Annual Cheese Party

Last year, we enjoyed our first annual cheese party after Nate became interested in the wide variety of cheeses available at Whole Foods Market.  It was so much fun, that we decided to make it an annual tradition for the night before a new school year.

The boys started school on Wednesday, so on Tuesday we headed out to Whole Foods to see what we could find.  There are so many different cheeses available that all the kids had fun sniffing and choosing what cheese we would try.

We ended up with about a dozen different cheeses, ranging from simple cheddars to rosemary-encrusted romanos and anything you could imagine. They have a basket with chunks of cheese under $3 where we chose some samples from.  They are great about cutting cheese for you, but nobody seemed to be working in the department that afternoon.  I had also wanted to try some olives from their olive bar, but the lids didn't fit the containers, so I decided to nix that idea.

After choosing our cheeses, we picked up some fancy crackers, organic grapes (green, red and black!), grape tomatoes, 2 bars of organic chocolate, a bottle of wine and some glass-bottled soda for the kids.  It was definitely a splurge, but the fun of the evening was worth it!

We go through the cheeses one by one and we all taste the cheese and give our opinion.  We liked them all this year -- except for one gouda.  (We loved the other gouda Lydia chose)  We all ate plenty, and finished our meal sharing the 2 bars of organic chocolate. 

It was fun, and we all think this is a fun tradition to continue. We have leftover cheeses in our refrigerator, and will use them up over the next few weeks -- giving us a chance to remember the fun all over again!