Not Your Average American Cheeses: January’s Cheese of the Month Club

Yes, that’s right, we are back with another installment of Cheese of the Month Club. If you’re new to the blog, we are longtime subscribers to Penn Mac’s Cheese of the Month Club. Penn Mac is an awesome Italian grocery store in the Strip District, and their monthly club provides two pounds of cheese each month. There are four different cheeses, half pound of each, and every month features a different cheese. We have enjoyed this club for many years now, and even though we’ve been in it for so long, we still get new-to-us cheeses each month!

Also new for 2019: we’re gonna actually make it through a full year of posts. We always eat a full year’s worth of cheese, but the posts tend to fall off. But this year: we shall eat 48 cheeses, and we shall tell you about 48 cheeses. (I’m trying this positive visualization thing where, if I visualize that we’re writing posts that are up-to-date in December, we will be. Just roll with it and humor me.)

However, because we’re already a little behind (I said humor me, please), tonight, this night in late-mid March, we are bringing you the cheeses we enjoyed in January. And boy am I hungry all over again, revisiting them in photographs.

Penn Mac kicked January off with the Cheeses of America box. Don’t be fooled by the soggy ‘American cheese’ slices you got on high school cafeteria sandwiches. These were four delicious and unique cheeses.

First up was this luscious brick cheese. Brick cheese originated in Wisconsin in the 1800s, and may have been so named because bricks were used to press the moisture out of the curds during the cheesemaking. (It’s also conveniently shaped like a brick, so it’s a complicated back story, really.) It was buttery and light: there was very little weight to this cheese. We found that it paired well with champagne honey mustard and soft prosciutto.

Next up was another Wisconsin cheese, the Park provolone, from the Park Cheese Company in Fon Du Lac. This cheese was STINKY. It not only smelled stinky, it had that wonderful stinky flavor to it. It was earthy and great with the horseradish yellow mustard.

The McCadam Cheddar was next. This cheese is from Chateaugay, New York. It was creamy and mild, the perfect snacking cheddar. This one was a great pair with the champagne garlic mustard (can you tell we buy all of our mustards and dips in wine country?).

And finally, January’s cheese selection brought us one of my all-time favorite cheeses, Guggisberg Swiss. This cheese was born just a few hours west of here in Millersburg, Ohio. It was so soft and creamy, had just a little hint of stinkyness to it, and it was excellent with the horseradish beet mustard and bacon jam.

What was lovely about these cheeses was that all of them were terrific as snacking cheeses. No need for an elaborate cheese board; you can just slice any of these cheeses up and enjoy them alongside mustard, jelly, fruits, or almonds.

We did use the cheddar as a topping for chili later in the month, shredded the provolone over pasta, and tossed the Swiss into an omelette or two.

And of course, the littlest cheese-taster (and official notetaker of 2019) loved every bite she had. Check out these cheeses down the Strip District on your next visit!