Hello. My name is Anya Firisen

and I am ten years old. I have liked cheese since I was very young. When I was very little I liked fresh Parmigiano chunks that my parents cut for me. I still do. I also eat Parmigiano that I grate right there on top of pasta. My parents do not even consider buying macaroni and cheese that comes from the box. Instead they buy fresh cheddar cheese and make macaroni and cheese from scratch. This helped me become a cheese person.

I started to like other cheeses at parties my family held. These parties gave me a chance to taste some of the cheeses that I now take to school in my lunchbox. All of a sudden I wanted Brie in my lunch because once I tasted it at a party and it was so good! Sometimes in my lunch I have cheeses like La Tur or Robiola. All of them taste great with water crackers, charcoal crackers, thin wheat crackers, or other crackers. The charcoal crackers have real charcoal in them but taste really good, especially with Gorgonzola. My sister Sasha and I make cheese platters and put out all sorts of cheeses that we don’t know the names of and we take chopped-up apples and cranberries and grapes and eat them with that. Sasha is seven years old. Sometimes I go to cheese counters and they have cheese out and I try it, or they don’t and then I ask. It allows me to taste new cheeses and helps me become more of a cheese person.

Cheeses I Take To School:

These cheeses would all go well in a kid’s lunchbox as long as they liked them. If your child doesn’t like cheese, show them this story and try some of the cheeses I’ve written about below. Let them choose which ones they like and then put them in their lunchboxes. Then they might start liking cheese more, maybe even as much as me.

CAMEMBERT tastes a lot like Brie but is softer. Normally Camembert is made from cow’s milk but the one I like is made from a mixture of sheep and cow’s milk.

EWE’S BLUE is a blue cheese that’s a bit sweet. It tastes nothing like Gorgonzola. It is made from sheep’s milk. I love to eat this with quince paste. (The farm that this cheese comes from is the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company near my house. I have been there many times.)

GORGONZOLA is very good with sweet things like grapes or quince paste. It is a blue cheese so it has a lot of mold on it and in it. (The kind that you can eat.) Most kids don’t even try this cheese, but it is actually really good. It comes from cow’s and/or goat’s milk and it is made in Italy.

LINCOLNSHIRE POACHER is a sweet and salty cheese. It looks somewhat like Parmigiano. It comes from England and is made from cow’s milk.

PETIT COMTÉ has a taste a bit like Swiss cheese but a little stronger. It comes from France and is made from cow’s milk.

PIAVE tastes great with green grapes and tastes a lot like Parmigiano. If you saw it for the first time you would probably think that it was Parmigiano. It is a cheese that even cheese haters would like. It comes from Italy and is made from cow’s milk.

PURPLE HAZE is a really interesting goat cheese with herbs. It has a mixture of fennel pollen and lavender that makes the cheese sweet and spicy at the same time. The texture is creamy and thick. My entire family likes it.