{"id":2249,"date":"2014-05-22T16:42:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T20:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/?p=2249"},"modified":"2014-10-22T13:16:50","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T17:16:50","slug":"cheese-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/22\/cheese-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheese Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a little obsessed with ethnic markets. I’m completely in love with the Lebanese Butcher, attached to the Mount of Lebanon<\/a> restaurant in Falls Church. This is where I buy preserved lemons, olives in bulk, and canned favas. Buy a whole leg of lamb and have them bone it out for you — lots of meat for kabobs and stew, and even a couple of nice roasts for Sunday dinner. They have these coconut cookies up at the cash register that are INSANE (the CGP likes them better than my macaroons<\/a>!). But there are a couple of MUST HAVE products I want to promote today.<\/p>\n

They sell this olive-infused Egyptian Feta<\/strong> that is unlike ANYTHING I’ve tasted before. Let’s start with some nomenclature first. In the EU, “feta” refers to a very specific kind of cheese, made in defined ratios from the milk of specific animals (sheep or sheep\/goat), made in a very specific geography (Greece), in a very specific traditional way. That’s the grainy, salty, crumbly cheese you think of when you think of feta. Elsewhere, outside the EU, feta frequently just means “white cheese.” So when I bought a box of this, I thought I was getting the crumbly stuff with bits of olives. OH NO NO NO … I opened the box to find this amazingly soft and lush creamy spread that tasted like oil-cured kalamata olives. Imagine the best cream cheese schmear you’ve ever had, but 100 times creamier and 100 times more infused flavor. I smear it on crackers. I smear it on flatbread with kabob or grilled sausage. I want to smear it on an everything bagel but I keep forgetting to buy them. I don’t remember the price — $3.99? $4.99? Something low enough that I didn’t flinch the first time and don’t even care now. If you love cheese and love olives — this will become your new addiction. Made with buffalo and cow’s milk. I swear it’s the buffalo milk that gives it the texture. The nice butcher at the back says he eats this every day for breakfast.<\/p>\n

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So on to another find — labna. It’s essentially yogurt cheese — kind of like greek yogurt strained even further. The texture is similar to cream cheese, but the taste is tangier. At $1.99 for a one pound tub, it’s a steal. I can’t strain my own yogurt for that price! You know what I like to eat it with — DATES. I can get a huge tub of dates for $4.99. I haven’t seen dates at that price ANYWHERE in town. These are wonderful to eat out of hand or to use in baking.<\/p>\n

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Standard caveat<\/strong>: This is a personal recommendation. I have been provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a little obsessed with ethnic markets. I’m completely in love with the Lebanese Butcher, attached to the Mount of Lebanon restaurant in Falls Church. This is where I buy preserved lemons, olives in bulk, and canned favas. Buy a whole leg of lamb and have them bone it out for you — lots of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-recommendation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/2014-05-16-20.45.01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ImYM-Ah","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2249"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}