Happy Post-Thanksgiving!

Happy post-Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope your day was full of friends and family, lacking in drama, and sporting a great cheese plate!  Even though all of my genetic family was hundreds of miles away, I enjoyed a beautiful day with friends, starting with turkey in the park under sunny skies, followed by a movie and a cheese course curated by yours truly.  The good part was that I didn't have to cook, the bad part was that now that I'm considered the "cheese expert" of the group, the pressure was on!

I couldn't just bring any old cheese.  The good news is, I am definitely feeling more confident about my cheese choices after six months of experimentation.  The only problem - there are too many great cheeses to pick from!  What to do?

Why, track the "Pilgrim's Progress" of course!  "Huh?"  you say?  Well, those poor persecuted Pilgrims started their journey in England (amazing cheese choices from there!), spent a while in the Netherlands (can anyone say 5-year Gouda?), and finally ended up on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts!  I am so clever!  Well, at least when I went into Andrew's Cheese Shop on that mission, they said they hadn't heard of that theme before...  Anyway, the RSVP list started out at 5 (including Darling Husband and myself).  I had picked up a Lancashire from England, a 5-year Gouda from the Netherlands, and the amazing Birkshire Blue from the Birkshire Mountains of Massachusetts (ok, the Pilgrims probably didn't get that far inland, but whatever!).  I had about a pound of cheese, which would have been fine, but then the list grew to 8 and then to 10.  Yikes!  Man Who Sneers at Goats (Cheese) jumped in with a few additional cheeses, including a Petit Basque from Spain.  I also brought along a Camembert from France.  We rationalized that the Catholic Pilgrims who traveled across Spain and France to the beautiful cathedrals during the Middle Ages were also Pilgrims (albeit not the kind that ate turkey and corn pudding with the Native Americans who hadn't yet realized that they were a threat to their very existance).

I'll be posting about a few of the cheeses over the next few days as you recover from turkey overload and start planning your holiday parties.  Are you planning cheese boards?  Let me know!