Tag: seattle cheese
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Get Your Goat with Queso Ibores
One of the most frequent requests we receive at my cheese counter is for raw-milk goat cheese. While there are plenty of raw-milk options among our cow’s milk cheeses, there are ridiculously few options in the sheep-and-goat set. We recently brought in a cheese to help fill the void—and add a bit of color to…
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CSAs: A New Way to Get Cheesy
Step aside, grocery stores and online shopping. The CSA is here! You may already be familiar with the acronym CSA as it relates to fruits and vegetables. CSA stands for “Community Supported Agriculture,” and it is a way for folks to buy shares of a local farm’s harvest. Think of it as everyday people helping…
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Can Dogs Eat Cheese?
Google search trends will tell you that pet owners aren’t sure whether to feed their cats and dogs a lot of things.[i] The reason for that is dogs, cats, and other animals metabolize foods differently than humans. So not everything that we love to eat is something they should eat, even if they seem to…
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What in Consternation is a Tomme?
Literature nerds may chuckle softly to themselves at the title question, “what in consternation is a Tomme?” Even the Oxford Companion to Cheese starts its explanation of the name with a reference to words: “The name most likely derived from the Greek word tomos or the Latin tomus, meaning a cut, slice, or section of…
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Burrata: Bathing Beauty of the Cheese World
Luscious, voluptuous, silky, oozy, creamy butteriness. If you aren’t already turned on to Burrata, you should be. Hailing from the region of Puglia, Italy, this gorgeous little cheese’s name means “butter.”[i] Burrata is a member of the pasta filata family of cheeses: those stretched-curd cheeses related to Mozzarella, Oaxaca, and Provolone. Yet in a twist,…
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Tasting Notes: Métier Brewing Company Beers and Cheese
This year has wrought its share of terrible things, but one bright spot in the darkness is the beautiful foods that are still being produced for us to enjoy. Just as animals don’t stop producing milk, plants don’t stop growing and people don’t cease needing to eat—even when lives are threatened by a pandemic, social…
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How Small Creameries Hang in the Balance of Quarantine and Coronavirus
(with Links to Support Local Producers) It was a drizzly Friday afternoon in mid-March when Lynn Swanson received the call that Seattle’s farmers markets were closing. Lynn was distraught about the news for good reason: she makes sheep’s milk cheeses on the farmstead creamery that she and her husband own on about 80 acres of…
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Why You Should Stop Describing Cheeses as ‘Sharp’
Did you ever have an elementary or middle school teacher ban a word from the classroom, saying that everyone was using the word too much and you all needed to try to find other words to describe what you were trying to say with the now-banned word? I did; I remember having an elementary school…
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A Wisconsin Cheese Journey: Part 3
[This is the final post in a three-part series on the Cheesemonger Invitational winners’ trip to Wisconsin in October. You can read the first part here and the second part here.] My third full day in Wisconsin started off by jolting me with the hard, cold reality that I had already acquired a lot of…
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A Wisconsin Cheese Journey: Part 2
[This is a continuation of a three-part series on the Cheesemonger Invitational Winners’ trip to Wisconsin in October. You can read the first part here.] After two nights in Madison, I found myself charmed by Wisconsin. The landscape was not as boring as I imagined it would be, the people were friendlier and more open…
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How Blue Cheese is Made at Twin Sisters Creamery
Looking at a wedge of blue cheese with lines of blue mold rippling through it, you might assume that the mold got there by being injected into the cheese. I have heard this from time to time as an explanation to children or from one adult to another, of how this family of cheeses is…
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A Resolution for 2019 That We Can All Do
It’s that time again: out with the old, in with the new; a fresh start; a renewed sense of [insert deep internal need/desire here]; time to lose weight, get more sleep, be more productive, and do it all. Did someone say “New Year’s resolution?” Now, I don’t know too many people who actually set New…
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8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses: Week 8
We have made it to the end of my “8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses” series—and subsequently to the end of 2018. If, like me, you are scratching your head and wondering where the time went, just know that it tends to fly when you are having fun—as you should be when cheese is a part…
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The 12 Days of Cheesemas
[Originally published on December 18, 2016; revised December 12, 2017.] In honor of the holiday season that surrounds us, I give you the gift of poetry and music. Tomorrow is the twelfth day of Cheesemas. If you have not yet gotten all of your Christmas cheese together, I hope you will take inspiration from this…
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Have A Blue, Blue Blue Blue Christmas (Pairing)
When we talk about pairings for blue cheeses like Stilton, the conversation tends to head toward dessert wines like Port, Madeira, or Sauternes. After all, the fortified wine plus assertive, salty blue cheese is a classic combination—and it works. But that got me thinking: If you are going to eat your cheese for dessert, what…