So, in the last blog post, I briefly mentioned gourmet mac and cheese. I did not go on for several paragraphs about how the cheese was handmade, then aged for a full year before being melted over fresh pasta, and what a glorious, savory thing the final result was. I won’t go on for paragraphs about the mac and cheese in this blog post, either, but suffice it to say that it was very good. Very, very good.
Like, make me weak in the knees thinking about it good.
But this post is about the cheese – all of the cheese! Beecher’s Handmade Cheese is exactly as their name advertises – handmade cheese. And you know it’s handmade because the far wall of their shop is nothing but windows, looking in on the work floor. Two giant metal vat await the organic farm-fresh milk to be poured in and mixed. As Layne and I sat on the milk-can stools by the window, enjoying our amazing mac and cheese, we watched that milk curdle, the curds stacked after they’d drained a little, and then the blocks of curds be stacked yet again, letting gravity do most of the work of squeezing the excess whey from the cheese.
If that description of the cheese-making process sounds boring at all to you, let me tell you that it absolutely wasn’t!! We were riveted. Oh, we both are from Saskatchewan, and thus have seen the inside of a milking barn before. Neither of us was ignorant of how the process worked. But to actually watch the milk metamorphose into a vast sheet of rubbery curds was fascinating.
If you are ever lucky enough to find yourself at Beecher’s, please set aside a couple of hours to enjoy watching the process. Oh, and order a bowl or two of the mac and cheese for me, please!!!
thisfox Says:
Briiiiillliiiiiaaaaant!
Dinner and a show! And both of such high quality.
Rai Says:
Wow, that place sounds amazing… damn my lactose intolerance…
LoneHowler Says:
Oh yeah I know that place, it was fun to watch. I’ll have to make a point of get a bowl of mac and cheese next time I’m down
Emma Says:
*droolssss* OMG that sounds sooooooooo divine….. It must totally have like plusses.. To what ever D&D category you can think of…
Bard Says:
This magical place…is in Seattle, right?
PedroSteckecilo Says:
Yeah… that sounds very, very good.
Alina Says:
Bard – yes, it’s in the middle of the Pike Place Market, in Seattle.
Dudley Says:
I just started working in the cheese department at my job, so this was highly amusing to me. 🙂
I wish I could make cheese by hand! Cheese and beer. Then I’d be set.
istatalnara Says:
Forget cake or pie… nothing, and I mean NOTHING, beats cheese.
And in a totally unrelated bit to this comic… I finally went to a place that had bubble tea, after I had been craving it from your comic! THEY WERE OUT OF THE STRAWS! It makes me want to bawl…. especially since I’m back in Utah now and there are no places to get any good bubble tea.
Tamarisk Says:
Speaking of bubble tea, I’ve found a store that sells the bubbles for making tea at home, but I still can’t figure out where to get the straws.
Damien Sim Says:
Replying to Tamarisk’s post about the straws… I find it really funny how some things like straws for bubble tea are kind of hard to find in the US… here in Thailand, I think you can find them at the nearest Macro (similar to Costco over there). I guess people tend to take things for granted. Over in the US, you could walk into Radio Shack and buy the electronic parts you need for a DIY project. For me in Thailand, I would have to trek across the whole of Bangkok (not an easy feat… the place I want to get to is quite obscure, and I might have to deal with the anti government protesters, and the insane traffic as well as a language barrier) just to find out if they have the parts available 😀
But I really do hope you findd the straws you are looking for