Don't Cheese and Drive

Who can forget their first taste of aged gouda? The unexpected amalgam of warm, comforting near-caramel flavor with the graininess and crumbly nature of fine parmesan is kind of a shock. You wonder: "Why are all my pleasure sensors beeping so hard? It's just cheese." But you want more. At the Tour de Fromage, a cheese bicycle ride or bicycle cheese ride, local interesting person Juliana Gallin leads a group to several specialty markets, many of which may have aged gouda on hand. The idea is to pedal around learning about, looking at, and tasting cheese in the shops of fine purveyors. Find out why, say, certain cheeses are good to eat even though they smell like a hardworking dad's evening foot. Finally, load up on goat, cow, and sheep milk fermentations, and then head to a park for a ripe feast.
Sat., May 30, 11 a.m., 2009