of the drawer cold and sweating, and the bloom had crept down two sides where the wax paper had not lain flat.
You do not throw out cheddar for this. That is a rule older than the fridge.
I set it on the board and looked at the spread. The fuzz was surface, but the roots went down where you could not see them. Books say an inch. I have never measured. You take what the eye says is safe and then you take a little more, because the hand does not trust the eye.
The knife went in below the bloom. The cut face was clean, pale orange, sweating its own oil. I turned the block and took the next side, and the parings fell away in a stiff furred slab, the blue riding on top like frost on a shingle.
The centre came out smaller than a bar of soap. Firm. Sharp when I tried the corner against my tongue. Still cheese, and better for the age, if you could forget where it had come from.
I could not entirely forget. But I ate it.
The parings sat on the board in a low heap, fur up. I meant to bin them. I wrapped the good piece first, in fresh paper this time, pressed flat to the corners.
The heap was still on the board an hour later. The blue had spread another quarter inch in that hour, out over the cut orange edge, working at the part I had called safe.