MARK MY WORD: PASS THE PARMESAN: SOME GALS ARE JUST CHEESEHEADS

Our youngest child can't get enough of Parmesan cheese, that grated cheese that you shake on pizza.

Bailey likes to shake it on everything, including French fries and chicken fingers. She's certain everything tastes better when coated with cheese. A little sprinkle just isn't enough.

If she had her way, she would just take off the lid and dump an entire mound of the stuff on her food. Joni and I have done our best to ration the stuff, but it seems we're forever running out of Parmesan cheese.

In her mind, Parmesan is the main course. Everything else is just a side order.

She loves other cheeses too, including shredded mozzarella. She consumes shredded cheese like other kids devour potato chips. Give her a bag of shredded mozzarella and she's ready to conquer the world or at least our back yard.

But Parmesan is her favorite. She devours the stuff with the kind of enthusiasm that would shame even the greatest chefs.

Parmesan cheese dates back at least 800 years. It owes its name to Parma, Italy, the region where the cheese was first created.

Long before the Green Bay Packers reigned supreme, cheeseheads lived in Parma. With the advent of the National Football League, they moved to Wisconsin and started wearing yellow cheese hats. They refused to wear Parmesan cheese containers because they felt it would be in bad taste to sprinkle at games.

Boccaccio glowingly mentioned Parmesan cheese in his writings in the 14th century as hungry scholars and cheese marketers readily point out.

Moliere, the famed French playwright of the 17th century, dined primarily on Parmesan cheese in his old age. Bailey would understand such dedication to cheese even if she can't understand anything French but fries.

English diarist Samuel Pepys buried documents, wine and Parmesan cheese in the garden of the naval office to preserve them from the Great Fire of London in 1666.

It's important to have the right priorities. Pepys was a certifiable cheesehead, a man who knew the importance of wine-and-cheese parties to the success of a nation.

London survived the fire and went on to build one of the cheesiest empires in the history of civilization.

That English tradition carried over to the colonies. Americans didn't mind throwing all that tea in Boston harbor, but they would have shuddered at the thought of dumping cheese chunks and party toothpicks.

Our oldest daughter, Becca, doesn't understand her sister's fascination with Parmesan cheese. She can't imaging spreading the stuff all over chicken nuggets like Bailey does. Becca prefers to drown everything in ketchup.

But Bailey dismisses critics of her culinary delight. Nothing keeps her from partisan Parmesan enjoyment.

At 5 years of age, Bailey still wears a lot of her meals, including Parmesan, which often ends up sprinkled on her face.

Not surprisingly, she smiles through it all, just so long as we don't run out of the cheese.

Bailey has no interest in a milk mustache, but she's happy to be a cheesehead. In her life, there's a whole lot of shaking going on, most of it involving Parmesan cheese.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.