The power went out at my house at 8:30 last night, which meant I couldn’t continue to sew or watch Camelot. Before I accepted my forced bedtime I ate some cheese and crackers by candlelight and squinted out some M.F.K. Fisher, which I thought was appropriate. This is from How To Cook a Wolf, her book about trying to eat and live well in emergencies (written for World War II, of course):

“…in a time of peril and unspoken fear [cheese] is an anesthetic and can make your guests, your own self, feel slightly stimulated by its unmistakable flavor and more than a little reassured to know that it still exists. “

Indeed. Cheese in times of peril or power outage is very nice.