Sometimes It’s About Delivering Cheese Boards

I like cheese – all kinds of cheese. One of my personal favorites is a carmelized onion cheddar from Trader Joe’s. I also love Boursin cheese – just toast a piece of bread, and spread with one of the Boursin cheeses, then add tomato and avocado, with salt and pepper. So good eating something so simple. One day last month, I decided to ask Facebook and Instagram followers where they stood on the subject. The answers to my question, “What’s your favorite cheese?” included: bleu cheese, aged swiss, reggiano, and my favorite: “Never met a cheese that I didn’t like…. Ever!”

I seem to spend a lot of time with cheese in my catering business. Or should I say I spend a lot of time delivering cheese boards.At some point in a week – and sometimes multiple times – I can be found with a saran-wrapped cutting board of cheeses and accompaniments. I deliver them to local City Island businesses for art receptions, grand openings, and the like. I travel to bring the cheese-y goodness (couldn’t resist saying that) to all kinds of occasions: receptions, benefits, ceremonies, you name it. One of the awesome things about those deliveries – and when I deliver food in general – is that it is already plated. It’s not stuff you have to set up yourself. That’s the ease factor: You just rip off the saran wrap and you’re good to go.

Because the possibilities are really endless, I love creating all kinds of cheese board configurations. There’s a Spanish cheese board: Manchego, Mahon, and Valdeon (Spanish blue cheese) served with quince paste, Marcona almonds and Castelvetrano olives. There’s my go-to standard cheese board: St. Andre triple cream brie, aged gouda, Vermont cheddar. Sometimes I’ll add baked brie with candied pecans, carmelized apple, and cranberries.

I’ve even made a cheese board for kids: mozzarella cheese sticks, some Baby Bell, with grapes, berries and apples, and dried fruits: banana chips, dried pineapple, etc. I’ve seen some adults savoring the moments of that cheese board too.

And it’s not all about the cheese.I like interesting crackers like the Fig & Olive Crisps from Trader Joe’s. I also like the Firehook Baked Crackers which come in different types: everything, whole grain, sea salt.Sometimes I’ll add some seeded breadsticks in the mix. And always a good bread – like a favorite I have, cranberry pecan bread.I usually also feature a honeycomb.

The perfect cheese board? Don’t get overwhelmed! It is what’s perfect for you in that moment and for the moment.When you’re thinking of cheese boards, there are the types of cheese, the crackers and bread, berries, fruits, nuts, olives and other accoutrement, and finally the “sweet”: quince paste, fig jam, grapes, etc.

Explore your display options too. Find interesting boards and other ways – a “circular” cheese board perhaps – to showcase the cheese-y goodness (said it one more time!).

Whether cheddar or American (and May is American Cheese Month), brie or swiss, every cheese board creates moments to savor – and delivering them is pretty cool too, centering life, as it should be, with food and friends.