On Saturday, March 10th, I attended the Cracking of the Cheese at Whole Foods Market. Since I was a bit short on time, I went to the smaller Woodmere location on Chagrin Blvd. The entire parking lot was full and I was a bit leery of the crowd that I might find in the store.
Lucky for me, I arrived in time to get a seat right in front of Jason and his 90 block of cheese. As it turned out, there were only about 15 people there for the event. I sat next to Sarah from Cooker Girl. It was nice to run into her.
Jason talked about the history and making of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
- gets its name from the city of Parma and Reggio
- dates back to 12th century
- cows fed only food from the region
- consortium oversees all of the parts of the operation
- milk fat is used in butter and mascarpone
- 90% of the production is consumed in Italy
He also talked about the tools used to crack open a wheel.
As part of the Whole Foods event, every store was cracking a wheel at 3PM Eastern.
90 pounds of deliciousness will run about $1500 retail.
Samples were free.
I was glad that I attended the event and hope to see more of the store demos and events in the future. Thanks to Jason for sharing his talent and love of cheese with us.