For The Love of Cheese!

I've already told you all about my crazy love of cheese (see here) and the wonder that is Wine and Cheese but this Tuesday was special. It's the Wine and Cheese before my birthday!

For years I have wanted a proper cheese cake for my birthday. Like this one

here

or this one

here

but wheels of cheese are EXPENSIVE! A good whole wheel can cost upwards of 300$ not to mention the fact that how on earth could anyone eat that much cheese??? (well, I know how I just don't think my body would appreciate it). Like all things that are out of my reach I lust and then I plan a knockoff. Honestly, I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before. You can make a very cute and modest cheese cake with just a few simple tools. 

1: Round cookie cutters of varying sizes. I love this set Daniel got for me for Christmas. 

2: Cheese. The key to making this work is that your cheese has to be flat and the same thickness all the way through. 

I picked up a nice selection. I also grabbed a few round cheeses to make my life slightly easier. 

I missed getting pictures of this next step because I was having way too much fun (and I had cheese all over my hands) but it is pretty simple. Take a round cookie cutter and punch out a round of cheese. Once you've punched all the rounds you can (remember to do these in different sizes so they stack like a regular cake) stack away. I made two.

"Curse you mighty mountain of cheese!" Who said you can't play with your food? Next simply garnish and enjoy! 

The blue cheese was the most difficult to work with since it was a bit crumbly but you can just reshape it if it falls apart a bit. 

The best part of punching out all the rounds is getting to make fromage forte with all the leftover bits of cheese. Sometimes I hoard cheese ends for weeks just to make this stuff. If you eat as much cheese as we do you will find there always seems to be just a little bit left over. Save these! Do not throw them away! Just keep them around until you have 1/2-1 lb of cheese bits and pieces. Then, using your handy dandy food processor, blend all the bits (grate them first if they are hard cheeses) with 2 cloves of garlic and 1/2 cup of white wine. It should go from this

to this

Just add a little more white wine if you need to until it is the consistency of pie dough. Now you've got a pliable mound of spreadable cheese that can be made into a ball or simply pressed into a serving dish like so

A warning though, this cheese is not for the faint of heart. Fromage Forte means strong cheese and it is. Especially if you've got a good blue in there. You can make it with any cheese you'd like, but I say the stronger the better! 

So get out there and eat some cheese! 

Cheers!

A Well Deserved Night In (And a New Use for Paint Chips)

As I mentioned before (here) Tuesday's Wine and Cheese tradition is the highlight of our week here and after getting another level of the yard terraced we both deserved it. Since we have been having such long weeks with this project I went all out and put together something extra decadent.

Notice a theme? What can I say, after all those weeds I pulled up I was feeling a bit goaty. (seriously?) Whenever I put together a cheese plate I like to have a nice rounded menu with fruits and meats to go along. (Centsational Girl has a good post about this too if you are in to cheese) I like to have 2-3 different cheeses (no more because it gets confusing) with different textures. Usually something hard, soft, and spreadable. Other than that I don't get too fussy making things "go" together, I just pick out what I like. Today I got fancy though and stuck with the goat theme the whole way through. (btw I got everything from Trader Joes).

The Goat Brie wasn't as smooth and creamy as some brie is but it was tangy and delicious all the same. I'm really fond of Brie with a little raspberry jam for sweetness.

The Goat Gouda was nice and firm like a good aged Gouda should be. You could definitely taste the goat.

This was my favorite of the lot (and according to my local TJ's is only around for a limited time). It is really good smeared on a slice of Pear.

I thought it was too cute paired with the "goat" wine which was pretty tasty for a 6$ bottle of wine. I like the red better than the rose but both were quite drinkable (they also have a white which is good).

I don't normally make labels for every wine and cheese but I thought I would for you all. They were pretty straight forward to make.

I took one of my random paint chip strips cut it into three and punched holes in the top and bottom (I have a hole punch that is really tiny that I use for scrap booking but I am pretty sure a regular sized hole punch would work too). Then just write the name of the cheese and thread a toothpick through it (hopefully you have better handwriting than me. When I do this for parties I print them out so they don't look like something a second grader would have written) Like so

It didn't bother me that you could tell they were paint chips but you could cut them down more if you want.

Now lets have one last look at that cheese....

MMMMM... I could eat you right now. The most difficult thing about Wine and Cheese is not having it every single night, which is why it is so much fun. It lets us have a night together that is fun and decadent but little to no work which means we can just focus on each other. We have been having a weekly Wine and Cheese for the last 5 years and we don't plan to stop. I love that we have a night a week where we both put down whatever we are doing and dedicate an entire night together no matter how crazy life is and this week we definitely needed a good break.

Cheers!