Tag: seattle food
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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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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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8 Weeks of Celebration Cheeses: Week 7
One of the qualifying factors for a cheese to be considered a “celebration cheese” is its availability. I’ve talked about some cheeses that are more difficult to get because of how they are imported, and I have mentioned that other cheeses are only seasonally available. When you eat what is in season, when it is…
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The Cheeses Every Home Must Have
This has been a big year for The PhCheese so far. Not on the blog front so much, unfortunately, but in more personal arenas. Things have been rather silent on the blog and social media because my fiancé and I succeeded in doing something we felt would be impossible in the Seattle metro area—and yet…
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Ossau-Iraty is Oh So Yummy
Once upon a time I wrote about Mahón, and my deep and undying devotion for that cheese. I share those feelings equally with another cheese: a sheep’s milk Tomme from France’s Basque country that goes by the name of Ossau-Iraty. Mahón doesn’t have to worry about me cheating on it; I give these cheeses both…
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The Truth About Pairing Cheese and Fruit
One of the most common questions cheesemongers get from customers is a varietal of “what fruit goes with this cheese” or “what cheese goes with the [insert fruit here] that I just picked up?” A lot of people are only imagining fruit when they ask you for a good pairing for a certain cheese. Why,…
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In the Buff—That Other Type of Cheese Milk
We’ve got cow, goat, and sheep on our radars when it comes to cheese. But what about that other ruminant animal? Buffalo milk is not among the most common milks used in western cheesemaking, but it is an important source of deliciousness. Perhaps the most famous of all buffalo milk cheeses to American audiences is…
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Trick-or-Treat! Don’t Forget the Cheese (Platter)
Whether you are heading out for an early evening of trick-or-treating with some tiny humans or staying in to hand out candy, Halloween is an excellent night for a cheese platter. And no, it’s not too late to throw something together, even if you are at work during all of the daylight hours. After all,…
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Up Your Dinner Game with These Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes
It’s not just decorative gourd season, it’s melty cheese season. And boy, is it ever. Last week, I extolled the merits of Switzerland’s tiniest mountain cheese, the mighty-smelling Tête de Moine. He’s just one of many cheeses waiting to grace your table in liquefied form with drippy deliciousness. There’s also Raclette, Morbier, Emmental, Gruyere, Comte,…
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Three Reasons to Treat Yo-self to a Cheesemaking Class
About a year and a half ago, we hired a new baby cheesemonger named Janna at the shop I worked at in West Seattle. One of her previous cheese qualifications was that she had taken a cheesemaking workshop from another local grocery store, PCC Community Markets. Listening to Janna talk about the class, it seemed…
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German Cheesecake: Revisited
It seems to be cheesecake week here in Seattle. Not only did I have a hankering to bake one on my days off this week, but now I hear one of my friends is baking one for her anniversary this weekend, too. I posted a very solid recipe for German-style cheesecake last December. Since I…
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A Tale of Cheese as Old as Time
Not too long ago, one of my dear readers submitted a question to the blog (something anyone can do, by the way; it’s nice to get a message from someone who isn’t a spambot). That question was as follows: Can a cheese be too old to eat? The question was prompted by the video I…
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Notes From the 2017 Washington Artisan Cheesemakers’ Festival
September is that time when the summer heat begins to dissipate, when people become suddenly excited about impending autumn and pumpkin spice lattes, and when the cheesemakers of Washington State come together for their yearly expo. The Washington Artisan Cheesemakers Festival, which is held annually in the Seattle Design Center, gives people the chance to…
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Grand Ewe’s One Tough Gouda
Okay, okay. I’ve definitely gotten the memos from my readership that this blog needs MOAR VIDEOZ. And so I took some time out of my busy workday of managing a cheese shop to stop and cut the cheese–and film it for y’all. (And no, mom, I did not “glam it up” for this one. This…
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Burrata: The Dumpling of Cheeses
Burrata and I have had a complicated relationship since my time in the cheese biz. That’s because it hasn’t always sold the way it was expected, or at least hoped, to sell. In the first cheese shop I worked at, I didn’t really understand what Burrata was. I stocked the few cases we received, it…