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Chief Longwind Of The North

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For those of you who have not yet tried it, you have got to get your hands on some extra-sharp Pinconning Cheese. It is an aged Colby, but created in Michigan. It is creamy and open textured with a flavor that will either curl your hair, or straighten it. It melts nicely, and is best served at room temperature. At 1 year aged Pinconning has as much flavor as a four year old cheddar.

I first tried it a t a freind's home up in Ontario. With the first bite, my toes curled, and my jaw muscles ached just a bit. Really good, sharp cheese does that to me.:LOL: It was, to be totally cliche, love at first bite.

I will always adore a well crafted, aged cheddar, and a quality Colby. But sometimes, I just want Pinconning.

There are so many cheeses I love, and extra-sharp Pinconning is up there among the best.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
For all of you aged cheddar lovers out there, I have two sites for you to check out - Igourmet Cheese - igourmet Cheese: Shop For Gourmet Cheese by Milk Country Type Texture Variety. Best Online Cheese Selection, and this - Aged - Cheese

Though it's not shown on the Frankenmuth Cheese Haus site I have purchased 15 year aged white cheddar, which was delicious, and 17 aged white cheddar that was a little too funky for my taste buds. They have many kinds of cheese there, but are a bit pricey.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
My fave sharp cheese used to be cheddar.. I like Vermont. New York and Canadian. Here lately I've been cutting a hunk of Parmasiano Regiano.
 
Camembert

We had a cheese tasting while on a river cruise through the Provence. We discovered we loved Camembert. so we bought some. [FONT=&quot] We discovered, much to our dismay that as our Camembert ripened, it gave off a powerful smell! We kept it in our refrigerator and had it in a zip lock bag and covered in aluminum foil. That helped some, but it was still pungent. None of the little towns we stopped at had markets to buy more zip lock bags until we got to Dijon.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Our tour manager told me of a market named Lafayette 4 blocks away that should have something. I found the place, and much to my dismay, it was a 6 floor department store! I found the directory, and headed up to house wares on the top floor. They did not have any bags, but I found a round Tupperware that would work. It cost as much as the 2 wheels of cheese, but we had to do something.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Kathy told me it was going in my suitcase on the way home because she did not want her clothes smelled up![/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]My only concern about going through customs and immigration was the cheese. I could see one of the beagles they use taking one sniff and rolling over! The cheese container did its job and I did not have any stinky clothes.[/FONT]
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:LOL: Cheese/meat sniffing beagles are the worst (or wurst), and good at what they do. They also are good at detecting fruits or vegetables. Thankfully we haven't been caught yet with my wheel of Laughing Cow cheese. I always pack a bunch of ziplocks. They use a German shepherd or a lab at the Cozumel airport to sniff suitcases.
 
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[FONT=&quot]Our tour manager told me of a market named Lafayette 4 blocks away that should have something. I found the place, and much to my dismay, it was a 6 floor department store! [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]My only concern about going through customs and immigration was the cheese. I could see one of the beagles they use taking one sniff and rolling over! The cheese container did its job and I did not have any stinky clothes.[/FONT]


Galeries Lafayette in Paris?

Dismay? Its one of my favorite places in the world!!!!! And it sells great cheese!!

You were lucky at customs. Cheese that's not vacuum packed is a no-no.
 
Galeries Lafayette in Paris?

Dismay? Its one of my favorite places in the world!!!!! And it sells great cheese!!

You were lucky at customs. Cheese that's not vacuum packed is a no-no.
It was their Dijon store. It was a beautiful store, but I just wanted to get something to pack the cheese, and had a time constraint to get back to the bus.
 
Galeries Lafayette in Paris?

Dismay? Its one of my favorite places in the world!!!!! And it sells great cheese!!

You were lucky at customs. Cheese that's not vacuum packed is a no-no.
I love that store, too! My wife always loved the fashion show, while I prefer shopping the gourmet food and wine shop.

Last time in Paris, we were there during the height of the mad cow scare. I remember having two saucisson (cured sausages) confiscated in Philly customs coming back. Even though I bought them in the CDG duty free shop, and they contained no beef, and were supposedly packaged properly. Bummer. I'm sure the custom agents enjoyed them. :rolleyes:
 
There was a TV segment about Customs in Miami disposing of Cuban cigars and rum. Oh yeah LOL


Customs in Miami also disposed of my tiny sample tinfoil packets of facial moisturizer. It was shortly after some airline disaster, and no liquids were allowed, period. I told the woman to give it back to me, and smeared it on my face.

A good friend who regularily went to Canada to get his beloved garlic pork sausage picked some up during the Mad Cow scare, and wasn't allowed to bring it across the border, even though it was a pork product. He ate as much as he could on the Canada side.
 
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On one if my mother's on the way back customs disposed couple of kilograms of black caviar, she had in her luggage. Luckily they missed the other couple kilograms she had packed more carefully.


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What? We're all still on topic. :LOL: Many cheeses are imported, as are sausages and caviar.

Beagles and other dogs are always appropriate to add to any topic, of course. ;)
 
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Off topic Chief? Not. At least we're all still talking about about food worth bringing back home. ;)
Well, maybe not with Cuban Cigars and Rum.
 
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For cheese-lovers within striking distance of Seattle, get yourselves to Big John's PFI (Pacific Food Importers). It's a hard-to-find, canopied door on a dead-end alleyway, but it's a cathedral to cheese. An air-conditioned glass case about 30 feet long holding what looks like hundreds of cheeses.

And you can sample as many as you like, with no pressure. One slow day, I got a complete Stilton ("the perfect marriage of cow and bug") tour from the chatty counter-guy, then we wandered into soft French, and the complete revelation of a Boucherondin, which my girlfriend declared to be "utterly knickerdropping."

Prices are not exactly wholesale, but given that they supply probably every good Seattle restaurant, turnover is high and quality is excellent. You're limited to buying at least a pound or so, what a shame, what a shame, what a shame...

And that's just the cheese counter. The place is an international food warehouse with vast reach. While you're there, grab a 25 Kg bag of Antimo Caputo "00" flour for pizza, some slabs of cured bonito for shaving into katsuobushi (and the gorgeous plane used to shave it), and some enormous jars of white anchovies, or whatever takes your fancy.

Do I sound like a fan of the place? I go there sometimes just to walk around, which is always a pleasant mistake...
 
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