Think about it - pretty amazing, eh? Then ask yourself - what are you drinking with your TEA? Are you going for what babies want, what soccer moms provide, and what makes literally everything it touches soft and cloudy and vague?

That's right, you know what I'm talking about: milk. The same milk that is provided by politicians when they are exposed, so they can hide in its cloudy depths and stay safe from discovery.

Yet one single drop of lemon destroys that cloudyness. It breaks up that sabotaging milk, it wrecks the soft vagueness of baby lies. In fact it is so strong that the entire cup of tea cannot be salvaged, and must be thrown out.

But when the TEA is made with lemon in the first place, it i clear and crisp and you can see all the way to the bottom of the cup, and it leaves no place for lies to hide.

That's why you never see any TEA advertised with lemon. Never! Instead, milk is exalted. It's said to be comfy, warm, and given frothy italian names so you can pretend you're on vacation, instead of being put to sleep with lies. Billboards are made with people wearing milk mustaches and looking happy. And in contrast, lemons are said to be sour.

We must learn from these lessons. We must drink lemon with our TEA, and not milk. And we must fight off the many, many efforts to serve us TEA with milk. And any time we find TEA with milk in it, we must put in the lemon of truth to destroy the milk of lies.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who drink TEA with milk, and those who drink TEA with lemon.

What do you think was in Patton's TEA when Rommel was flooding the desert with milk? Lemon! Why do you think Washington drank lemon in his TEA when he crossed the frozen Potomac, surrounded by milky snow and heading towards the British (and you KNOW what THEY put in their TEA!). What do you think blocked the automatic landing sequence and forced Neal Armstrong to take over the controls to land on the moon manually? Milk! And what do you think he and Buzz drank with their TEA to see the danger, and avoid it in time? Lemon! (NASA recently declassified this information).

So did any of these heroes cave in to the milk threat? Nope. And neither would you, if you'd just rely on what they relied on: The Lemon of Truth.

In fact, it was only when the Brits accepted the lemon of truth that they could finally fight off scurvy and become a world power. You think that's an accident? Don't be a fool.

Lemon Cheese

Cheese! Cheese is hard, right? It takes, like, a zillion steps, right? And you have to have a cow's stomach, right? Right. Keep telling your friends that, and they'll be impressed when you plunk this in front of them.

Step 1: All good cheese comes from France. Make up a French name for yourself.

Step 2: Get a quart of whole milk and four lemons. If you don't want to bother squeezing lemons, get a bottle of lemon juice instead; the label should tell you how much juice equals one lemon.

Step 3: Put the milk in a pot and heat it--gently--to 100ºF. That's the temperature of a baby's bottle; if you splash a little of the milk on the back of your wrist, the milk should feel slightly warm. Keep the milk at 100ºF for 15 minutes to sterilize it. Don't let the milk get any hotter, and for God's sake, don't let it boil. The hotter it gets, the smaller the curd will be. If the curd is too small, it will soak through the cheesecloth, and you'll end up with half a teaspoon of the world's grainiest cheese.

Step 4: While the milk is heating, spread a piece of cheesecloth about the size of a dishrag inside a colander. (Cheesecloth is a loosely-woven cotton cloth used for straining food. You can get it in packets at the supermarket.)

Step 5: The milk is still heating, so ponder your French name again. Is it really who you want to be? Is there some other, sexier name you could have, something more evocative of your inner self?

Step 6: Take the milk off the heat and pour in the lemon juice. Stir. Within seconds, the milk should start to curdle. If the milk doesn't curdle, add a little more lemon juice.

Step 7: When the milk has fully curdled, strain it through the cheesecloth. Tie the ends of the cheesecloth together into a bag and hang the bag of curds to drain. The woman who taught me to make lemon cheese told me to hang the curds for one hour; I found that this made a harder, drier cheese. I hang my cheese for half an hour, and it comes out creamy.

Step 8: Gently scrape the curds into a bowl. Salt or sugar it to taste. Be careful if you salt the cheese, since the flavor intensifies rapidly as the salt crystals dissolve--which takes a little while. Salt too much, and you'll end up with a delayed-action cheesy salt lick. If your new French persona has unleashed your culinary imagination, you can mix in nibblies like nuts or cooked spinach.

Step 9: Press the cheese into the bottom of a bowl or a small mold and write your French name on the surface. If you have enough self-control, let the cheese age in the fridge for at least a day. It becomes stronger-tasting, and if you salted it, it becomes distinctly saltier. My homegirl Lacewing adds, "Surprisingly, to sweeten it, just add a drop or two of vinegar. Yeah, sounds weird, but it'll make it sweeter if you let it age. Literally JUST a drop or two. More than that will make it SWEET, or powerbomb vinegar." She says that vinegar can be fun, but she giggled right after she said that, so play at your own risk.

Step 10: Unmold and serve on a small plate garnished with a slice of lemon and a sprig of whatever, or eat it right out of the bowl like a barbarian. It's rrrrrrrrreally good on crackers. If you don't salt it, it also makes amazing lemon cheesecake.

Cheese is, to put it lightly, not a traditional Japanese food. If you want to give your lemon cheese that Japanese flair, you could, um, I dunno, dye a little ball of it red and stick it in the center of the bowl of cheese for an ever-popular "rising sun" presentation. Or dip pocky in it. Or press it in a "Hello Kitty" rice mold. The world is your limit! ...so long as you stick to, uh, Japan.

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