Calkins Creamery Pastured Paulin

(God, I've been reading "pasteurized" for "pastured" this whole time.)

Calkins Creamery Pastured Paulin
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$15.99/lb

... Meh? I mean, it's not a bad cheese, and it's better than, like, supermarket cheese, but it's not... astounding.

Old Chatham Nancy Camembert

Old Chatham Nancy Camembert
Comes from: sheep *and* cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$19.99/lb

You know, I may not know the difference between camembert and brie, but I know what I like, and I like them, and also this one.

Aged Reserva Mahon & Quickeus English Farmhouse Cheddar

Aged Reserva Mahon
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$14.99/lb

So I've reviewed mahon before in this space, but I have a terrible memory (woo! medicine!) and, y'know, it was available in small pieces. So, mahon. Mahon is a firm cheese, very similar in texture and moisture to parmesan, and it smells a bit like gouda, but while it's not a ridiculously strong cheese, it's stronger than either of those. Mahon just hits the top of your palate (your soft palate, if you must know) and almost burns the back of your throat. It's got an aftertaste almost reminiscent of banana (and you have no idea how long I had to ponder, cheese disintegrating in my mouth, before I figured that one out). It is not my thing, exactly, but I could see where people would dig it. "People."

Quickeus English Farmhouse Cheddar
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$14.99/lb

What's interesting about this one is that immediately after unwrapping it, I said, "Wait, does this cheese have horseradish in it?" The answer is no, but it smells so strongly of horseradish that I suspect something. It does not taste of horseradish, however; instead, it's got a lovely, almost sticky, cheddary thick and moist(er than your flaky cheeses, anyway) consistency. It reminds me of Seaside Cheddar, but that might just be because they're both British cheddars and both "the wrong color"; thanks to America, cheddar is, was, and always will be bright orange. Whatevs. Nice ched, Brits.

Greek Manouri

Greek Manouri
Comes from: sheep and goats
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$12.99/lb

This cheese is tough to describe. It tastes a whole lot like feta, but when I think of feta I think of chunklets that are a bit chewy, but also... full of holes, you know? And this cheese's texture is... well, it's lightweight, as if it were full of holes, and yet there are no holes to be seen. It is *less dense* than its appearance might suggest. It's like, if you had a chunk of, well, Capricho de Cabra or La Tur, and then cut off all the melty outside bits, so only the vaguely-sandy-but-that-sounds-bad-so-I-don't-mean-sandy-maybe-I-just-mean-drier inside bits remained? This cheese would be like that. Soft enough to crush with your tongue alone, but not melty or liquid soft. Just... soft.

It is very good.

Mons-Cazelle de Saint Affrique and Pata Cabra

I would like to dedicate a post to the two cheeses I enjoyed in New Orleans as part of my healthy and balanced Whole Foods-based dinners on Friday and Saturday nights. (Yes, I was in New Orleans, during French Quarter Fest, during a weekend, and I... ate at the Whole Foods salad bar. Because I was alone, and exhausted after house-hunting, and I AM NOT ASHAMED.)

So. Mons-Cazelle de Saint Affrique and Pata Cabra.

Mons-Cazelle de Saint Affrique
I gotta hand it to the cheese guy at Whole Foods. He recommended this cheese -- I mean, Whole Foods is pushing it this month -- and it was quite good and I was not sorry at all. Perhaps I should use my cheesemongers as a source of cheese information, as well as social gossip. Maybe. A little? Anyway. This is a soft/semisoft sheeps' milk cheese, not too sheepy but strong enough, and as always I recommend crusty bread if you have crusty bread in your lonely sterile hotel room. If not, well, you have the internet. Maybe. When it doesn't die.

Pata Cabra
And this cheese was also quite good, though I picked it out in classic G-fashion of finding a hunk of cheese that would not, when consumed in its entirety, make me feel like a fatass. Ahem. A goats' milk cheese to balance out the previous day's sheep-round, this cheese was delighful. You should buy some and eat it, if you like goat cheeses. And... that's all.

Capricho de Cabra vs. La Tur

So I don't have pictures of either of these cheeses, because I sort of brought them along to school and ate them with my Healthyman cafeteria salads yesterday and today, and it would've been even more distracting during lunchtime lecture if I'd whipped out a camera *in addition to* slowly licking each morsel of cheese off of the plastic it'd been wrapped in. Which I may or may not have done.

Annnnd not like it would've helped y'all much, either. By the time I got to them, the cheeses were more or less semi-solid balls of goo. Like... I dunno, sort of like brie that's been sitting at room temperature for a while. Deeeeeeelicious (and the "delicious" is serious).

Oh! Hey! I'm on the internet! Here is the Capricho de Cabra, and here is the La Tur. Woo!

So. Picture two white semi-solid balls of goo, and the Capricho de Cabra cost, I think, $10.99 or $11.99 a pound, and the La Tur was more expensive, say $19.99 a pound, and both are, of course, available at Whole Foods or whereever you have a cheesemonger you love and another one to crush on. IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.

What I am saying here is that both of these cheeses were delicious and well worth eating with a fork in the back of a dimly-lit roomful of sad radiology residents, occasionally crinkling the saran wrap and cementing your reputation as that annoying bitch who eats weird shit loudly.

And despite the fact that the Capricho de Cabra comes from goat, and the La Tur comes from both goat and cow, the cheeses tasted very similar, a lovely fatty goaty crush-it-on-the-roof-of-your-mouth... orgasm? We'll go with orgasm. The La Tur was a little stronger -- I might prefer the Capricho de Cabra for taste -- and had a nifty dry-on-the-inside, melty-on-the-outside thing going, but honestly the differences in texture between the cheeses were probably due to their locations in my bag and my bag's location on the floor before lunchtime. You know, what we scientists call confounders.

(Science!)

Soo. You should buy one of these cheeses, is what I am saying. Either would go well with crusty bread, not sweet and not too strong (I'd stick with classic baguette or sourdough), and maybe a little bit of some kind of fancy lettuce (... arugula?). Yes. That would be delicious.

(Soooo delicious I wish I were eating it right nowwwwwwwww.)

Gorgonzola dolce

Gorgonzola Dolce
Comes from: cows
Purchased at: Whole Foods
$10.99/lb

Oh god this cheese is so fucking good.

It's soft and melty, almost like brie, and not at all like blue cheese; this cheese has only the occasional small chunky bit. It's really almost mild, for a blue cheese; hell, it *is* mild. It's the sort of blue cheese you'd serve to your friend who hates blue cheese. But it's just... so good. There's a creamy bite, and then if you sort of wait and hold the cheese in your mouth (hi, this blog is basically porn, isn't it?) there's a sweet, almost fruity taste. Seriously. It's weird. What the hell is that taste? Why does it remind me of something? What does it remind me of?

God, this cheese is delicious.