You might wonder what’s happening when I haven’t had the chance to post for awhile… “Is he in a coma from eating too much cheese? … Did he fall into the Canyon of Cheese? … Has he run out of ideas or things to talk about?”Although the first of these mused questions might be the closest to the truth, the actual truth is perhaps less interesting. Due to the economy I was laid off several weeks ago from my IT job, and have been 
frantically looking for new work. On the plus side, I no longer have to commute from Oakland, CA to Atherton on a daily basis. There’s been plenty to keep me busy besides looking for work; the theatre company I helped found has its latest play “Aaron Trotter and the Incident at Bikini Beach” opening on July 31st (click on the press photo for more information/link), so there’s much to do for that… and to keep myself sane (insane?) I might do something like create a Shadow 
Puppet Theatre for our cat Nikita’s entertainment (click on photo for a different view). Although she found it engaging, she did not take much action against the bird shadows I provided. Her reflective mode leads me to believe that she was questioning reality, perhaps much like the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave…
OK, OK, we’ve had enough, Bryce! Where’s the cheese?!?
Oh, sorry “Inner-Cheese Voice”, got carried away, as usual, and as the title of this post mentions, I’ve been sitting on a lot of content that I haven’t been writing about. Today I’d like to tell you a bit about the event I volunteered at for the California Artisan Cheese Guild; Sunset Magazine’s “Celebration Weekend”.
Just as with last year’s, 2009’s visitors were rewarded with excellent weather for their participation, and, like last year, the Guild’s cheeses and information were a huge hit.
With so much to do at the event from booths of tourism boards, to vendors, to chef demonstrations and live music, you’d think that it’d be hard to choose what all to try, do and see. The great many visitors, however, who lined up to taste some of the best artisan cheeses in California were no dunces; it was worth the wait.
The style in which people sample cheeses often speaks volumes about how acquainted they are with quality cheese. 
I’m the last to suggest that you should be a cheese snob when trying cheese, but I do appreciate it when people are surprised by what they are tasting (instead of the; “Oh; free cheese! I’ll shovel down as many samples as they’ll give me!”- method of tasting…). With cheese there is such an amazing variety of possibilities of taste and texture, that 
taking a moment to understand how a cheese affects your tongue, your taste buds, and your overall enjoyment of life, can be very rewarding. It’s true that NOT every cheese is going to be a cheese that you enjoy, but life is too short not to take a moment and enjoy the bounty of what is offered, particularly when such time and care has been lovingly 
applied to cheeses such as those we were offering from the California Artisan Cheese Guild.
One of the cheeses which I was able to give samples of out to people was Point Reyes Farmstead Blue. Since for many blue cheeses are very strong (particularly after trying more mild tasting cheeses which were being offered: fresh goat milk cheese from Harley Farms, Shamrock’s Artisan Goat Cheeses, Sheena Davis’ Delice de La Vallee and Sadie Kendell’s Crème Fraîche) the reactions were all over the 
map. I love how people’s tastes for cheese are just as individual as there are cheeses.
Plenty more content to get to work on, so meanwhile, enjoy the pictures (all taken by Kathy. Clickon any picture for a pop-up window with the full-res version)!
