It's All About the Cheese!

The Newport Beach Public Library offers a What's Cooking at the Library series. The It's all about the cheese! event was held on Tuesday, April 19, 2011. The amazing Pamela Thomson, Cheese Enthusiast, shared her vast knowledge about this delectable dairy addiction and directed the cheese tasting. James Vorce, Wine Guy at Trader Joe's, Cost Mesa, discussed the wines that were selected to complement the cheeses.

I headed over to the library right after work to help set up and had a fabulous time with Pam's sweet, quirky, and super supportive friends, colleagues, and loyal customers from Trader Joe's. We set out place settings and arranged the cheeses according to Pam's diagram. Pam was so thoughtful, that she brought treats for us to make sandwiches for ourselves before the event began.

Here are some photos of the lovely volunteers before the guests arrived:

Michelle fitting in a quick snack before the event.

Gail arranging the cheeses.

James pouring the wine.

The Wines

These are selected wines from Trader Joe's that we enjoyed with the cheeses:

Moscato Villa Alena - Sparkling Wine: A sweet, bubbly sparkling wine with acid and spritz. So yummy and refreshing!

Epicuro Sicilia Nero d'Avolo - Red Wine: A red with hints of plum, berries, and peppery spices. Vicky, Gail, and I helped Pam pick this one over two other options the week before. The event attendees around me seemed to like it, so I was happy! :)

The Cheeses

Clockwise, starting from 12 o'clock:

Ricotta - Gioia Cheese: No rind, fresh, pasteurized cow milk. This one was lovely spread on a lemon cookie with a drizzle of honey and a sip of the moscato. I am not a fan of ricotta cheeses, as they don't have enough flavor for me, but I like ricotta if it is combined with the right sweet stuff.

Rouge et Noir Triple Creme - Marin French Cheese Co.: Bloomy rind, soft, pasteurized cow milk. I absolutely adore brie cheeses! (Although it's not exactly correct to refer to all triple cremes as "bries," like we do here in America, or something like that, but I don't care.) This one was soooo good spread on the breads, with fruit, nuts, everything! A great pairing with the white wine.

Truffle Tremor - Cypress Grove Creamery: Bloomy rind, soft, flavor added (earthy truffles, yum!), pasteurized Alpine goat milk. This one is brought to you by the same creamery that offers the equally incredible Humboldt Fog. My new favorite cheese! So good with honey, bread, all by itself ... I was in cheese heaven.

Midnight Moon - Cypress Grove Creamery: Waxed rind, semi-firm gouda-style, pasteurized goat milk. I enjoyed this cheese with the red and white wines. It was especially tasty with the olive bread and dried cranberries.

Ewephoria - CheeseLand: Wax rind, semi-hard gouda-style, pasteurized sheep milk. I love all gouda-style cheeses, so this one is aptly named. Eating it certainly does induce a euphoric state in the taste buds.

Bella Vitano Black Pepper - Sartori: Coated rind, firm, pasteurized cow milk. Pam says this one is good with salami, melted in macaroni and cheese, or with grapes. Not my favorite, but maybe if I had a glass of dark ale and some mac 'y' cheese, I would have enjoyed it more.

Barely Buzzed - Beehive Dairy: Rubbed rind, semi-firm, pasteurized Jersey milk. This was my other favorite of the evening. The rind is rubbed with ground expresso beans and lavender. I am going to try this cheese with some Vietnamese coffee and a French baguette. I'm sure it will be an utterly sinful sensory experience!

Point Reyes Original Blue - Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company: Bloomy rind, semi-firm, pasteurized Holstein cow milk. I am simply not a sticky cheese person. And I must say that eating a very small piece of this cheese with a date really neutralized the pungent flavor and brought out its creamy richness. However, I am still not sold on blue cheeses and will leave this delicacy to those who fully appreciate its finer points.

In addition to the wines, honey, and pear jelly, we also tasted the cheeses with a variety of breads, nuts and fruits:

All in all, I had a wonderful time! I would recommend a cheese tasting event to anyone who likes cheese. You'll learn so much and discover wonderful new cheeses, as well as be able to impress your friends and family by offering a delicious cheese plate at a dinner party or bringing one with you to a social event.

Pam gave her volunteers leftover cheeses from the event, and I rushed out the next day to buy nuts, olive bread, and wine to eat with my cheeses. I even ordered the cheese plate at Urth Caffe when I went out with my girlfriends on Friday. It truly is all about the cheese! :)

Reconnected

Tuesday: I spent a lovely evening helping my friend Pam select a red wine for her cheese event, What's Cooking at the Library, next week. (It's sold out, but visit Pam's website It's all about the cheese! for upcoming events.) Pam gave us a preview of the amazing cheeses we would taste, as well as other delicious morsels she'd brought back from California's Artisan Cheese Festival. The company was excellent and my taste buds were thoroughly satiated. I went home, settled in, and turned on my computer to discover that the internet was down. Resetting the modem yielded no results. I flipped on the TV to horrifying static on all channels.

The following notice hung on my door: "Time Cable has conducted a routine service audit in your area and discovered we have been providing service that was not ordered. We have corrected our error and disconnected that service..." I immediately called up Time Warner. No record of the disconnection existed in the system and Friday was the only day I could be available during working hours for a technician to come out. Three whole days without television and internet. I would miss an entire round of American Idol. The fury, the frustration, the utter helplessness of it all overwhelmed me.

And then, I got over it. I cooked dinner and read a book. I wrote a poem:

Three days offline and off-screen
and I'm pheening for a fix of the net--
connectivity and HDTV to numb the brain,
entertain, and even inspire.
Wired to watch and read and recognize other's art,
I've stood apart and willed my heart to wait--
wait for time and wait for genius,
missing the whole point of creating.
Cramming my craft into spare moments
rare and few and far between,
I've seen the dark and dismal underside of self-denial,
all the while feeding on the fiction and distraction at my fingertips.
With the stroke of a key, a press of the remote,
entire worlds unreal revealed,
and creative intentions ditched.
Thanks to a cable audit glitch,
my disconnect affected a hard reboot
straight to the root of my discontent.

Well, I do need the internet to be able to post this. And email really is essential to communicating, especially for the freelance work I do. However, I learned that I shouldn't rely so much on a cable connection. Yes, it keeps me connected to others, but often quite disconnected from myself. So this brief interruption in my cable services has helped me reconnect with my commitment to making a habit of being inspired.

Tim, the very friendly and helpful Time Warner tech, confirmed that the "error" lay in the fact that the auditor disconnected me in the first place, but we'll let bygones be bygones, as they agreed to credit my account for my days without service and I learned a very valuable lesson. Let's hope it never happens again, though.

Who Is Saint Giovanni Online Novel Blogging Event

The very talented and amazing Rane Anderson is hosting a blogging event of her YA paranormal romance novel, Who Is Saint Giovanni. She will post a chapter every week, starting today, April 11, at The Lit Express. For behind-the-scenes information, click here.

Rane has inspired me to fully delve into the realm of YA fiction, so that I can gain the courage, confidence, and creative stimulation to start writing my own novel. She has also given me the great honor of editing her novel before it is published in e-book format. I get a bit of a head start on online readers, as Rane sends me chapters in installments, and let me tell you, you're in for real treat!

Start reading to find out who Saint Giovanni really is.