“Cheese is just preserved milk”
I was so excited when my friend Jo told me there would be a Cheese Event at the Durham East Branch library. Yay, cheese and the library! It was even free. The event was sponsored by a grocery store called the Durham Co-Op and the theme was sheep and goat cheeses. Mmm stinky barnyard cheeses, just what I prefer!
We visited Asheville, NC, a few weeks back with our friend Doris. While we were coming up with ideas for the trip, I searched for local cheese shops. We were staying in Fletcher which is about a 20 minute drive outside of Asheville. Imagine our surprise when we found Looking Glass Creamery on that list and it was only a few minutes away from our AirBnB. We chose to go there Saturday in the early afternoon. The timing couldn’t have better as the sky opened up into thunderstorms just as we walked into the shop.
When we have visited Costa Rica in the past, we noticed that most of the cheese here falls into the “fresh category” but never really put much thought into why that might be. We usually just chalked it up to which foods are popular here and that a wedge of hard, funky cheese didn’t really fit in. Once we discovered the Monte Azul brand of cheese as something more relatable to our palates and one that was possible to pair with wine, we found out the information we had been missing. Cheese is different in Costa Rica for good reason! It just so happened that Monte Azul was near where we were staying so we arranged for a visit there. Our entry will share the things we learned that day.
Brecon Estate, http://breconestate.com, was our third stop on the Paso Robles day of Wine with Lori. We were delighted to see that they had a cheese plate to pair with their wine tasting. As you know, we love pairing wine and cheese but were also happy to have a bit of food during our tasting. This tasting room was set up differently than other places I’ve visited. The people pouring the wines were indoors but we could either sit at the bar on the outside of the building or at the picnic tables. The weather was terrific so either option sounded good to us. This winery had different grapes than we’d seen earlier in the day so let’s get started and find our favorite!
In order to celebrate National Cheese Day, we found an event at a local venue that pairs WineAndCheese. This was our first time visiting Cheese Please and we wondered how we had never come across this place before? We found out that they opened just after we left FL so that explains it. They offer wine tastings on Thursday nights and cheese tastings on Friday and Saturday nights. What a perfect place for those of us into wine and/or cheese. The owners Michael and Carlos were so much fun to hang out with. They say Cheese Please offers Cheese with a Side of Men. When we saw the scrolling slideshow of the male models across the room, we knew it was be a fun evening.
Today’s WineAndCheeseFriday entry has Andean Culture, song and dance, and a cheese-making facility! If you read about Viña Florida y Queso Amasado, https://wineandcheesefriday.com/vina-florida-y-queso-amasado/, a few weeks back, then you know that we found some cheese produced nearby, at a local farmer’s market. We were fortunate enough to be able to head out to Tarqui, the village where it is made, for a tour. Our contact that sold us the cheese, Miyo, let us know that there was a tour scheduled and that we could come out and join them.