Tag: cheese education

  • Reasons Why Red Hawk is Hot

    Reasons Why Red Hawk is Hot

    This week’s cheese of the week is a special little guy I picked up in California, its native homeland. The cheese’s name is Red Hawk, and its birth was totally accidental. Red Hawk is a washed-rind triple-cream. It was born out of Mt. Tam, which is Cowgirl Creamery’s organic triple-cream soft-ripened cheese. Mt. Tam was…

  • Musings on an Intensive Three-Days of Cheese

    Musings on an Intensive Three-Days of Cheese

    In a bright, naturally lit room lined with six long black tables and headed by a podium, each of the 14 places set at the table is a clockface made of cheese. Three beers headline the place settings, and the tables are strewn at their edges with folders, notepapers, pens, and those folded name placards…

  • Everything You Didn’t Realize You Needed to Know About Irish Cheeses

    Everything You Didn’t Realize You Needed to Know About Irish Cheeses

    Somebody (my mom) asked me last week if I was going to write any posts about Irish cheeses leading up to St. Patrick’s Day (I was planning to). Since we don’t carry many varieties of Irish cheese in my shop, I was concerned that I wouldn’t have much to write. In truth, the only cheeses…

  • Upcoming: Three Days of Cheese!

    Upcoming: Three Days of Cheese!

    There’s this wonderful thing in the Bay Area called The Cheese School of San Francisco. They offer classes and tastings year-round, but twice a year they offer a three-day intensive course for cheese professionals. It just so happens that two very lucky Seattle cheesemongers are attending the school’s March course, and I happen to be…

  • What Makes a Cheddar Cheddar?

    What Makes a Cheddar Cheddar?

    I’ve been writing a fair amount about cheddars on here over the past few weeks. It’s a category of cheese that deserves a lot of attention, if only to match its huge presence in the Anglophone foodscapes. After originating in the tiny corner of Somerset and flourishing among the great English cheeses, Cheddar spread not…

  • A Cheese I Cantal Love Enough

    A Cheese I Cantal Love Enough

    It’s not enough for the French to have 6,000 types of native cheeses. They have to compete with the English on the one cheese that couldn’t get more English: cheddar. That’s right; the French have a cheddar, too. And it’s delicious. Really, ridiculously delicious. Sure, it’s not really a cheddar—and the French would probably not…

  • Clothbound Cheddars: Unveiled

    Clothbound Cheddars: Unveiled

    We all know what cheddar is; we’ve seen it, we’ve eaten it, we (most of us) like it. But while the name “cheddar” already conjures a place (England), a process (cheddaring), and a style of cheese (duh), the types of cheddars are diverse—adding layers of meaning to a common term. Today I’m interested in just…

  • Cow, Sheep, Goat: What’s in a Milk?

    Cow, Sheep, Goat: What’s in a Milk?

    Milk is milk, is milk, right? Well, no. All milk serves the same basic purpose of nourishing a mammal’s young, but how that milk accomplishes its goal is different for each animal. Cheeses made from cow’s milk are perhaps the most prevalent in the United States, but goat’s milk cheeses and sheep’s milk cheeses are…

  • Teaching a Baby to Walk–Er, Crack

    Teaching a Baby to Walk–Er, Crack

    Cheesemongering isn’t exactly the most common profession. In other words, there aren’t that many of us. It’s an exciting occasion when a new one comes along. But more often than not, you have to create cheesemongers; mold them and shape them, as it were. We just got a new baby cheesemonger, as we like to…

  • Just How Are Brie and Camembert Different?

    Just How Are Brie and Camembert Different?

    A question that comes up a lot in the shop is, “what’s the difference between Brie and Camembert?” Typically, it starts out by someone holding up a small wheel of camembert while asking, “is this Brie?” The response of, “Nope, that’s a Camembert” is what gets the inevitable conversation going. Brie and Camembert are both…

  • Adventures in Home Cheesemaking

    Adventures in Home Cheesemaking

    [metaslider id=536] Last summer, we put up a display that included some Urban Cheesecraft cheesemaking kits and some books on cheesemaking. I felt compelled to try out the deluxe kit at home, not just to make sure I could accurately sell the kits or help customers troubleshoot, but also out of a genuine interest in…

  • 12 Books to Kickstart Your Weekend Reading Plans

    12 Books to Kickstart Your Weekend Reading Plans

    I am often asked what some good books are for people who love cheese and want to know as much as they can. The people asking are sometimes cheesemongers, sometimes customers, and sometimes random people amused by my obsession with cheese. So I’ve compiled a shortlist of titles that are a good starting place for…

  • A Cheesy New Year’s Resolution We Can All Get Behind

    A Cheesy New Year’s Resolution We Can All Get Behind

    New Year’s resolutions are something we either make or make fun of (you know it’s true). I’ve started viewing them as “goals you make at the beginning of the year with a check-in date of 365 days from now” rather than as “new year’s resolutions.” No matter what you call them, many people do set…

  • 15 Meats and Cheeses You’ve Been Saying Wrong

    15 Meats and Cheeses You’ve Been Saying Wrong

    Working in a cheese shop in a grocery store, you encounter a lot of different kinds of people. Some know more about cheese and charcuterie than others, some cook more or travel more, some are more educated, some are more adventurous, and some just want Velveeta or American cheese. It’s a mixed bag. Over time,…