♥♥♥Happy Birthday, to my precious husband Daniel!♥♥♥

We’ve been obsessed with cheese and wine (as a complete meal) for a month or two now. For his birthday today, Daniel wanted to cuddle up on the couch with a bottle of vino and a platter of gourmet cheeses.

Prior to tonight, We’d only patronized Aniata in Del Mar. Since we’re planning on joining the Aniata Cheese Club soon, we decided to try out the other fine cheese shop in town, Venissimo in Mission Hills, before we’re ultra-committed to Aniata.

Venissimo has a totally different feel from Aniata. The store is more bright and airy and urban with funky music playing over the speakers. In contrast, Aniata is more dank and cavelike and quiet which isn’t a bad thing by any means. In fact, Aniata makes me feel like I am entering a reverent and serious cheese nook that is the perfect cozy environment for the fromage.

The Birthday Boy making his selections

Venissimo and Aniata both have excellent selections of cheeses and outstanding customer service. We love these specialty shops because we get to pick and choose and taste each cheese before our purchase. And the cheese experts at both shops always take our tastes and comments into consideration, guiding us to new cheese flavors that are always a taste exploration for us since we’re fine cheese newbies.

Here’s what ended up in our cheese bag today for Daniel’s birthday:

• Sicilian Olives Hand-Stuffed with Blue Cheese for Martinis - Danny wants to make these himself someday, but hasn’t yet gotten around to it.
• Peppa Goat Bites - Handstuffed South African peppers stuffed wtih chevre, Danny thought these would go great in martinis, too. But he ended up preferring them straight out of the package. They have a unique sweet and spicy flavor
• Cabrales - A Spanish mixed milk raw blue cheese that was creamy and spicy with a great consistency. Our favorite of the night!
• Mimolette - A French cow’s milk cheese that is almost fluorescent orange in color with a very dry consistency. I preferred to eat this cheese plain, without any crackers or bread. It reminded me of a North Hollander, which I actually prefer over the Mimolette.
• Pantaleo - A hard Italian goat cheese from Sardinia. Daniel described it as very “palatable” and I would say that it’s very simple and mellow. To me, this cheese fell a bit short because the
  flavors are not very complex.



• Mostarda Mantovana di Pere - A sweet and spicy pear mixture with a little sugar and mustard. Unique flavors that we’ve never before imagined. We bought these to go with the blue cheese, but it would also be great in a salad or with chicken.
• Rosemary and Salt crackers and a olive baton from Bread on Market

After reading this article from Slate about how it’s perfectly acceptable to eat cheese with white wine (instead of red), I finally felt free to indulge this natural inclination of mine with an inexpensive Chardonnay called Jepson from Trader Joe’s. Daniel had a martini and a bit of wine, we snuggled on the couch, toasted his birthday, and that was that!

2006 is definitely the year for us to explore and indulge our innate passion for fine cheeses. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it…