Cheese dinner

We did a cheese dinner on Wed, July 30th that I meant to discuss, but have let myself be distracted!  Before I discuss the fun time we had at the dinner, I want to share why we did the dinner in the first place.

Let's start with some background.  I teach full time and have my summers off.  This past year I went for a National Certificate, which was a great deal of work and kept me from helping as much at the restaurant. Craig worked hard throughout the year.  After I finished the work for my certificate, I committed to Craig that I would work to help relieve the pressure on him and I did throughout June. Then I decided that he needed to actually leave Oak Park to relax because even on his 'days off' he worked and I was worried it would burn him out (which would be a nightmare to fix!).  As I result I sent him on vacation. The rules were that I didn't care where he went, but he was not allowed to go to the restaurant or home for 48 hours. Originally he tried to play golf, go fishing and a few other things but they fell through, so finally he settled on exploring Wisconsin and sampling cheeses. That was something that we wanted to do together, but he decided he would check it out first.  

Craig wandered the countryside, armed with a map from the Wisconsin Cheese Association and he visited a few cheese places.  He had a BALL-music on, windows down, beautiful weather!  He met Sid Cook at Carr Valley and they chatted about cheese, cows, life and eating.  Sid sent Craig off with lots of tasty items for his cooler.  Craig also went to Brunkow (they come to the Oak Park Farmers' Market every Saturday) and several other places.  He came home with his huge cooler packed with cheeses in every shape, color and size, with sheep, goat and cow milk cheeses.  It was awfully fun to open and taste!

He wanted to go to...I think it is called Fantom Cheese but just couldn't coordinate it.  They are these two ladies that make fresh goat cheese (my personal favorite) and it is phenomenal. Some day we are going to get up there and visit them, learn about their operation and ideas and buy some goat cheese-probably lots of goat cheese.  

So, that is the reason we did the cheese plate, but also the reason we held the cheese dinner. I will have to write about the cheese dinner later, because it is time to relax before bed!