Category: Food

For years I have been a tepid supporter of the state of CT. To me it’s summed up in its choice for state bird: the American Robin. How… unoriginal*.

YET! Since moving to the Connecticut shoreline my enthusiasm for my state of residence has skyrocketed! It’s like someone took a salt and pepper shaker of awesome and seasoned the shoreline with cultural and culinary gems.

Jen and I found one such gem a few weeks ago:

Fromage of Old Saybrook

It is the cheese shop to end all cheese shops: Perfectly cute and full of far more than just cheese.

They have about 240 kinds of cheese, all sorts of coffees and spices, and adorable kitchen tools and organizational bits that make home dining even more of a pleasure.

After three trips in about four weeks, Jen and I have decided to try every single cheese that the shop has to offer. We’re checking them off one at a time and I have decided to review them in a reoccuring feature called the Cheese Files.

Each cheese will be rated on its taste, its price, and its independence (edibility without cracker, honey, or bread)

This week? Fromager Des Clarines: Jean Perrin Comte.

This French cheese comes as a full wheel packaged in an adorable little wooden box slightly bigger than a hockey puck.

This cow’s milk cheese is soft and smooth. We served it’s creamy goodness warm with honey, almonds, and cranberries atop green apple and crackers – though it appears that the experts recommend eating it at room temperature with a spoon. It’s mild and does not need to be accompanied by cracker, honey, or other supporting character.

Overall this cheese was exceptional, although a bit pricy coming it at $16 for the wheel.
Taste 3/4
Price $$$
Independence: High

Next up? I’m not sure just yet. I may review the cheeses we’ve already tried or try another soft mild cheese. Either way, I can assure you that we are starting on the mild side before venturing into the realm of smelly cheeses. The potent cheeses occasionally require mental preparation.

*
more than just boring the American Robin is also the state bird for Michigan and Wisconsin. This seems such an odd circumstance considering that “state anything” should really be meant to define some uniqueness and originality. I’ll save this rant for another post.

**
http://www.thomasdux.com.au/products/fromage-des-clarines

Everyone has their go-to meals; those quick easy dishes that you fall back on week after week. For Jen and me it’s Zucchini Pasta, chicken tacos, and cashew chicken stirfry. But as someone who loves to try new dishes, I want to make sure that sprinkled in between these sustenance staples is some culinary creativity.

But Wait! How do we choose what to eat each week? For us it’s mostly random, perhaps influenced slightly by the weekly sales circular. This doesn’t seem right to me. We need a more strategic approach.

Enter Excel.

Jen and I made a list of all the dishes that we frequently duplicate. Not just our go-to’s but all of our favorites. We then rated each across three criteria:
Ease, Health, and Deliciousness

I charted these on a 3-Axis chart (z-axis is deliciousness rated from 1-3)

Honestly, not too many surprises here. We don’t bother making really complicated food unless it’s delicious. And the more delicious the food the higher tendency for an unhealthy experience.

While this chart in itself is not a solution to perfect planning, it allows us to balance a week of dinner choices across this scale. We next have to create a series of constraints.

1. Weekday eating shouldn’t be more complicated than ‘tricky’
2. Only 10% of meals can fall into the unhealthy or fatty range
3. No dish can be made more than once per week
4. Deliciousness must be maximized

I was working on a linear program for a bit, trying to have Excel’s solver define for us the best dinner solution. But for the life of me I couldn’t quite get the constraints right.

I’m losing my touch.

Michelle recently took an educational trip to Italy to learn about cheese and foodstuffs. On Saturday Jen and I got the trip review, complete with epic pictures and videos.

Perhaps most striking was the parmesan factory. Check out the insanity:

Those cheese wheels are HUGE. They are about the size of a small tire and during the forming process take two people to lift before being split into this size. Each wheel is checked by a professional hammer guy* who knocks all over the place with a tiny hammer to determine if there are any voids in the cheese. Anything that’s deemed less than perfect is cut up and sold in a smaller form.

The wheels are aged for two years before being sold.

We did a quick guesstimate based off the height and length of these rows. Our estimate? 21,000 wheels of cheese in this facility.

Amazing.

*best job ever