Why are these plain cheeses my favorites for this month? Because they represent an encouraging contrast to the industrial boredom of the usual, standardised offer at supermarkets and are therefore a step into the right direction, especially in the context of the post-communist consumption binge that is (for understandable reasons) still widespread in Albania. At the same time I am aware how risky it is to write about kaçkavall. Not only in Albania, but between the Caucasus and the Adriatic Sea just about everybody seems to have a different view on this, claiming it – under all kinds of slightly different names – as their own, in its true and only and historic form (something that pertains to many things in Albania – or rather the whole of that region).