Tillamook Cheese Schoolin

by Nate Day • Nov 1, 2012 Our posts feature partner companies.

Tillamook Cheese Schoolin

On Saturday, October 27th, the Tillamook Cheese emissaries invited Chelsea to visit them at their secret lair. As it turns out, the Tillamook Cheese HQ is on the move with their Loaf Love tour and this time they were located at the jungle in the city of San Diego, filled with tigers, bears, and hippos. Oh my.

My Love of Tillamook Cheese Runs Deep

Actually, it was held at the San Diego Zoo and Chelsea invited me and Some Boy to come along with her. That was really nice of her seeing as how she knows I love Tillamook cheese. I used to live in Southern Washington and Northern Oregon and I vividly remember taking the tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory in Tillamook when I was about 12 years old. They let you taste the curds…they actually let you taste the curds. They clearly did not know I was coming because there was no one guarding the curd bin when I walked it and let’s just say, I left quite full.

Anyway, so I go with Chelsea to the Cheese Zoo and we got a free demonstration on how to make grilled cheese from Keegan Gerhard from the Food Network. It was like I was grilled cheese Chuck Norris getting a karate lesson from the guy at the Taekwondo dojo at that corner store at the mall they couldn’t get rented out for like six months. I didn’t tell him, but I’ve been making grilled cheese since I was about five. That’s like 22 years of grilled cheesin. Actually he did pass on a bunch of good information about ingredients and selection. Seems Mr. Gerhard is a minimalist like myself. It’s like we both came from the Bauhause of grilled cheese.

The Grilled Cheese Throwdown

Funny thing; Tillamook actually held a competition for grilled cheese making. Chelsea said I had to make “ours” for the entry. To be perfectly honest…Chelsea did nothing. She gets no credit at all. So I made my grilled cheese (pictures not available for national security reasons) and entered it with the other “stove heated cheese and bread” concoctions.

For informational purposes I will describe my grilled cheese. I started like anyone else would. You know, a good foundation: bread buttered on one side. Then I went for the guts. Two slices of Tillamook pepperjack cheese and a sprinkling of bacon chunks. Yeah that’s right, I got fancy and went with bacon. Then I added the top piece of bread. Oh hold your horses, I know what you think is going to happen next. If I let you guess…you’d be wrong. I did not put butter on the second slice of bread. No! I instead fried my grill cheese with one side buttered and the other…wait for it…with a slice of sharp cheddar Tillamook cheese on the outside.

Now you might wonder, “What the hell? Cheese is supposed to go on the inside.” Well, this comes from an experience I had when I was about nine years old (it was part of a three year odyssey involving too much bloodshed to post, so I’ll just give you the discovery I’m talking about). If you were to take a piece of cheese (real cheese, not orange oil solidified into a square sheet) and fry it by itself on a frying pan, you get – if timed correctly – a giant chees-it.

And there it is. I made a chees-it crusted pepper jack and bacon grilled Tillamook cheese sandwich.

I offered up my sandwich with a warning, “Be careful my pretties. You might not be able to handle this sandwich.”

Now I wish I could tell you my sandwich did at least decently well in the competition. I wish I could say it was well received. Oh wait, it was. I won best tasting grilled cheese!

Afterwards, they introduced me to their King, King Loafy.

And then I went to the gorilla exhibit and showed Chelsea why I am lord of all animals.