Cheese. That uniquely adaptable and multifarious food that can make you weak in the knees and big in the ass. And you don't care, because it's cheese. Ask someone who's lactose intolerant what they're likely to endure a night of belly pain and gurgling for and 9 times out of 10 they'll answer with CHEESE.
It's no wonder cheese is the most stolen item in the world.
That's right. According to a 2011 survey it wasn't drugs, cars, cash or computers that was the most sought after item among thieves. It was cheese. The reasoning behind this is threefold: cheese is expensive, cheese is easy to steal and cheese is almost universally loved.
At the moment cheese happens to be the love of my life. The main reason for this of course is because the man I love is working as an architect from his home office in a French farmhouse. Also he is a figment of my imagination. So for now it's me and cheese.
I have to tell you it's even been difficult to get cheese to commit to anything more than a 2 week relationship before it goes bad. I tend to either suffocate it, sour it or let it get stale.
Not anymore. I have just taken my relationship with cheese to the next level. I have a Cheese Grotto.
It's basically a home cheese cave. Or a cheese humidor. It is a high end item for people who are very, very serious about their back fat. I mean cheese.
This story dates back to last December when a friend of mine sent me a link to a new product that was soon going to be released into the world. The Cheese Grotto. I was stunned by its beauty and brilliance. Seriously stunned. But it was Christmas and I was busy and I kind of forgot about the Cheese Grotto. There was just too much going on at the time.
Then a month or so ago I got a random email from someone named Jessica Sennett. She introduced herself as the inventor of a cheese storage product and she wondered if I'd like to test one out. It was called the Cheese Grotto.
Um. Yes. YES. Only an idiot would say no to that kind of offer. My Cheese Grotto was coming home!!
This Cheese Grotto makes me insanely happy every single time I Iook at it because it's beautiful and because it works.
The Cheese Grotto works by keeping a cheese friendly humidity and temperature inside it with the help of a clay brick and venting holes at the back of it.
The coolest thing is you don't even have to wrap the cheese. It just sits there out in the open looking great. It's FANTASTIC.
Would you like to save this stuff?
We'll email you this post, so you can refer to it later.
You want some cheese? No problem. Just slide out one of the bamboo shelves and you've got an instant cheese tray. I don't know if I'm really doing my love of this thing justice.
Yes it's a high end item. Yes that means it's expensive. Yes, that's also what makes it feel special. Like that special feeling you get when you wear diamonds or expensive clothing. Only it's expensive clothing filled with CHEESE.
(The whole point of this thing by the way is that it keeps cheese fresh for much, MUCH longer than anything else. Weeks longer, and in some cases months)
Each Cheese Grotto is made to order from locally sourced, sustainable materials. I didn't even know there was such a thing as bamboo plywood but apparently there is. It's called Plyboo and it's what the Cheese Grotto is made of. They are all assembled and finished by hand. It you take a good look at it you can see it isn't just a few hunks of wood nailed together. It shows the kind of craftsmanship you don't normally see outside of The One of a Kind craft show. It has that kind of beauty to it.
Up until now my cheeses have been wrapped in Cheese Paper, which does a fine job (WAY better than plastic wrap or waxed paper), but not a Cheese Grotto job.
In the past month I've stored 6 types of cheeses in it to see how they do. I chose to keep the Cheese Grotto in the fridge, but you can actually store it right on your counter.
Keeping it in the fridge means your cheese will last longer than if you store it on the counter.
Let's take a look at the stars of this show, the cheeses.
Of these 6 cheeses, 4 came from my local cheesemonger and 2 from the grocery store. At the grocery store I grabbed some Boursin Pepper cheese and a wedge of Fontina. Pepper cheese is great on crackers or crumbled on top of broccoli soup. The Fontina is a superior melting cheese that gets all gooey and stringy. I use it to make one of my MOST favourite quick recipes, Penne with Rapini with Chorizo sausage from Canadian Chef Cory Vitiello.
The Le Crottin de Chevre is a soft ripened goat cheese from Quebec that has a stink to it. The Sainte-Maure de Touraine is also a soft ripened goat cheese, but this one is from France and has been rolled in ash. It is an unpasteurized cheese.
The bottom two blue cheeses are delicious, strong, blue cheeses. The Shropshire has a creamier texture than its orange colour would imply (the orange is made with a natural colouring). And the Italian Oro Rosso is one of my favourite cheeses ever. A creamy blue cheese with some bite that's been steeped in a sweet red wine with blueberries, currants, elderberry and more. The rind is covered in blueberries, blackberries and currants. I eat it on thin Cranberry Pumpkin seed crackers if I have some. If not, I bite into it like an apple.
All of the cheeses were still looking like brand new a month after I put them in the Cheese Grotto. I noticed the Fontina was starting to get a tiny bit darker on the outside, which means it's drying out, so I changed the humidity in the Grotto and it's been fine since. It's the sort of thing you have to get a feel for.
The thing that makes me the happiest is I can actually see the cheese which makes me much more likely to pull it out and have a few hunks of it. Which makes me much more likely to eat the entire $25 hunk of cheese before it goes bad. The fact that the Cheese Grotto at least doubles the shelf life of most cheeses also helps guarantee that. That means I'm less likely to waste money and cheese.
Regular old Goat's Cheese which normally lasts for around 7 days in the fridge before going off can last for 3 weeks, unwrapped in the Grotto.
Semi-Hard cheeses that start to go mouldy or hard (depending on what you wrap them in) after 14 days in the fridge will last for 3-6 months when allowed to breathe out in the open in the Cheese Grotto. 6 months!
And my favourite, the very expensive Blue Cheese, which normally gets weird after a week or two in the fridge, can last 2 months in the Cheese Grotto.
Yeah it's expensive, but it's also truly remarkable and something you'll own for the rest of your life. And unlike your washer or dryer, this thing will never need repairs or need to be replaced.
And unlike your imaginary boyfriend, this thing is very, very real.
*this post does contain affiliate links because I am now a proud affiliate seller of the super-fantastic Cheese Grotto.
Meredith
Cheese is my jam. My saliva glands went into overdrive at the closeup of all the cheeses. Especially the Shropshire. OMG. I want this adorable little cheese grotto thing. Also, yay Coke in bottles! Although having just gone to Costco, where I usually buy Coke in bottles from Mexico, and they had none for the first time ever!........I"m thinking our idiot President's tough talk on Mexico has caused them to withhold their wonderful Coke made with sugar. Also, is that a Stella Artois pounder? Why have I never seen this? You go girl.....all that great cheese and fancy beer in a giant can! Can I come over?
Katie C.
I haven't finished the post, but right before I got your email I got an email that contained an article about a gang in Italy that was busted on Monday for stealing €180,000 worth of wine and cheese!
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/italian-police-bust-crime-gang-122638058.html
Leslie
Wow Karen that is really cool. I too love cheese. All cheese except the blue kind LOL
Karen
Hi the grotto looks fantastic but if I cannot splurge the Cheese Storage Bags that were on your site maybe over a year ago work pretty good for the cost of them.
Karen
The cheese paper is great Karen! ~ karen!
Linda J Howes
Will this work for vegan/nut cheese?
Jessica at Cheese Grotto
Hi Linda! Yes, it definitely can work for vegan/nut cheese. The Cheese Grotto has conditions that actually make many different types of food thrive: from vegetables, cheeses, to cured meats.
Danell
Whoa!! I guess that is some valuable piece of cheese furniture! It is pretty and sounds very functional. It'll have to wait though. Cheese hardly lasts long enough to store around here anyway! It is true, for me anyway that there is one thing I will suffer, being dairy intolerant and that is cheese. In our house, half are vegan and even the vegans love their cheese.
Carolyn
I'm curious about the cheese odors escaping the grotto and making your kitchen smell like you are standing in a damp cave?
My husband is a freak and doesn't like "stinky" cheese (he lumps Brie into this category...). If I buy cheese and double wrap it and place it in a Tupperware, he still claims he can smell it.
Does this Grotto somehow contain this issue?
Karen
Hi Carolyn! As long as the vents at the back are closed I imagine the smell would be contained enough for most people, but you know how it is if you don't like the smell of something. You really can smell it from a mile away, lol. I had my vents closed and had the cheese in the fridge and there was only one time that I could smell cheese when I opened the fridge, but that's because as it turned out the vent wasn't completely closed. Also one cheese in particular was extremely stinky. ~ karen!
Carolyn
Thanks Karen!
I think I'd love this Cheese Grotto, but I am not sure my husband would since I'd want to buy more different types of cheese. Lol.
Leah C
This thing looks remarkable, but right now I'm fixated on how cute of a word 'Plyboo' is. :)
Kari McD
a cheesemonger just opened in my neighborhood....fantastic stuff. I think I know what I want for my birthday now!
Thanks Karen!
Marna
Wow, so cool! Love any and all cheeses!
Tine Lisberg
Oh, Karen - it's af beauty.
I would like to have one here i Denmark.
You write, that the humidor have small holes in the back. Does your fridge smell og cheese?
Karen
Hi Tine! Tak. It is a beauty! You can control the vents in the back to either open them or close them. I had mine closed so the cheese smell was confined to the Cheese Grotto. But if you did open your vents because your Cheese Grotto was getting too humid, I imagine there would be a bit of cheese smell that would leak into the fridge if you had stinky cheeses. :) ~ karen!
Gilly Bean
Do all the cheeses start to smell/taste the same after being together uncovered for so long?
Karen
Nope. I'm not sure how, but nope. Mind you when they're under a cheese counter at a cheese store they don't either so ... ~ karen!
Erika Collins
I don't know which I covet more, the grotto or the contents!
J
Oh Karen-I know it will only be a short amount of time before you are teaching all of us how to make a fully functional Cheese Grotto. You know how much we all love to learn stuff and make stuff, specially cool stuff that will give us bragging rights in the finest groups of foodies!
Lez
I was thinking exactly the same thing J! I wonder if there are instructions on Google somewhere-probably! But my woodworking skills suck, unlike Karen's!
It's truly gorgeous!
JennyW
Oh, Yes ,Please! Either figure out a way to make one, or have a really great GiveAway :)
Ann Brookens
Since they gave the grotto to Karen (and it costs $350), I think she might feel a bit -umm- DELICATE about making a knockoff and posting it on her blog...
TucsonPatty
That is gorgeous! I don't eat enough different cheeses at one time to warrent this beauty, but maybe this would convince me. I tend to buy only one kind and eat it , then another...etc. I also would have to clean out the fridge to make room!
Paula
Yep, that's high end. Why do you keep your eggs in the fridge?
meg
ohhhhhh this is an interesting question I don't know if I saw the answer to, here on your blog, yet.
do you wash your chickies' eggs? and / or do you supplement with store-bought eggs?
also I totes want a cheese grotto too it looks amazing, I'm always forgetting about fancy cheese!
Karen
https://www.theartofdoingstuff.com/an-eggducation/ ~ karen!
Karen
I did an egg experiment post several months ago Paula comparing how long unwashed eggs will last on the counter as compared to the fridge. In the fridge they'll last for months and months. So if I have an abundance I know I won't get to in the near future, I start to put them in the fridge. ~ karen!
Katie C.
Are you sure it wasn't an eggs-periment?
Paula
Okay so you only put them in the fridge if you have an abundance. Thanks for answering.
MrsChrisSA
Ooooo that is something I really really really want!!!!!
Catt-in-Kentucky
That Grotto! A new thing to covet. Those amazing cheeses! I would rather have cheese than sweets any day......I am am a late-at-night covert cheese sneaker from way back. Can I keep a cheese grotto under the bed?
Brenda
THANK YOU for thinking of this - next level - on the bedside table! ... beside the wine & crackers (and onion jams) ...
Ralph
Thanks for this,Karen.
I will give the grotto some serious consideration since cheese is my drug of choice.
Karen
Hey Ralph. I really can't say enough about it. In fact I just left the kitchen this very second where I stood at the counter with my little shelf of cheese and the last bit of my Oro Rosso. I have a very emotional reaction whenever I interact with this little Cheese Grotto, lol. ~ karen!
Tina
It's beautiful! When I moved to Belgium, everyone warned me I'd gain weight because of the chocolates. No. Chocolate is meh. But cheese? Over or beside a salad? Kill me now! THAT is heaven on earth!
Debbie from Illinois
Does a choir of angels sing when you open that little wooden door? Because that grotto is a work of art. So cool!