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Cost: 5 dollars for a decent sized, if smallish (due to wax) wheel.

Mia: Edam is a Dutch cheese that is similar to a mild cheddar. The taste made me think of a particularly delicious batch of Mac and Cheese - the homemade stuff, not the boxed rubbish. When purchasing it at the store, it seems harder than it actually is, because it comes encased in paraffin wax. At first I didn’t know how to get the wax off, but it was surprisingly easy. I was surprised by how soft the cheese was inside; because of the wax I expected it to be harder. Since it is encased in wax, you’re getting a little less cheese than it looks like just looking at the package, so keep that in mind.

I sliced some Edam to put on crackers, and I melted some on a tortilla. Both were delicious! It melted really well, actually better than some cheddars. It would make an excellent addition to any melted cheese items. It’s a bit expensive to go overboard with, though. I might use this along with some of Mexican style melting cheese to make a quesadilla or even a spicy dip. The taste is mild, but not bland. There is a little bit of sharpness, but it’s subtle. The texture is a really nice middle of the road. It’s not hard like some of the sharp cheddars we like to get, but it’s got some substance to it. According to Wikipedia, this softer texture is due to a lower fat content than the average cheddar.

Patrick: I was astounded at how well this cheese melts. Love them as I do, most cheddar cheeses become a lumpy, grease-ridden shell of themselves if you melt them in huge chunk form - this little Danish guy melts like Velveeta but has a real cheese taste.

On the taste, I had never really encountered anything I could describe as a medium sharp cheese. Most “medium” sharps I encounter I consider yellow filler, good for mac and cheese or tacos or something, but not really a cheese man’s cheese. I accept that my taste is skewed toward the pointy end of the sharpness scale, and I don’t think anyone reading a cheese blog will look down on that.

This Edam was definitely like a medium sharp on my scale though - in color, texture, and flavor. Most of the extra sharp cheddars I enjoy tend to be white, while the filler type mild cheddars are a yellow or even orange. This was smack in the middle, no doubt about it. The texture was even smack between the hard, dense extra sharps and the more squishy run of the mill stuff.

I wouldn’t expect myself to be too fond of such a middle of the roader, as I am on the board of Sharp Cheddar Cheese Rules, a non profit cheese advocacy group, but like the very mild and buttery Derby, I suppose any cheese is bound to delight me in some way I didn’t suspect.

Except Brie. Thought I was going to leave that one open, didn’t you?

Overall Verdict: Tasty middle of the road cheese, melts extremely well. Pricey for its medium-ness, though.

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Cost: Almost 7 dollars for a very good sized wedge.

Mia: I was at Whole Foods ordering a birthday cake for Patrick, and I decided to get him some cheese. When I saw this one, I knew I had to get it. After all, its green, and his birthday is St. Patrick’s day. It’s fate! The English Derby Cheese is a delicious mild cheese, with a green marbling caused by the addition of sage. This results in a sage flavor throughout the cheese. If you dislike sharp cheese flavors, you may like this one. I tried it on its own, on crackers, and melted on a tortilla. All three were delicious. It melts really well on a tortilla, and that is delicious just on its own. This cheese has a very subtle flavor. Since it has sage in it, it would probably be very good with turkey. Try a tortilla with this cheese, lettuce, roasted red peppers, oil and vinegar, a little seasoning, and some turkey (or for my vegetarian brethren, Smart Deli Turkey.) If, like me, you don’t use much sage in your everyday cooking, this will add a nice, surprising flavor to your recipes.

Patrick: I’m somewhat ambivalent toward Sage - like pretty much any herb other than rosemary and oregano, it’s hard for me to even tell they’re there. This cheese did not change this feeling, however, this is a cheese blog, not a “stuff that gets crammed in cheese” blog.

The derby cheese is described in several places on the web as having the flavor and consistency of a very mild cheddar, with an added buttery flavor. I can’t really add much to that - it’s just about spot on.

I like my cheddars sharp, but this was still quite delicious, and while I couldn’t pick sage out of a lineup, it definitely added a little something to the overall flavor.

My only real complaint with this cheese would be that it is fairly costly for what is watered down enough cheddar that you could probably get the same flavor from non-aged Kraft cubes in the convenience cheese aisle. This may hold true for people who can detect and greatly enjoy the sage, and the marbling process that makes the cheese look so cool can’t be easy to do.

Overall Rating: great for sandwiches, good for intro cheesers.

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Cost: About 5 dollars for a very generous block.

Mia: I liked this Gruyere a lot! It’s good snacking cheese - I’d say the best use is simply slicing it and putting it on a cracker. It’s a little dry, and can almost be a little gritty, but this didn’t bother me. As far as other ways to serve it, I did try it in a quesadilla yesterday, along with both mild and sharp cheddar, and that was delicious. If using it in a recipe, I would use a more common cheese as the base, and use the gruyere to add a little accent flavor. I would like to try this cheese along with some cheddar in a sandwich, especially a cold sandwich with lots of toppings, like a sub. This would be a good cheese to try if you’re stuck in an American-Slices-and-swiss rut, but you’re afraid of funny smelling cheeses with funny sounding names. I will say that it has taken Patrick about a week to get me to pronounce Gruyere properly!

Patrick: I’m usually not a fan of swiss cheese. I know it sort of has the dominance of cheese iconography, with the hole-laden wedge and whatnot, but even from a young age I avoided swiss cheese on things like sandwiches. It always seemed kind of rubbery and dry, and had that sort of off-putting cheese stink that turns a lot of people off fancy cheeses, without any of the complex flavor payoff. I do enjoy french onion soup, but that solved both the rubbery and dryness problem by melting it over a cup of liquid, and just about any cheese will taste delicious melted into oniony soup.

I don’t know if it is a feature of Gruyere over standard run-of-the-mill swiss, but this particular gruyere was not rubbery. It definitely had the dryness factor going, in abundance - as Mia points out, it was dancing on the edge of gritty, but it was balanced precariously enough on the good side that it didn’t bother me. So, taking care of my main gripes, the flavor is its only remaining challenge on the road to cheese blog stardom, and it didn’t disappoint.

For the price, one would obviously expect this to beat run of the mill prepackaged non-deli sandwich swiss cheese, but I was amazed at the difference in flavor. This is still no sharp cheddar, but it is by far the most flavorful swiss cheese I’ve ever had. I dislike it when people use the word “nutty” to describe flavors that are savory and complex but not nut-based - I don’t know why. However, there was a sort of dry, savory fat-laden flavor to this that is undeniably similar to what you get in a good cashew or other fatty nut. While I only had it on its own and with crackers, I think it would be excellent on a sandwich, as long as it was the supporting role cheese rather than the star, and it would be infinitely improved if it was a toasted or heated sandwich. Melting does wondrous things for cheese like this.

Overall Rating: A surprising hit, definitely tasty and a genre worth revisiting. Worth exposing swiss-o-phobes to.

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Cost: About 6 dollars for a slightly shrunken but fairly wide wedge.

Mia:Unlike Patrick, I am not morally opposed to Brie. This, however, is the reason people like him hate it so much. It definitely has a mushroom flavor, and overall I’d say it tastes like a solid glob of cream of mushroom soup. Which is not tasty, even if you like cream of mushroom soup. Now, I think if you were to melt this cheese into a pot of soup, it would be really tasty. On the suggestion of a Brie lover, I melted it onto a piece of toast. It was much better than just the cheese alone, but still not great. Overall, I think it has potential as an ingredient in other things, but I don’t think I would ever use it as the feature of a dish.

Patrick: For science, I decided to try this for the blog, despite my rather obvious distaste for brie. I had recently had a discussion with my friend Steve, who quite correctly suggested that this blog will soon be overrun with fromageophiles of all sorts, and my blatant anti-brie agenda would be a lightning rod for all sorts of flame wars and comment tirades. He said this not out of concern for any ill effects of those flame wars, but with a lip-smacking hunger for the entertainment value they would provide.

However, providing flame bait would not be scientific, and this blog is most thoroughly For Science.

I tried to like this cheese, I really did. The sign next to it at the store said it had a hint of grass and earthy mushroom flavor, and to be honest that should have served much the same capacity as a skull and crossbones to me. It was my hypothesis that this cheese would be much like its foul brethren, an expensive way to calibrate one’s palate and make sure it isn’t losing its zero point. However, my commitment to science forced me to try and give it an objective hearing, or tasting, or experiencing - whatever word you prefer. I think I will go with “experiencing,” as this cheese has an olfactory aura before you eat it and a visceral jolt while you are eating it.

I would describe it thusly: imagine you are sucking on the exhaust port of a rusty, coal-powered mushroom collection robot with a penchant for rolling in dirt. There are flavors that wouldn’t be too bad there - I personally enjoy mushrooms, and mushroom-flavored things. And to their credit, the grass flavor was QUITE UNDERSTATED. The texture was even a pleasant surprise to me, as I had last experienced a Brie with a consistency that I could only describe in terms relating to elephant snot. However, despite all that lukewarm praise, the prevailing part of my experience was the rusty, metal, coal-powered robot anus flavor, which persisted through many many mouth flushings with a soft drink that should be capable of stripping paint.

As I said, I tried to approach this in a scientific manner. Scientifically speaking, and without undue hyperbole, never has a hypothesis been more conclusively proven in the history of human discovery.

However, ever in the pursuit of science, I once again subjected myself to this foul metallic dirt-curd, this time with some delightful basil, on a nicely toasted slab of bread. A hypothesis must be tested against new evidence continually to earn its wings and become a theory.

I would now like to introduce Patrick’s Grand Unified Brie Theory, as borne out from the continued gag reflexes summoned up by the melted incarnation of this dairy monstrosity.

Patrick’s Grand Unified Brie Theory
X * 10^21 = Y, Where X is a single particle of brie, and Y is the amount of tastebuds who die in the equivalent of a septic tank overflow as a result of consuming it.

Overall Rating: It’s brie.

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Cost: About 5 Bucks for a good-sized wedge.

Link: Swissrose

Mia: I’ve actually become somewhat addicted to this cheese in the last couple of days. At first I couldn’t figure out what the taste reminded me of. It was something…meaty. Then, I realized what it tastes like - SALAMI! It reminds me quite a bit if salami in a weird non-dead animal sort of way. It melts really well (I made Patrick a sandwich with it today and put it in the toaster oven) and its really good just by itself. I would eat this as like a main-feature kind of cheese. I probably wouldn’t use it for something where I was just sprinkling a little cheese on top, because its too expensive and you wouldn’t get the full effect of this particular cheese that way.

Patrick: I couldn’t place what the extra flavor to this cheese was, at first. I thought maybe the paprika dusted on it really permeated and gave it a spicy flavor, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t til Mia pointed it out that it clicked - it was like eating a little salami and cheese sandwich, all rolled into the cheese. Before that, though I was definitely ranking this among the most smoky cheeses I have ever had. I definitely have a red-zone, where smoky flavor ruins cheese for me, and this is probably the best in price-is-right style “Close but not Over”. It’s reeeeally smoky, but the real sharp cheddar flavor is definitely there, and the paprika and salami-ish flavor are good for getting you to keep wanting just a tiny little extra piece.

Overall rating: A. Would do business with again.

So hello - welcome to our cheese diary.

That may seem like a completely absurd concept, so allow me to elaborate.

Every now and then, Mia and I will go to any number of grocery stores on a Cheese Adventure. This blog is a public diary of those adventures. That, again, may seem like a completely absurd concept, so allow me to elaborate.

A Cheese Adventure is essentially russian roulette at the cheese counter at your local fancypants grocery store. We typically choose a cheese at random, usually based on the humorousness of its name, and then take it home and try it out. Sometimes they are winners, sometimes they are brie. A good time is had in any event, and we convince ourselves we are essentially the functional equivalent of Indiana Jones, if he were more interested in reasonably priced cheese than priceless artifacts.

We’d toyed with the idea of keeping a written log of the cheese adventures, so that the adventureness could be preserved for posterity, and decided that since we are huge nerds and this is quite concievably the most pathetically asocial thing a group of people can possibly do, it had no better place than a blog.

From this day forward you can expect scans of labels, opinions, pricing information - basically a birdwatcher’s catalog, but for cheese, so you can vicariously live our cheese adventures with us. Welcome to the digital age.