Sometimes, there are some things you just can't make up. Take for example "National Cheese Purchase Sacrifice Day." Aside from other websites that are equally as baffled by its origin as we are, the mysterious National Cheese Purchase Sacrifice Day seemingly aims to do a combination of the following things: relieve you of otherwise much-needed monies, rid your home of furry vermin, and continue the proliferation of ridiculous "holidays" that keep the greeting card industry zipping along at a racecar's pace.
Well, we here at Clean Plate Charlie seldom shy away from food trends, and in the interest of trying to enjoy this "holiday," we put in some R&D into today's blog. The basic rule for this food holiday is that you buy yourself a cheese and sacrifice it to a mousetrap. This is kind of morbid, and we wonder why the PETA people haven't launched a campaign against it.
Oh well, before we share our findings, we'd sure be a bunch of dicks if we didn't ask you to first consider volunteering and/or donating to Feeding South Florida and Hands On Broward before spending your dosh and wasting a perfectly good bit of food. It certainly is the right thing to do. Plus if you do have mice in your home, use peanut butter in your trap. It works better than cheese.
See also: Celebrate National Hot Dog Day with these Five Tasty Variations You Can Make at Home!
I'm a cheese lover. I love cheese so much I'll never go vegan. The only cheese I will not eat is cottage cheese, namely because the misnamed product belongs in the baby-vomit category and not under dairy. Sorry. It's the truth whether you like it or not. For this food holiday, we chose three cheeses: one Welsh semisoft and two American blues. We paired all of these cheeses with International Passport Specialties Everything Flatbread, some caper berries, and a very chilled, crispy California Chardonnay.
From the United Kingdom, we tried the Red Dragon cheese. It is a Y Fenni Welsh cheese made in the cheddar style with ale and mustard seeds. Coated in a bright-red wax casing, this cheese was slightly softer than cheddar and benefited greatly from the vibrant snap of the spicy mustard seeds. It's currently available at your local Whole Foods and retails for $16.99 a pound.
The first American blue that we tried was Emmi Roth's Moody Blue. This Wisconsin blue was brittle under our touch and had good, deep veins that went from dark green to off-gray. The flavor was rich and not-too-strong in the nose with a warming touch of smokiness reminiscent of smoked Gouda. Also available at Whole Foods and currently retailing at $15.99 a pound, our cheapest sacrifice in this session.
Rounding out this trio of cheeses was Rogue Creamery's Caveman Blue. This little devil is going to replace any of the Danish blue varieties on my board at home once my raise here at CPC kicks in. Deliciously heady without imposing, this cheese is soft on the way down and leaves a good orbit of aromas and tastes in the throat like the thick tail of a primed Cabernet. Maybe it won't be replacing other blues on my table that soon, since that raise is mostly a figment of my imagination and this baby retails for $29.99 a pound.
All three cheeses were delicious in their own right and a pleasure to consume. Go ahead and try them out, abstain from wasting them on a mousetrap, and contact the fine folks we linked above. Just because this food holiday has a ridiculous connotation doesn't mean we can't use it for some good in our communities.
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