These are the grazing days….

The holidays are a haze of what I call grazing days. Grazing days involve parties, Christmas open house get-togethers, church celebrations, and family meals that spread across two or three tables next to a mountain of aluminum foil tossed on the corner counter. And the one most important thing about grazing days is cheese. Yes, ma’am. Cheese.

Different sorts of cheese on kitchen table.

Think about it. Statics say over the last twelve weeks of 2023, the USA spent about 323 million dollars on cream cheese! That’s a lot of cheesecake and dip, my darlings! Wisconsin, the Cheese State, sold about 3.5 billion pounds of cheese in 2022. That means we each eat about forty pounds of cheese each year, give or take a slice here and there.

It’s tough because each recipe calls for some type of cheese. Dip cheese, cake cheese, cookie cheese, pizza cheese, sliced cheese that goes with crackers, olives, fruits, vegetables, and select beverages all crammed onto a huge board that EVERYONE TOUCHES. Is that cheesy or what? That, my friend, is the essence of GRAZING DAYS!

But wait? The SUPERBOWL is next. They call it that because of the big bowls of CHEESE we must consume on this day. Hello, queso and Rotel, lots of Rotel and other spicy additives. And chips, gotta have chips!

The Grazing Days continue with Valentine’s Day–Chocolate Cheesecake, please, and Mardi Gras–throw me some cheese, Mister! And cream-cheese-and-strawberry King Cake! Then we move on to St Patrick’s Day and Easter and Memorial Day and another big cheese day–the Fourth of July. Fireworks and cheese! Labor Day pairs well with cheese, too, don’t you think? And then we’re back to the original Holidays. And macaroni-and-cheese–always! Whew. That went by like a Cheeto being thrown at your mean brother, didn’t it?

All of this to say, I hope you had some great Grazing Days and I hope this new year brings you lots of Grazing opportunities, because most of us love our cheeses. Right now, I’m going to nibble on some fresh mozzarella with crackers and celery–just to get some green in there–and some gruyere with fruit. (And I can’t even pronounce that one!) I do know that young gruyere is smooth and nutty and older gruyere is more earthy and salty. Which describes me at times, too. And don’t get me started on wine and cheese. That’s a whole different subject, but it does require an elegant sort of grazing, where you have to sniff things and pretend you know all about tannins in wine and you tell people you flew to Pier 39 in San Francisco to handpick your cheeses. We’re still on Grazing 101 here, people. We buy our cheeses at that famous Superstore with the WM initials. But we can be classy when we want to, right? I mean, Velveeta sounds so velvet…

Maybe next time, I’ll talk about chocolate…..Happy New Year!

(Oh, and you can read while you nibble some cheese, please! I need Cheesecake money!) What’s your favorite cheese recipe?