in search of cheese

We went out to dinner with Beautiful's parents while they were here and we went to one of Beautiful's favorite places The Farm. The food was great and company was even better as we had some great conversations with Tom and Kris. We had some local cheese as an appetizer and that got Beautiful and I into trying some more cheese on our own. We went to New Season's on Interstate and lingered over the cheese display for a good deal of time. Where do we start? We can't remember the name of any of the cheese we had that night so we just decided to pick one type of cheese, in the case Blue cheese, and get two varieties. We grabbed a local cheese and one from Newton Iowa called Maytag Blue. Beautiful's Aunt lives in Newton so that seemed like a great pick. We went home and had a little of our new cheese tasting the two and talking a bit about it. I know it comes off as a bit pretentious but it was a good time and felt like a treat. We spent less then $6 and had an experience that seemed much richer. When our friends visited from Montana we gave them a sample and got their thoughts on the two. We all seemed to like the strong flavor of the Maytag blue but the local one was smoother and you could eat more of it. We are going to go back to New Seasons tonight but now we are armed with two books to help us decide what we will sample this week. Both from the library we checked out Artisan Cheese Of The Pacific Northwest to get the local flavors and Cheese: A Visual Guide to 400 Cheeses to get a better understanding of the types, flavors, and ways the different cheese are made. If you know of any cheese we should try or if you have a favorite leave a comment and let me know.