So Cheesy

Sometimes it is necessary:  I took the afternoon to disconnect and start in on some much-needed cleaning and organizing.  It felt amazing and was a great distraction from everything else on my mind. 

Does anyone else ever feel like they are constantly drowning in paperwork?  We get so much junk mail and I feel like I can never keep it all sorted!  I'm a work in progress when it comes to organization.

Leftover Mexican Soup for dinner! Two nights in a row without meetings = two nights in a row that I get to have dinner with Bruce.  Love that equation!

We ate this while counting down until the season premiere of The Office!  Did anyone else watch?

So I need to backtrack a little bit.  Before I started posting about Troy's case (I really didn't feel right posting about anything else) Bruce and I had a fun opportunity to taste-test cheese as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program.

The program was made possible thanks to a collaboration with Sargento.  It was neat - we went to the grocery store and bought some sort of Sargento Cheese, another processed cheese and some sort of cheese pairing for the tasting.

We paired the cheese with crackers with the intention of using the whole plate as an appetizer to this dinner:

It was such a great pairing!  Between the different cheeses and the meat and potatoes meal, we were definitely eating hearty that night.

I have a confession: I was a little bit skeptical about this tasting opportunity.  I generally buy cheese in block form because I thought cheese was cheese and that if you bought something pre-sliced (the Sargento cheese that we bought was pre-sliced in one of those skinny bags) it didn't have as much flavor as if you had bought the block and sliced/shredded yourself.

So I was shocked when this pre-sliced stuff actually was packed with flavor!  Real cheese flavor.  The processed stuff tasted more like milk in cheese form than actual cheese.  AND (I'm sure you've never looked this closely but I read it on my "tasting sheet" and was curious so I looked) you can actually see the ridges on the Sargento stuff where it was sliced.  Apparently processed cheese is melted and then formed into the slices and packed. 

That's ... not appetizing.  But now it makes sense as to why processed cheese doesn't actually taste like cheese.

Anyway, I was a skeptic, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to do this taste taste.  Many many thanks to Foodbuzz and Sargento.  Bruce said the words, "this is worth the extra money" after we finished tasting.  You know what that means. :)

Okay, it's time for me to bring myself to bed - goodnight!

pssssssst. Foodbuzz and Sargento gave me the funds to buy the cheeses and pairings but didn't pay me to say nice things about it.  Over and out.