Cheese Party-Christmas Eve

Here we have the Christmas Eve 2011 Cheese Party spread.  It is one of our favorite traditions that we take part in every holiday season. The date of the party isn't important.  We just make sure we have our cheese party sometime between Christmas and New Year's.  We have it at different times depending on whether we have company coming for any of the holidays or if we will be going somewhere.  If we have people visiting us we like to include them in our cheese party.  This year we had plans to be home for Christmas but gone for New Year's so we decided to do the party Christmas Eve.

Kent caught red handed drinking from the bottle. 

We love CHEESE! (And olives.  We could have an olive party every year if there were more types of olives to try.  And if we LIKED gourmet olives, which we don't.)  One of the kids (I think it was Emilia) asked Kent how we started the tradition of the cheese party. His response was not exactly accurate (but a good answer nevertheless).  He told her that when we were newlyweds we were so poor at Christmastime and we didn't have any money to buy fancy treats and food.   So we went to the BYU creamery and picked out a fancy cheese and bought it and had our very first cheese party.  The part about being poor newlyweds was true.  And the part about buying stuff at the BYU creamery.  The cheese party, however, did NOT originate in that way.  Here is the real story, recorded for posterity:  The year after we were married Kent was working in the Microbiology stockroom at BYU  making media (the stuff that goes in petri dishes for the microbes to grow on).  He had a department party around Christmastime where they had a sampling of many different fancy cheeses and appetizers.  He came home from the party and told me all about it and how fun it was to try all these new types of cheeses. I was intrigued and we decided that it would be a fun tradition to have a cheese party every year and feature a different type of cheese.  THAT is the true story of how the cheese party originated.

Part of the cheese party festivities this year included playing Hero Quest.  It's one of "our" favorite family games (Our=kent and the kids'. I play it because of peer pressure, and so that I am not a party pooper).  Kent used to have the game when he was a kid and he used to play it with his brothers. Last year he bought the  game on Ebay (and paid a steep price for the discontinued game).  Just watch, Hero Quest will make a comeback just like Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake and the Smurfs.  And then you will be able to get your very own copy of this game for 10 bucks at Wal-mart.

The cheese of the year was Dutch Vincent cheese.  As you see, it sports a picture of Van Gogh whom the cheese is named after.  The cheese is quite similar to the flavor of a Parmesan cheese, but I thought it tasted just a touch more like mold than Parmesan.