Week 22 - Smoked Gouda and Dill Havarti, with Byron and Dominic

God bless Byron. Jill and Chris were riding down from Seattle to celebrate Chris' 30th birthday for a night of debauchery (we had wanted to go to Stripperoke, which is exactly what it sounds like, at Devil's Point, but who knew the line to get in gets incredibly long? Thankfully, Sassy's is a good old stand by). Wanting to squeeze a cheese night in, but not wanting to have to leave to go to the store, I sent Byron to the store instead (doing my bidding, another reason I will miss you as neighbors). Always anxious about picking a 'good' cheese, Byron asked what kind I wanted, to which I said "I don't know, something that looks interesting". And that he did that with the dill Havarti.

The cheeses:

Smoked Gouda: Smoked Gouda is one of my favorite kinds of cheese. It's one of those where I buy it pre-sliced so I can use it on sandwiches, but then end of eating it in front of my refrigerator at like 11pm. Don't judge me. Gouda in all different forms and variations have been talked about in the past weeks, so I'm going to keep this one pretty simple. Q: How is a smoked Gouda different from a regular Gouda? A: Smoked Gouda is smoked in brick ovens over Hickory chip embers. Fun fact! Did you know the local Dutch pronunciation is "How-da"? So many "how's your sandwich?" "It's Goud-a" down the drain.

Dill Havarti: Now, I don't know much about dill, or how and when to use it, but I feel like the answers should be 'sparsely' and 'not very often'. I talked about Havarti in week 12, so I'm just going to skip over that and go straight for this dill's jugular. What has it any business doing in cheese? I literally had one bite and that was enough to totally turn me off to it. Dominic as well. It's not even the Havarti's fault. It's doing the best it can. Dill is just a terrible taste demon. I kept thinking I should try another bite, at least for the scientific method's sake but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Sorry Byby (who begrudgingly had a few more bites before throwing in the towel too. Who knows, maybe he ended up using it in a dish or something).