Blue is my favorite color. . . .

I love blue cheese. I don't remember when I started loving it. I don't remember my first taste. But I love blue cheese. I love Roquefort and Humboldt Fog. I love gorgonzolas and blue cheese dressing on salads even when the blue cheese is pretty darn unimaginative. I love the Stilton that comes home from trips to the UK (and the person who brings it home). And now I have found the holy grail of blue cheeses.

While in Pennsylvania this summer, I went to the Ardmore Farmer’s Market – which is not quite a farmer’s market, but still had swell things, including some Amish farm products. What did I buy? Cheese. What kind of cheese? Bleu de Termignon. At $40.00 or so a pound, this cheese was a splurge, so I bought a very small slice (for $10). It was spectacular. Advertised as made by a woman who owns 9 cows (ok, that's if advertising is hand scrawled magic marker signs over the cheese), bleu de termignon is worth trying. In fact, I bought it a second time to take home and consumed it before I even left Bryn Mawr.

I may not have the right “cheese vocabulary” to describe bleu de termignon either visually or in terms of taste. It is not creamy really, and is not heavy in terms of the moldy/salty taste that some blues have. It smelled wonderfully grassy and blue simultaneously. In fact, it tasted like I wanted more even after eating the slice I bought. And it was so good I turned away from the crackers I bought to accompany it and just ate cheese. This was simply the best cheese I have ever had. It has come close to erasing my yearning for a blue goat cheese I once bought in a small round in Ithaca and have never seen again. At the end of my nosh on this cheese, I wanted nothing else. Not chocolate. Not more cheese. Nothing. It was perfect.

Now, home again, I discover, of course, that it is not a Pennsylvania cheese. It is a cheese from the French Alps apparently loved by Charlemagne. Who knew? For more on bleu de termignon,click here or here. Better yet, find some, and try it. Wow.