A week ago Sunday, I decided, last minute, to create a grilled cheese sandwich. With little time and almost no inspiration, I turned to a book called Great Grilled Cheese by Laura Werlin. That is when things changed. That evening, in my opinion, I cooked a great grilled cheese sandwich and took some of the best pictures of my short blogging career.

Sunday, instead of creating a new Sunday grilled cheese sandwich (sorry), I traveled to where the wonderful ingredient known as Goat Cheese is made: Mackenzie Creamery. Recently, I have noticed Mackenzie Creamery Goat Cheese located within Mustard Seed Market and was intrigued. It definitely looked amazing but was somewhat pricey so unfortunately, I never purchased any. Then, I noticed in Cleveland Magazine that Mackenzie won in the category of 2009 Best of Cleveland: Food. That is when I knew I had to visit the creamery and actually try this cheese. How can I not support a local business, especially one that makes cheese?!

I think you should now either follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook because if you haven’t, you are missing out, thanks to Google Alerts.

Ever since 2002, I have been a big fan of NPR. How can you not be?! I have a 45 minute commute so I am able to listen for awhile and hear some great stories on both Morning Ediition and All Things Considered. After reading, and tweeting, the New York Times article At Jewish Delis, Times Are as Lean as Good Corned Beef, I was intrigued to hear that NPR would be talking about the same book. Not only will they be speaking to the author of Save the Deli, David Sax, but they will also be sharing America’s deli stories. Pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

I really am not sure why it has taken me two weeks to write this entry, but it has and I apologize. Thankfully I took notes on each cheese so I would not forget. In my original taste testing episode, I simply stopped at the local Whole Foods and picked up a few “nibblers,” or remnants of cheese, that I found interesting. I went home and tasted. Simple but good method. However, this time, I did things slightly differently.

On September 13, I spent 20 or so minutes tasting various cheeses at the local, large Whole Foods. (Not the smaller, old Wild Oats turned Whole Foods.) Instead of being forced to choose from only the nibblers, we (my mom, dad and I) were able to pick the brain of the cheese monger (His name is Jason. You should go say hi to him!) and taste any cheese we wanted. What was also awesome about this cheese tasting adventure was that there was a very knowledgeable customer also cheese tasting. Thanks to his expertise, we tasted some very interesting cheeses and went home with 4 cheeses and a desire to taste more. One cheese that I almost tasted, was rubbed in lard. Being that I keep Kosher, that was a no-no. I do wonder how that would have tasted, though. I also learned, courtesy the other customer, that a man who knows his cheeses has an easier time picking up the ladies. Is that true? Ha.

These are the 4 cheeses that I tasted, along with my thoughts.