Cheese - The Bucket List

Goals are important, right?  Yeah... sure they are!

So here's the goal.  I want to taste every variety of cheese in the world between now and the day I die.

Today I can mark two off of the list:

Cheddar
Monterey Jack

I love these cheeses.  I eat them almost every week.

If I could afford it, I would also eat these cheeses every week.  They're made four miles from here and they're fantastic.  I have, of course, had many cheeses other than these, but you have to start keeping track sometime, right?  Sometime is now.

This is the current comprehensive list of cheeses at cheese.com with the cheeses I've eaten (since this morning) crossed off.

Flour. Lots of flour.

Recently we started purchasing flour in 50 lb bags.  We use lots of it.  Why?  Because we don't buy bread.  As of a couple of weeks ago we don't buy flour tortillas either.  The last 50 lb bag of flour cost us $21.25.  I buy yeast by the pound (about $3) and it lasts about a year.  I think the flour will last a couple of months.

When we decided to buy the 50 lb bag of flour we wondered how in the world we were going to store it.  After consulting with some friends who do a lot of bulk buying, we found out that if you go to a large grocery store with a deli you can usually get large food grade buckets for free or for a buck or two.  Three of those puppies and you have all the flour storage you need.

Wednesdays are Jen's baking day.  Saturdays are mine.  This weekend I'm making hamburger buns, so I'll probably post my recipe.  I might make baguettes too (if I have time tomorrow).  I try to make the baguettes every two weeks.  Jen has considered marrying them.  I tell her she has to settle for me.

Here goes something...

I'm not new to blogging.  I've done it for about eight years in various contexts.  In fact, you can still read my sermons and occasional ramblings on matters theological here.

But life changes in eight years.  I'm now ordained, married, and have a seventeen month old daughter.  I live in Maryland.  I'm a parish pastor.  I have a fairly successful writing avocation.  I could have never guessed that I'd be here now when I started blogging then.

I don't blog nearly as much as I used to.  My world has changed and so has the Internet.  But there is one new thing in my life that I love writing and chatting about: food.  It's not that food is new in my life, but my love of cooking and baking is.

It turns out that I make a mean baguette and that I've inherited some of my Aunt Viola's mad cinnamon roll skills.  I have nearly perfected the art of frying an egg or a mess of bacon in my cast iron cookware.  Just two weeks ago my wife and I made some wonderful tortillas from scratch.

On this blog I'm going to write about food.  Some will be food that I make and some will just be food that I eat.  Most of the recipes won't come from me, but many of them will have my own tweaks in them.

This could be fun, or it could disappear in two weeks.  We'll see.