This Week's Tasting Plate: Trick or Cheese?

"Dairymaid store hours, spooky scary. Milk becoming cheese, cheese becoming lunch."-- Sung to the tune of Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

If we hadn't experienced the making of cheese first hand, we would probably just assume that it was created through inexplicable supernatural phenomena. It's so incredible, how grass becomes something so fatty, creamy and delicious, surely some mysterious force must be at work. And so, we invite you to tour our haunted cheese mansion and eat something substantive before pigging out on Reese's Peanut Butter cups while watching Hocus Pocus.

This week, we're featuring one of our all-time favorites, the Smokey Blue from Rogue Creamery. Cold-smoked over Oregon hazelnut shells, the cheese ends up with a slightly caramel-y, campfire flavor that makes it so perfect for this time of year.

We're also carrying La Tur, which is a dense, creamy blend of cow, sheep and goat's milk. Runny and oozy around the perimeter, it's a decadent treat even for a cheese. Dunbarton Blue, Bellwether Pepato and Matos St. Jorge round out the tasting plate. Happy Halloween!

This Week's Tasting Plate: A Little of This, A Little of That

Did you guys know that Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta reunited to record a Christmas album? As in, this year, 2012? Check out the album cover. We're pretty sure given the angle at which they're holding those coffee cups, the beverages are just painted in.

As terrible as that album may be, we can't help but sigh a little nostalgic sigh. Remember when Sandy became a little trashy for Danny and Danny a little preppy for Sandy? Together, they were two very different yet very compatible flavors.

Just like in Pure Luck Dairy's June's Joy, where the crushed peppercorns studding the goat cheese is like Danny's leather jacket and the touch of honey is Sandy's sweet innocence (now sullied). Turns out, sullied cheese is delicious cheese. We'll have this Dairymaid favorite on our tasting plate this week along with Barely Buzzed, Pawlet and Rimrocker.

Cheese: You're the One that I Want. Ooh ooh ooh.

This Week's Tasting Plate: The Black Sheep of the Family

There are plenty of cheese-lovers out there who still don't care much for blues. Some people can do all manner of funky, beefy, salty and tangy cheeses, but choose to skip the last tasting on our plate. We're not the type to be pushy about it--what is recreational diary consumption about if not freedom?--so we typically don't shout about it from the rooftops/our blog.

This week, though, we're featuring the exceptional Old Chatham Ewe's Blue, which is not only a blue, but also a sheep's milk cheese. Neither of those characteristics is a tour headliner, but neither was Van Gogh until it was too late. Sheep milk has been a part of other cultures around the world for some 12,000 years, but we still don't see it much here in America. Sheep are extremely hardy, but those kind of survival skills aren't really necessary in our climate, so sissy cows work just fine for us.

Of course, sheep's milk is richer in fat than cow's milk, so the acidic sweetness that comes with blue veining provides a wonderful balance to the luxurious creaminess. The Ewe's Blue is really one-of-a-kind and so we hope that this week you'll be encouraged to give it a try, even if you usually don't.

Also on the plate are the Marieke Gouda with cumin, Texas Gold Cheddar, Bonne Bouche and Appalachian.

This Week's Tasting Plate: It's a Wonderful Life/Cheese

With all the mundane activities we busy ourselves with to get through the day--chores like changing in and out of pajamas, driving places and selecting throw pillows for the couch--it's easy to forget that every precious second of life is a wondrous mystery.

That is, unless you're DMX and you just discovered Google. In case you'd forgotten how freaking crazy the Internet is as an invention, let this video remind you. It takes the rapper close to an hour just to type in the three letters of his name and then his world is just completely rocked. We want to be rocked like this today. Rock us universe!

If you are similarly looking for a thrill, we think you should drop by the store this week. Cheese be crazy, y'all. It can go from grass to delicious dairy in four days. Sometimes we wish we could erase our memory so that we could taste a certain cheese for the first time all over again (same for watching Friday Night Lights). You have this power!

This week, we have the Pleasant Ridge Reserve Uplands, an Alpine-style cheese that has won Best in Show by the American Cheese Society twice, Crater Lake Blue and Sand Creek Gouda. The tasting plate is loaded up with smoked habanero Cheddar from Beehive and eating it reminds of us sitting near a campfire. Can you imagine! Thanks cheese, for reminding us of life's little miracles every single day.