Wallace and Gromit

Beecher’s Handmade Cheese

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With inflamed shoulders and wrists, hobbling upon bug-bitten ankles, we  conclude an excellent late-summer pickin’ session under the old oak tree.  The creamery crowds seem more appreciative in the evenings;  we played for them far past sundown.  A time of crickets, moonglow, and private ice cream consumption.

With a return drive through miles of farmland, missing dinner (and lunch!) is no joke.  As usual, a sack meal awaits in the truck.  One Honeycrisp (Malus pumila) apple, some multi-grain sourdough bread, and a nice wedge of cheese, sliced off our chunk of Beecher’s.

My tailgate sack dinner in the dark becomes a top hat affair.  With the complexity and punch of Beecher’s, every mouthful is the pleasure of a banquet.  

Cheese is one of the better discoveries in history.  Big business makes it by the ten-ton.  But real cheese?  A whole new ball game.  Like the first time I tasted carrots fresh from the soil or spring water from the hill.  Hearing true silence of a New Mexico desert.  Artisan-made cheese opens the senses to another reality.

Trader Joe’s giant open-air merchandiser is a great way to explore cheeses.  That’s where the Beecher’s Flagship was discovered – great job on the labeling and logo!

We’d been thinking of a cheese article for some time.  Peter Sallis, voice of Wallace and Gromit, passed in June.  This famous claymation series opened our eyes to varieties and passions associated with cheeses.  We wanted to note his contributions to society.  The English take their cheese seriously!  When we come up with an angle, we’ll have more about  Peter.

For now, a message from Kurt Beecher Dammeier:  By starting with fresh, pure milk from local farms and applying the traditional methods used by cheese makers for thousands of years, our cheeses are free of artificial ingredients making them just as delicious as the milk they are made from. – Beecher’s