Trader Joe's Cheddar & Gruyere Melange Cheese

I'm starting with the first TJ's item that ever caught my attention, years ago, as explained in my introductory blog post (which, if you haven't read, you probably should).

Let's not mince words: I friggin' love this cheese. I would eat it on crackers for a late-night snack every night of my life, except for the fact that when I did essentially that* for a year or so, I gained about ten pounds. So now I force myself to walk past the cheese section without stopping most of the time, and just get it as a treat once in a while.

But you know what? That's not enough of an endorsement. So let me put it this way: Cheese-pirate aliens could come and snatch every other kind of cheese in the world, leaving only this stuff, and I'd be OK with that. Not that I'm wishing for that to happen--because I like lots of other cheeses, too. But as long as I were left with my melange, I wouldn't shed many tears if all the others got sucked into another dimension, or got banned by the Spanish Inquisition, or whatever.

It's super-yummy (I apologize for starting in with the technical food vocabulary so early) without being overpowering. It blends well with whatever goes well with any cheese (which, let's face it, is just about everything). It cuts easily without being all icky-soft (I can't stand runny cheeses) or crumbly-hard.

By the way, I apologize for the photo of the not-quite-new package. It is my intention to use pictures of intact packages whenever possible. But I didn't decide to do this blog until after I had already cut into this block.

There's nothing else to say. Go to Trader Joe's and buy this cheese. Or maybe I should tell you not to, so that there's plenty left for me.

Will I buy it again? 

Yes. Oh, my, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is easily a Top Ten Item. (N.B.: I reserve the right to designate a lot more than ten items as Top Ten Items. Don't be so literal, people!) As you will discover with future reviews, TJ's has a handful of items that I like so much that I will always keep them stocked in my kitchen. This may be the only one that I like in that same kind of way, but can't actually keep around all the time, because of the expanding-waist-size problem. That puts it sort of into a category of its own, which seems only fitting. Unlike my pants.


*It wasn't all or even mostly this particular cheese, but it sure helped get that habit started.