Tillamook Cheese Factory
One of the places we went on our trip to Oregon was the Tillamook Cheese Factory. You may not know this about me, but I freaking love cheese ((My friend Patrice affectionately refers to the two of us as “cheese monsters.”))!
When we first got to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, we could not believe how busy it was. The parking lot, which is huge, it was jam packed. When we got inside, we were overwhelmed by the number of people in this factory. The lineup for cheese tastings was probably a good 45 minutes to an hour wait, so we decided to skip the tasting the cheese and go right to buying the cheese, because pretty much every restaurant in Oregon uses Tillamook cheese, which they proudly note on their menus, so we had already tried lots of Tillamook cheese and we knew it was freaking delicious.
Well, before we actually bought the cheese, we checked out the inner workings of the factory, which is always cool for a food nerd like me:
Then we went on to the purchasing! Jeff and Madeline decided to get some Tillamook ice cream, while Nancy, Thomas and I went for the cheese. Sadly, they were all out of cheese curds, which Nancy had been looking forward to all trip ((Just an excuse to have to go back though, right?))! She couldn’t really buy cheese to bring back on the plane, so she stuck to buying less perishable items that she could bring back to Toronto as gifts. I, however, bought this:
And this:
I had some of the garlic chili cheddar last night after Bootcamp. It was to die for! I think I may need to make more trips to Tillamook!
As we were leaving, we noticed there was a wine tasting tent outside. Far be it from us to turn down a wine tasting, so we decided to check it out. And, would you believe, not only did they have wine for tasting, but they also had little cubes of Tillamook cheese! So all those suckers inside the factory lined up for hours for a cube of cheese be we got one after a 1 minute wait in the wine line up. Win!
The last time I was in Russia, I got to go through a chocolate factory. It was very, very cool. It’s amazing how stuff is made. As much as I like chocolate, I love cheese more, and thus, I am jealous.