The Cheese Monger

I was hoping to start off the month of June with a blog post like this:

Today is June 1st and it's finally starting to feel like spring up here in the mountain tops. The trees are exploding with a profusion of pinks, purples, and whites. The sun is shining and my glitter toes are sparkling.

That's what I would like to write. And it's mostly true (the above picture was taken last Thursday). Problem is, that it's raining and I came home and had to turn on the fireplace.

So I'll just share what I did yesterday. There's a fancy-shmancy grocery store down in the Salt Lake City area that boasts among other things, a huge selection of the world's cheeses. I like cheese. A lot. Can you beat a nice slice of gouda on a baguette? Hardly. But Dan adores it. Even more than I do. So as the finial cap to his birthday, we went to this store and spent a while hanging out among the Havartis and Edams.

Wild and crazy, I know.

And then we met the cheese monger. No lie. That is her title. It said it right on her name tag. And boy, did she know her cheeses. She gave us a few samples, and insisted we try the Spanish Machengo with a black olive (and not the kind from a can). Wow. I can never eat olives from a can ever again. Ever. She told us about her job, her love for cheese, and how she's been able to travel to Italy, Spain, and other places around the world to hone her mad cheese skills. We walked away with a block of the Machengo and a block of Butter Kase from Germany. And some olives. Not from a can.

As we hesitantly left the cheese area, Dan said, "if for some reason, my company no longer requires my services, I'm going to become a cheese monger."