C'est Bon at C'est Cheese Please!

You are going to think that all I talk about are goat cheeses but this one is pretty special because it is a low fat cheese - calm down! I can hear you all sighing and see the rolling of the eyes as you say, but low fat cheese is awful. Please do yourselves a favour and try C'est Bon and you will become believers. Full of flavour, the consistency of cream cheese so you can spread it on your Montreal-style, wood-fire oven bagel (which I carry on a Saturday morning, warm from said oven) AND only 15% fat, 30 calories per tablespoon - this is a miracle. I have photographed it along with the Jelly Boys - the fabulous gourmet savoury jellies that come in such flavours as Ginger Lime Cilantro, Garlic & Hot Pepper, Cucumber Dill, Herb & Onion and Chili Tangerine. These jellies can be used as condiments and glazes as well as spreads and are delicious but the most important thing for all of you calorie and fat conscious gourmands out there, they are only 15 calories per teaspoon and zero, yes, zero fat. I also have some great new crackers that are 130 calories and 1% fat per, are you ready, 19 crackers! So go ahead, indulge while you are watching the quarter final game tonight between Team Canada and Russia! Go Team Canada Go!

Le Cendrillon and other bits & pieces

It's been a busy day here at "C'est Cheese Please!" what with customers coming in to stock up for the weekend, Luigi the Squeegee making sure that the windows are sparkling clean and getting the new products out in the cases and shelves. It was wonderful walking in this morning to a fridge/freezer that was happily humming along, freezing what needed to be frozen and refrigerating the things that needed refrigerating! Perhaps one day when I am short of topics I will relate the saga of the fridge/freezer but in the meantime, I walk past it ever so often to admire the fine job that it is doing!

I thought today I might chat about Le Cendrillion which you see pictured here. This is an ash covered goat cheese from Quebec which took the title of World Champion in 2009 competing against 2,440 entries from 34 countries. I think that we can be pretty proud of the wonderful cheese producers here in Canada - not only do we produce athletes of the highest caliber as we are enjoying watching at the 2010 Winter Olympics but we also have world class cheese makers. We truly live in the best country in the world and being the modest Canadians that we are, we don't toot our horn often enough!

I am very excited that I will also be carrying some cheeses from another of our great Ontario cheese makers - Glengarry Cheese makes fabulous cheeses such as Figaro, a bloomy rind cow's milk cheese in the style of a Chaource and a washed-rind semi firm, Fleur-en-Lait. These should be in stock here early next week - a yummy way to start a new week!

Soooo, here we go!

Bienvenue, welcome to my very first blog attempt! It's a grey day here in Cambridge with a bit of snow coming down, but customers have been coming in to take advantage of the special that I have on Quebec cheeses (10% off!) in honour of the very first gold medal won on Canadian soil by Canadian, Alexandre Bilideau at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver! Alex is from our belle province, Quebec and we are all so very proud of him and all of our atheletes at the Olympics - Go Canada Go! Yesterday, Maelle Ricker of Vancouver won the gold in Women's Snowboard Cross - not sure how to honour her achievement yet as I don't have any cheeses from BC, not that they don't have a fantastic artisanal cheese industry (I'm thinking here of Saltspring Island in particular and their beautiful chevre -hot pepper, mushroom and some that have delicate little flowers on the top, so perfect for the cheese board) it's just that they are pretty expensive by the time they get to Ontario and I'm not sure that my customers would buy they with or without a discount - but don't worry Maelle, I'll come up with something!