The Single Best Food Event I've Even Been To: The Cheese-A-Topia Public Sale

This doesn't really fit this week's back to school/home ec theme, but since I was just writing about butter today, I decided I ought to go ahead and post this other saturated fat news.

At the end of August, I went to the public cheese sale that followed the American Cheese Society's national conference held in Seattle this year. Now, if you follow me on Twitter, you are probably sick of me mentioning this BUT MY GOD THIS WAS SO GREAT.

I have been posting about food events for about two years. I started posting about them because I liked to go to them, worked in a cooking school hostessing cooking classes, etc. So I have been to a lot of events. But this, the public cheese sale at Cheese-A-Topia, is the best thing I've ever been to.

It wasn't educational. It wasn't a networking event. I didn't meet any cheese luminaries (although my friend Rachel mentioned that Roger Bass, Madison Market cheesemonger from the butter class was there). All in all, we were probably only there for about 15 minutes.

But those 15 minutes were so packed full of sheer giddy, absurd, Willy Wonka-ish food joy that they really pushed this to the top of my list.

The sale was to close out the conference, and I assume these were all cheeses that had been featured in the conference, were part of the judging, etc. It took place in Tom Douglas's Palace Ballroom, and was, essentially, a bunch of tables piled high with various cheeses.

There were giant blocks of cheddars. Tubes of goat cheeses. Wedges of Fontina, Emmental, and a bunch of other cheeses I didn't recognize. Tubs of mascarpone and cream cheese. Random mysterioso packets of herbed soft cheeses.

Rachel and I got there towards the end of the sale, and it took me a few minutes to understand what was happening: because they were trying to get this product out the door, they dropped prices (previously just at $5/piece) to $25 for a shopping bag full of cheese.

Rachel & our cheeseI hate the excessively dramatic single sentence paragraph and excessive use of capital letters to signify enthusiastic blog shouting but…

$25 FOR A SHOPPING BAG FULL OF CHEESE. !!!

Everywhere I turned, someone in a green tee-shirt was exhorting us to TAKE MORE CHEESE. Take lots of cheese! Shove as much as you can fit in a bag! Shove it 'til you can barely carry it. TAKE MORE!!

As Rachel, who is Italian, noted, it was like eating at an Italian's house.

Oh my gosh, Readers, it was so great. It was hard to believe, you would pick up a piece of expensive-looking cheese and think, well, no, THIS can't be part of it, I probably can't expect to include THIS in the bargain but THEN YOU COULD.

I think I am going to stop saying "like a kid in a candy store" and start saying "like an adult at a public cheese sale during the last half hour." Because they are, essentially, the same thing.

We got an amazing variety; Rachel concentrated on picking interesting and pricey-looking ones, while I was thinking about bargains and cheap eats, so got a lot of blocks of utilitarian sharp cheddars and flavored jacks. We came home and started with an organized tastings complete with cheese research, but quickly became overwhelmed and it eventually devolved into just making lots of grilled cheese.

I sent her back to New York with a carry-on full of cheese, gave another bag to a friend here in town and still have my own drawerful that I am eating through.

Despite this cornucopia, I started to feel, as I mentioned recently on Twitter, a little "MY PRECIOUSSSSS" about it. I found myself resistant to parting with the bag of cheese that went to my local friend, even though I had gotten that extra bag with her family in mind, and even though I have so…very…much cheese of my own left to eat.

My mom was in town this past weekend. She really enjoys sharp cheddar and so was snacking mainly on that, and I found myself, again, going Gollum on it, thinking "OH MY GOD SHE'S EATING MY SHARP CHEDDAR" when I still have so many other blocks of it to eat through.

So, a cautionary tale: if you ever come into an obscene amount of cheese, just be aware that some cheese greed can set in. It's like the Lufthansa heist in Goodfellas.

Other than that warning, I must admit to write about this here feels like I am only bragging about how much cheese I got. I don't know if this national conference will be in Seattle again, and if it is, I don't know that they will have a public cheese sale at the end of it to sell off the cheese that were featured at the conference. In the slideshow, I am going to list some of the cheeses we liked, but even that feels like not being servicey enough to justify this post.

Well, I guess if I want to find some way for this to be useful, I will just say, folks, if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of a public cheese sale following a national cheese conference, GO! And go towards the end for the most bargain potential.

So if you'd like to see the slideshow of cheese and a list of some of the cheeses we enjoyed, check it out by clicking on the picture of our haul.