Photograph from neoterra on Flickr Leave it to the French to spend their hard-earned tax dollars sponsoring wine and cheese parties here in the U.S and around the world. Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French government, along with a handful of wine and cheese producers, is spending over $2 million to sponsor these parties in order to "show that French cuisine can be relaxed." If you want a chance to have the French pay you to throw a party, head on over to the contest form at houseparty.com. One thousand winners will get a 15 percent discount on certain French wines and receive a free gift when ordering French cheeses from specified websites. Okay, so... More

Editor's note: On Thursdays, Babbo pastry chef Gina DePalma checks in with Seriously Italian. After a stint in Rome, she's back in the States, channeling her inner Italian spirit via recipes and intel on delicious Italian eats. Take it away, Gina! Pecorino from Pienza tastes different from that made in Maremma, which is distinctive from what you find in Chianti, and so on. My mouth is watering for Pecorino Toscano this week, probably because I featured it in the dessert I prepared at the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Festival last weekend. Not that I needed a reminder—we’ve always featured this DOP (Denominazione di Origine Protetta, or Protected Designation of Origin) sheep’s milk cheese on our menu at Babbo, and... More

"This is not really the same thing as the government subsidizing (i.e. naturally inflating) the cost of corn, or soybeans." Photograph courtesy of Grafton Village Cheese In these tough economic times, it must be difficult for companies to take the long view on things. Especially one like Grafton Village Cheese, larger than many small-scale artisan producers but still tiny compared to the struggling giants making news on Wall Street Journal covers. But by temporarily subsidizing the dairy farmers they rely on to produce their cheese, this small Vermont cheesemaking collective was in the news yesterday for doing just that. The price of milk, a commodity traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, has fallen almost 40 percent in just one year... More

Photograph from katebornstein Your favorite cheese snack multiplied by your favorite nerdy wordy board game. Kellogg launched Cheez-It Scrabble Junior in January, and it's supposedly hitting shelves nationally. No clue why it refers to the munchkin version of the game, but it's still a good day to be a wordsmith with the munchies. [via Endless Simmer] Related Sudoku Pizza Do You Use Food-Related Words When You Scrabble? [Talk] Chocolate Scrabble... More

The day before I flew home from Seattle, I received an email from Tami Parr, author of the always-informative Pacific Northwest Cheese Project blog. She proudly announced the release of her first book, Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest. Oh, man, did I wish I'd had this book before going to Seattle. Largely a guidebook to the small-scale cheese producers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia, the book is similar to Jeffrey Roberts' Atlas of American Cheese. It would be perfect for the intrepid agrotourist with a strong interest in cheese. For each producer profiled, Parr gives a brief one or two page summary, along with contact information, visitor information (if appropriate), and of course information about the cheeses... More

"Beecher's is a great model for the new urban gastronomy—it reminds us city-dwellers that food comes from somewhere." Photographs courtesy of Beecher's Handmade Cheese Seattle's Pike Place Market delicately straddles two seemingly antithetical modes: down-home city produce market with plenty of local flair, and crowded tourist trap complete with fishmonger hijinks and overpriced hippie regalia. But to paint this place in such broad strokes is to miss the real beauty of it. What it comes down to for me is that for all the spectacle, a lot of the food you can get at Pike Place is really, seriously good. Other than the fishmongers, nowhere in the market is food performance as important to the experience than at Beecher's Handmade... More

It's not always clear who decides these things, but April is National Grilled Cheese Month, so let's get our goo on. All month, Pithy and Cleaver will feature grilled cheese recipes (they started with the tomato soup classic, except the soup is in the sandwich!). The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board also has some ideas. For the plastic-looking cheese fans, Kraft Foods launched a site where people can submit 50-word testimonials to Kraft Singles for a chance to win freebie coupons. On April 25, there's a Grilled Cheese Invitational happening in Los Angeles (the seventh annual, mind you). New categories this year include: the Missionary Position (standard bread, cheese, and butter with nothing fancy); the Kama Sutra (any kind of... More

Burrata can go from udder to wrapper in just a few hours, as I learned on a visit to the Mozzarella Gioiella factory in the southern Italian region of Puglia. More

"The flavor is mushroomy and even almost nutty—seriously delicious." Photograph courtesy of Mt. Townsend Creamery Last week my family and I spent some time vacationing in Seattle, and of course whenever I visit a new place my first goal is always to scope out the local cheese scene. Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest in general, has a great local cheese scene. Over the next few weeks I plan to profile some of the exciting things going on out there, starting this week with one of the best American cheeses available: Mt. Townsend Creamery's Seastack. New Yorkers like me have access to only a subset of the wide array of artisan cheeses now being produced across the U.S. Most of the... More

Photograph from Wikimedia Commons A few weeks back, JGordon left a comment on my post regarding France's raw-milk cheese war: "Could someone explain the difference between pasteurized cheeses and raw milk cheeses? Does pasteurization just destroy the flavor of cheese?... Despite the near-illegality of raw milk and its rare consumption, several hundred people a year become ill from drinking raw milk, with the occasional death. Is cheese safer, or is the taste difference very significant?" The raw-milk debate isn't going away anytime soon, so I thought it would be a good time to answer questions like those above and lay down my take on the matter.... More