Cheese, Glorious Cheese!

Lately, I've been thinking alot about cheese, thanks to The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project and the public library. And probably the Tillamook Cheese factory, which we have visited several times.

The Cheese Project got me interested in several recommended cheese books and the public library kindly supplied said books for my perusal.

There are so many different types of cheese! Who knew? Growing up in the midwest, cheese was either swiss, cheddar, cottage, ricotta or mozzarella. You could pretty much count on there being cottage cheese in our fridge, but the cheddar was mostly there at Christmas time, when Dad was gifted (blessed) with a largeish black-waxed white extra sharp cheddar from Canada. Heavenly stuff! Cream cheese was good for cheese cake or dried beef rolls, but not much else. I never saw a bagel until I was an adult. Dad was not much for "ethnic" food, unless it was brown beans and lingon berries. Swiss showed up once in a while, to put on sandwiches. We often had that pseudo-cheese that comes in a plastic envelope that you have to peel off. Ick on that stuff! Cheese of other types I do not remember being in our fridge, except possibly in salad dressing.

It's interesting how cheese is referenced in everyday life, as in "cheese it, it's the fuzz". Well, ok, not my life. But there's also "cut the cheese", "big cheese", "say cheese" and "that's so cheesey".

But anyway, a couple of the books I picked up at the liberry are guidebooks to artisan cheese makers. Once we planned out our summer route, I started checking for artisan cheese makers along the way.

We will be stopping at a cheesery in Wisconsin, hello, Cheese Heads! Then there's one in Iowa we may be able to get to, depending on the state of the road, and one near Missoula, Montana. And that looks like the extent of cheese for this trip. How nice it will be to have some hand-crafted cheese in the saddlebags for our snack breaks! I will have to remember to pack a cheese knife.

I could not find any artisan cheese makers in North Dakota, although I did find the North Dakota Cheesemakers Association, so one assumes there must be cheese makers out there somewhere. I wrote to the association and perhaps I will get an answer and find some tasty cheese in North Dakota after all. They have more cows than people there, so there must be cheese makers.

The new Puget Consumer Co-op in Edmonds has a nice cheese section and we picked up a couple of teensy blocks for sampling. One is Gjetost, a Norweigan cheese without which breakfast apparently would not happen in Norway. The other sample is Carr Valley Gouda. Carr Valley Farms is in Wisconsin. I've also got a bigger piece of paneer from Apel Farms. That one is an organic, raw milk cheese, made up in Lynden. Perhaps later tonight we'll sample the Gjetost and the Gouda. You could hardly find cheese more different than those two! They also had a large, large wheel of Queso Blanco from up around Bow, WA, but it was way too big for us to use up, as much as I love Queso Blanco.

We also bought some Nancy's cream cheese. It's more spreadable than Philly, and has only 35 mg of salt. Since it's naturally cultured and made with goat's milk, it has less fat and is more tart than Philly but pretty much the same mouthfeel. I quite like it.

I'm going to be trying all sorts of cheeses, but have not had much experience with different types, so, what's your favorite cheese?