• Cheese,  Middle East

    Cheese Really Did Change the Course of Western Civilization

    I don’t want to say I told you so, but this piece on the fabulous Quartz blog has confirmed what I have been banging on about for many, many years. That is…cheese changed the course of civilization. Long story short, the dawn of cheese apparently happened 8500 years ago less than a three hour plane journey from where I am sitting writing this post. In the Fertile Crescent (which stretched from Egypt to what we now know as Iraq and parts of Iran) over production of agriculture had depleted the  soil, meaning our Neolithic ancestors turned to raising sheep and goats. Meanwhile, some smart cookie also invented pottery. Throw into the mix…

  • British cheese,  Cheddar,  Cheese,  Travel,  Wales

    Sharp Relief – Snowdonia’s Little Black Bomber

    I’ve blogged before about the lengths my friends will go to in search of new cheeses for me. My friend Rachel (yes, we have thought about forming a girl band called The Rachels) found this beauty at Waitrose on a recent trip to Dubai. Hailing from Wales,  The Snowdonia Cheese Company has been making contemporary cheese and more traditional types for several years now. This cheese is perhaps their most popular. They market it as a “cheddar with attitude” and that is very accurate. So sharp it could cut itself, it has what I call a “drawback factor”. That is “ooooooof that’s sharp”. It’s made from pasteurized cow’s milk with non…