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!

Sheep Cheese Party

I was going to name this post "Sheep Orgy," but that just sounds naughty.  After the Friday cheese purchasing spree at Andrew's Cheese Shop, I wend out with my friend who shall from here on in be known as "Man Who Sneers at Goat (Cheese)" and ended up at the Silverlake Cheese Store where I continued withe the cheese buying orgy.  I've spent the last few days coming down from a serious butterfat overdose.  What can I say - some people buy too many purses, I buy too much cheese!

Anyway, I decided that since I was with Man Who Sneers at Goat (Cheese), I decided to go on a Sheep Cheese buying spree.  We ended up with FIVE varieties - four sheep cheeses and a cow's milk cheese.  I swear we were only going to get one or two.  OMG.  Don't fear - you will be learning about all of them in the coming days.  In the way squirrels save up acorns for winter, I eat cheese and save up the memories for the days I can't get out early enough to get to the cheese store.
  

With five cheeses in the bag, we threw an impromptu cheese tasting party, and Darling Husband, MWSAG(C) and I thoughtfully ate our way through close to a pound of sheep's milk cheese, washed down with a nice Zinfandel.  There are many ways to have a cheese tasting party.  You can focus on cheeses from a single country, cheeses from a single style (bloomy, washed, etc), you can have a cheese from each style, etc.  We decided to focus on cheeses from a single milk.  Hooray for sheep!  We started with a really mild soft sheep's cheese, and worked our way up to incredibly sharp aged pecorino (that's Italian for sheep).  It was pretty amazing to see who different aging and preparation methods create completely different cheeses.  They all had a great richness, and a great sweetness that made the tasting a lot of fun.

Afterward, Darling Husband was overcome by butterfat shock and had to go home to nap.  MWSAG(C) and I went out for healthy, detoxing salads.

So, a few mass tasting rules - taste from mild to strong, take a good sniff before you eat each one, pick a theme (optional, but fun), and stop eating before you start sweating butterfat!