In which my job is SO fantastic, and I truly enjoy it. (What a blessing, to not hate one’s job!)

Last year, I worked in a cheese shop in Minneapolis.

It carried hundreds of domestic and European cheeses, and it was really fun. I learned a ton about cheeses and cured meats, my palate evolved, and I even took online cheese classes.

I got into cheese, you might say. (It’s so much more pleasant than taking calls for Comcast, or slaving for Home Depot.)

Anyway, we’ve moved across the country, and now I work in a creamery.

I work in an actual creamery for a man who actually makes cheeses. It’s so cool! There are about three tons of cheese in the store at any given time, and many of them are truly wonderful. The coffee cheddar, the aged Tipsy Jersey, the cider jack, the ricotta salata–!

And he’s letting me expand the front end, the retail cheese shop: I’ve ordered goat and soft cheeses, as well as crackers and a couple cured meats–

Which means: we can now do cheese trays! For the holidays!

The ‘exotic’ stuff (bries, and goat cheeses, and prosciutto) won’t be here until next week, but the trays themselves arrived and we’ve already started. Just LOOK at this beauty:

(The salami is Italian, but the cheeses are all ours, and the almonds are Californian!)

I very much hope to help turn the place into THE one-stop cheese shop in the region; even though it’s a bit out of the way we’re still in wine country and on the tourism maps, and we’ll be able to do amazing high end stuff with mostly local, artisan cheeses and soft and goat cheeses and cured meats. And nuts, fruits, local mustards, local honey, local wine vinegar made from local wine…

Much of what I do at work is typically done, these days, by machines: cutting, packaging, and labeling the cheeses we produce for retail sale; but I’m abjectly grateful to have such a job that hasn’t been replaced by mechanization.

What a machine can’t do is be a cheesemonger: one of the funnest experiences is selling a cheese tray to someone who says, when you ask what they want included, “Oh, I trust your experience and knowledge, please choose for me!”

I’m going to join the American Cheese Society in 2020 and am working toward becoming a CCP, basically a certified cheesemonger, the year after.

Because I’m in my 50’s and need a hobby, I guess? One with certifications? Because I’m originally from IT, and what’s a job if you can’t sit a test?

I love cheese.