It was Charles de Gaulle who famously said

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

So lets take that concept to cheese crackers. In the U.S., if you buy cheese crackers, it’s probably cheddar. (There are more choices very recently.) Here there are a few more choices. When we lived (briefly) in Grenoble a few years ago, we became fans of this brand of crackers. You don’t get just a cheese cracker. You get a cracker made with a specific certified AOP* cheese–Compté from the Alps, Parmesan from Parma in Italy, Gorgonzola from Northern Italy, and Beaufort from the French Alps. It may not be 246 varieties. Yet. And they are not all from France. But we love having the choice.

Our first dinner consisted of snacks from the local grocery store (50 paces). It accomplished its purpose, helping us to stay awake until a respectable hour.

*Appellation d’origine protégée–from the Michel et Augustin website:

a certification given to products of VERY high quality [and to signify] that each product is made in a specific geographical region, with local ingredients, and according to age-old tradition and know-how