So this cheese is good. It's very mild, sort-of cheddary but softer than, I dunno, your standard grocery store brick. Probably would be good in your kids' sandwiches. You know, your imaginary kids? Yeah, those.
So this cheese? Kind of fell apart? When I took it out of its wrapper? It is supposed to look like this?
This is a pretty good cheese in the runny-on-the-outside, flaky-on-the-inside family. Not too sheepy.
This cheese is... interesting. Innnnnnnteresting.
Is there actually a difference between camembert and brie?
Anyway. This cheese was pretty good. But then I am kind of a camembert/brie fan.
I have no idea why this pecorino is so cheap, because it is the best pecorino I have ever had. Not too salty, just-right flaky... flavorlicious.
So Jarlsberg. Turns out, it is *not* a fancy cheese, but one of those sandwich cheeses my mom never bought. Which is unsurprising, because my mom bought exactly two sandwich cheeses: cheddar (for my brother) and muenster (for me). Leading to two of the sandwiches that carried me through elementary school, middle school, and high school: cheddar cheese with butter on challah bread, and muenster cheese with butter on challah bread.
Also this cheese. This cheese is *amazing.* I mean, I liked the rindy bits better than I liked the non-rindy bits -- just a little crunchier and saltier -- but that's more or less how I feel about all cheeses ever, so, eh. Anyway. Delicious, sheepy cheese that is not too sheepy, because god knows I have said enough times that I hate sheepy cheeses. (Did you hear me? I HATE SHEEPY CHEESES.) (But not this one!)
Oh this cheese is so good you should go out and buy some now, okay?
This cheese smells like feet. No, worse; it smells like gangrene. No, really; it smells like something rotting in the sun. It is *awful.*
Alright, so I did like this cheese, but I have a quibble (... can "quibble" be a noun?) with cheese-makers everywhere: Why must you coat your perfectly-good milk byproduct with an *obscene* amount of pepper? Why? I mean, I did just eat a ton of pineapple so my mouth is a little... sensitive (as in, bleeding), but this is a shit-ton of pepper on top of perfectly good mild, dry-firm goat cheese. A *shit ton* of pepper. A *my nose is running* of pepper. A *run to the fridge for a bottle of water* of pepper. A *the back of my throat is burning so hard I need to pee* of pepper.
I really liked this cheese. It tastes like swiss cheese, but *better* than swiss cheese. I mean, not that I am some kind of expert on swiss cheese of the non-supermarket variety, but anyways. Think swiss cheese, but without the giant holes, and denser and less wet, like swiss crossed with parmigian in texture. It's just got a really great flavor, this cheese. (Also: Made local! In case you care about such things! Which, not really, but: Field trip?)
So this cheese is... meh? I guess. It has a little bit of that foot-taste going, but so mild you don't have to notice it if you don't want to. Soft, on the verge of melty; it's not utterly formless, like brie, but with very little effort (and a spoon) you could mash it down onto your panino without damaging the bread. Anyway. Eh, I guess? And also, I have no class?
This cheese is pretty okay. It's got a nice sticky chewy-ness to it; go figure, it ranks with your traditional sandwich cheeses (... muenster?) on the hardness/wetness scale. (Um, that was surprisingly sexual. HARD. WET. AMERICAN. CHEESE.) I'm searching the archives, though, because I swear I've had a very similar cheese before, and recently... but maybe I just mean I *sampled* this cheese somewhere, so there's not an entry for it. Anyways. This cheese: Okay, not great, I'd probably want to do something with it if I had to serve it to the queen.
So mostly I want to talk about this cheese because its label alerted me to the existence of "microbial rennet," which is what vegetarians (and kosher-types?) can use to make cheese when they don't want their cheeses to contain delicious, delicious baby cow stomach. Hooray for science! (Except that some vegetarians apparently don't even think fake rennet is good enough, because... um, "Somehow, cutting a calf's stomach into pieces to create cheese, or inserting a calf gene into bacteria and yeast to produce bioengineered cheese is not very appealing." Wait, how are those *at all* the same thing?) (Oh, and now I totally want a campaign banner that says "LITVAK PALATE: ENFORCING MICROBIAL SLAVERY SINCE 2008.")
... Damn. Damn, this is a good cheese. You know, I love me some pecorino -- like I said, parmigian's saltier sheep-cousin -- but damn, maybe I have been buying the wrong type all along. Because damn, this one is salty but not too salty and just a hint of sheepy but not actually sheepy, like the memory of sheep or a lamb in the daisies. (And are there two poems that reference lambs in the daisies? because I feel like only one is about death.) Vote "yes" on proposition "this cheese," kids. And if you don't like it you are wrong.
Now this? This is a good cheese. A solid "medium" on the hardness scale, somewhere around muenster but of course tasting nothing like it, and maybe it'd be softer, even somewhat spreadable, if you didn't eat it straight out of the fridge like (cough, cough) some. Anyway. Good solid goaty flavor but not too goaty, and the rind (chew-licious) has a good sour tang that's not foot-ish. HOORAY GOOD CHEESE. Also would pair well, I'm guessing, with apple butter.
A firmer cheese with air pockets, dry-ish rather than sandwich-cheese-wet. This cheese is also mild, but it's a *better* mild than yesterday's. I dunno; I guess there's just a hint of sheep-ish that means that the cheese has some flavor, but not, like, overwhelming sockfoot. Once again I have the urge to combine it with rosemary and olive oil.
I'll be honest. I bought this cheese entirely because it is unnaturally orange. I mean, look at it! Only extra-sharp Wisconsin cheddar is that color, and that's because the kindly Wisconsinites add orange dye to it to warn us fellow Americans that THIS PRODUCT HERE MIGHT HAVE TASTE. CONSUME WITH CARE.
