Hey, Dummy… Feeling Lucky?
In my last entry I mentioned that I won a contest and that Culture Magazine gave me a bunch of cool cheese stuff… well, now it’s your turn! One of the cool things I got was the power to hold my own contest and bestow some cool cheese stuff on YOU, my readers!
The prize is pretty enviable: a copy of “Cheese for Dummies” by Laurel Miller and Thalassa Skinner. Here’s a synopsis:
From a pungent Gorgonzola to the creamiest Brie, the world of cheese involves a vocabulary of taste second only to wine. With the rise of artisanal cheeses, this once humble food made from curdled milk is now haute cuisine. And to make the new world of cheese less intimidating, Laurel Miller and Thalassa Skinner have created a handy primer to selecting cheese, pairing cheese with wine, cooking with cheese, and making cheese. In Cheese For Dummies, everyday cheese lovers will learn how to become true cheese connoisseurs.
Not only will readers get a look at how different cheeses are made around the world, in Cheese For Dummies, they’ll develop enough of a palate to discern which cheese is right for them.
Sounds like a real page-turner, huh? (I don’t even own a copy, myself, and this has got me thinking that my cheese library is lacking.) This book is for you though. So, get your entry in, cross your fingers, rub your rabbit’s foot, and don’t take off that lucky underwear!
Here’s how to enter: Leave a comment on this post and tell me about your best, most exciting or interesting experience with cheese. Make it a good one!
Next Sunday, March 17, 2013 (because even if you’re not Irish, that’s a luck day), I’ll select a winner based on how much I love your cheese story. I’ll post the winner’s name on the blog and also email you directly, so that we can make arrangements to have your copy of “Cheese for Dummies” mailed to you.
Don’t be a dummy, enter now. Best of luck!!!
When I was about 14 – and obsessively hungry all the time – my parents hosted a few friends at our house for a cheese party prior to a theater performance. After the crowd left I wandered upstairs, ignorant of what the crowd had been eating. I assumed that the strange-looking white blob that had been left on our kitchen counter was some sort of dinner my mother had prepared for me. I grabbed a fork and knife and went to town. Hmm, salty, sweet, delicious. I ate and ate until it was gone.
You might say “you must have known it was cheese?!” I didn’t. I honestly had no idea what I was eating, just that it was really good. Maybe there would have been a vague notion in the back of my head if I had really bothered to ask myself “is this really a wheel of cheese?” But I didn’t.
When my parents returned later that night they asked me where the cheese went. “Oh, that was cheese?,” I replied. I think they were a little horrified. But that’s the ropes, raising a teenage boy, I guess.
Can I just vote for Brian’s story?
Though it does make me think of one other one. At good ‘ol R-MWC, I went to brunch at my friend Marilyn’s house off of Rivermont. And another friend Kristen brought her dog, a short, squat terrier who looked like he might have gout–let’s call him Henry VIII.
When I went in to the kitchen to bring some of the brunch fare to the dining table, Henry VIII was just finishing off a log of goat cheese, and had been quite mannerly about it–sitting on a chair, avoiding the other plates, licking all the remnants clean. If I hadn’t wanted to have some, I would have thought that he was just an over-eager, but quite polite guest.
My best or most exciting experience with cheese? I have to pick one? Ok…..
I have friends in Chicago that like to visit the historical areas in Illinois. In Nauvoo, there’s a cheese factory. Once, visiting there, they bought a wheel of blue cheese. For the next several weeks, as they worked through that cheese, there were only the two of them at the time, every time we went over it was pull out the crackers and cheese time. Never before or since, has blue cheese tasted so very good. Fun times, and good cheese just seem to go hand in hand.
Truly, I have not yet found a cheese I didn’t like.
I once had a Greek friend who LOVED Stilton cheese, but it was unavailable in Greece. When visiting in England he bought a Stilton and took it back with him on the plane. The problem was it was a few days after he bought it before his flight and he just kept it in his hotel room. It was summer and English hotels at that time didn’t have air conditioning so his room was pretty warm. By the time he finally got on the plane with the cheese in his hand luggage it was very ripe and the whole plane knew about it all the way from London to Athens.
When Rebecca and I were in Croatia last summer, we happened to be in Istria, known for its truffles, on the day of my birthday. It was a long day, filled with driving and visiting too many small hilltop towns in a short amount of time, with a 5am bus ride ahead of us. However, one of the highlights was the cheese– truffle cheese. We stopped at a road-side stand and picked up a big chunk of it from a local cheesemaker, eating it with fresh fruit and bread from a farmer’s market for lunch. Then, that evening in another town, we found a restaurant with truffle cheese pizza, and had it once again. Not only that, we ate our truffle cheese pizza inside a Roman amphiteature from the 1st century. We were somewhat tired, but our stomachs were content and the experience was amazing (much thanks to the cheese)!
One of my best experiences with cheese was when I got to twist mozza with a fabulous cheesemaker friend!!
Actually I think my cheese exposure in the Republic of Georgia was the most fascinating. I don’t think anyone has lived until they’ve had khachapuri – the dough boat filled with melted sulguni and butter, topped with a giant egg.
In undergrad, at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, I had my first introduction to real fondue. At home my parents would buy boxed fondue (yes, it exists), which I always disliked, so I thought I didn’t like it at all. My good friend and I were invited to a winter gathering some miles from campus, through the woods, at a house on a small lake. The hosts included two gentleman who knew something about fondue, a Frenchman and a Swede. We were instructed to bring blanc-de-blanc wine and gruyere. In this cozy little house we heated the cheese on the stove with the wine and sliced baguette for dipping. Then we gathered at a table to drink wine and enjoy the delicious fondue. It all sounds so civilized, but you have to remember this was college. I learned that if you dropped your piece of bread into the fondue, you had to take a long drink of wine. That was the rule, according to our hosts. As you might imagine, the longer the night wore on, the more likely you were to drop your bread. The fondue was amazing, a total revelation after being used to the boxed stuff. But it wasn’t just the cheese, it was an experience – lots of laughter and good conversation. Cheese is definitely best when shared.