Our Love of Cheese

Image Source (the cheese we bought is already half-eaten, otherwise I'd take my own photo!)

One of our stops on our trip to Atlanta this weekend was Star Provisions, a little gourmet food shop. The reason for our visit? Cheese. My husband and I have not been able to find any really good cheeses where we live and we thought a trip to the city would be a good place to find some. We are both serious cheese lovers!

In addition to a yummy blue cheese and a feta, which we will mostly use for salads, we discovered two scrumptious hard cheeses: Rupert and Cumberland. The "cheesemonger" who helped us was very knowledgable, and I believe he said that the Rupert was a Vermont cheese made from cow's milk. It is similar to Gruyere, but is also highly unique and has a great pungency to it. The Cumberland is a Tennessee cheese and is also deliciously sharp and flavorful. The man behind the counter gave us a taste of each and he shaved the Cumberland very thinly, which I thought enhanced the flavor somehow.

When cheese is this tasty, we like to eat it very simply, with a baguette and maybe some olives or pickles or fruit on the side. These kind of "smorgasbord" late summer meals are some of my favorites!

Because we bought the cheese in the morning, and had a few more things on our list before leaving Atlanta around two in the afternoon, I carried my precious bag of paper-wrapped cheeses around with me--into a coffee shop, into Ikea, to brunch--rather than leave it in the steaming hot car. My husband joked that there never was such a prized bundle of cheese!