With a documented history dating back almost 1,000 years, only cheese made in one area of Northern Italy – the rolling hills and green pastures that comprise Reggio Emilia, Parma, Modena and portions of Bologna and Mantua – can bear the Parmigiano Reggiano name. There the cheese is handcrafted in small batches to meet the high quality standards of Italy’s Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano Reggiano, who have been preserving the tradition and integrity of the cheese for centuries. Read the rest of this entry »

Updated 02/22/10- Our contest may be over, but there is always time to enjoy some Parmigiano Reggiano. Try the six winning recipes or pick from the thousand-plus contest entries in the comments below.

Parmigiano Reggiano is truly one of the incomparable cheeses of the world. We take extraordinary measures to work with a small group of artisan producers in Italy to hand-select the very best Parmigiano Reggiano. Our chosen wheels are carefully aged for 24 months to bring out the best of Parmigiano Reggiano’s nutty and sweet flavors and creamy and crystalline textures.

And now we want to know what you’ll prepare with this fabulous cheese when you get it home!

As part of our month long celebration of this fabulous cheese, we are holding an online recipe contest to find and share fresh and innovative ways to enjoy real Parmigiano Reggiano every day. Post your best, original recipe in the comment section below for a chance to win a $500 Whole Foods Market shopping spree, a gift basket chock-full of Parm and goodies to pair, and an authentic cheese knife set from Italy. Five runner-ups receive prizes too.

Comments must be submitted to this blog post between February 3 and February 10, 2010.

You may enter more than one recipe in the comments (but you can’t win more than one prize) — just make sure they are your original concoctions!

A panel of Whole Foods Market Team Member judges will select six finalists. Those finalists’ recipes will be prepared and served to a celebrity taste panel at our Austin headquarters in the middle of February to determine the Grand Prize Winner. The recipes will be judged based on flavor profile, culinary appeal and the innovative use of Parmigiano Reggiano. See all Contest Rules.

The finalists’ recipes will be spotlighted in this blog later in February so we can all give them a try!

We’ll share more tasty information about Parmigiano Reggiano and our in-store events throughout February, so check back. But for now, hit the kitchen and get creative! I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Just enter your recipe in the comment section below.

Whole Foods Market’s selects our cheese producers not only for the quality of the product they offer, but because of how they run their businesses. In this video, Mary Keehn, Founder of Cypress Grove Chevre shares information on the history and production secrets behind some of her award-winning goat cheeses.

Rogue Creamery is known for it’s award-winning artisan cheeses such as “Rogue River Blue” that won “Best In Show” at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition in 2009. Learn about the unusual path that co-owners Cary Bryant and David Gremmels traveled to become master cheesemakers.

One of the things I love most about the holidays is celebrating with a variety of foods – and having lots of leftovers when everyone else goes home! And, as you may have guessed, leftover cheese is my favorite. I even plan the type and quantity of cheeses I buy for a gathering to make sure I’ll have exactly what I want for dishes the next day. Here are some of the ways I like to use up those various bits of cheese.

Cranberry Cheddar

Definitely a seasonal favorite. Produced using milk from cows not treated with growth hormones, this cheese is creamy and has nice flavor characteristics. It comes from the Hennings family in Wisconsin. If you have leftovers, you can’t beat it on a grilled turkey sandwich. Just place the cheese on top of slices of turkey and grill. I like it much better than using cranberry sauce because it doesn’t ooze out. The cranberries are contained in the melted cheese and provide that lovely fruit flavor that goes perfectly with turkey leftovers. Read the rest of this entry »

My father’s all time favorite meal was soup. He loved it at lunch and dinner. He had no real favorite – the one he was eating was the one he loved best. Preparing soups makes me think of him and the wonderful memories of the smells of soup permeating the house. Soup can be a simple or complex meal to produce but once it is made, I have a special way of making the recipe your very own: cheese!

There are so many great soups out there – and a lot of excellent soup recipes on our site. Here are a few classic winter soups along with suggestions for my favorite value added ingredient, cheese.

Butternut Squash Soup

I really like the classically fall flavor of butternut squash. Sweet and nutty soups are winners for fighting the chill in the air. I really like creamy and salty flavors with sweet. I dress this soup up with Feta crumbled on top prior to serving. These flavors blend together really well and the texture of the soup and the feta is a perfect combination. Let me know what you think! Read the rest of this entry »

Drum roll, please…our exclusive Isigny Ste. Mère Holiday Brie is in stores now. We’ve been (somewhat) patiently waiting all year for this holiday tradition to grace our tables again. This delightful cheese comes from a co-operative of 700 farmers in Normandy, France. Normandy is a lush area of rolling hills that produce very fertile grasses and the cows that graze on these grasses produce high butterfat milk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Learn about the art of the Affineur from a world-renowned master, Hervé Mons who discusses the business practices of Mansion Mons as well as their Tommes de Bois Noir goat’s milk cheese.

In 1998 I was visiting our Northern California Whole Foods Market stores and I came across a new cheese when dining in a local restaurant. It was a tasty cheese, very creamy with a luscious mouthfeel. It wasn’t like any imported brie I had tasted before – the flavors were quite unique. It was fresh with soft overtones of mushrooms. I loved it. Later I found out this was a triple-crème cheese named Mt. Tam. When I asked the waitperson about the cheese, she confirmed it was made in Marin, across the bridge from San Francisco. I was surprised to learn of this cheese and wanted to find out more. This started my quest for this unforgettable Marin County cheese and the Cowgirls who made created it.

Coincidentally, in 1998 I was living in Washington, DC, and was invited to attend an event put on by the American Farmland Trust. This event was honoring Marin-based Ellen Strauss with the “Steward of the Land” Award. I met this dynamic person and her family. I was so impressed with the rich history of her dedication to organics, being the first organic dairy farmer west of the Mississippi. I was interested in the mission and passion of the Strauss family. It was here that I begin to understand the synergies developed with the commitment of the farm and the cheesemakers from Marin. Read the rest of this entry »

In this episode, I traveled to Monroe, WI to visit the Klondike Cheese Company, one of the few feta producers in the United States that meets our Quality Standards. The Buholzer family has grown the company tremendously since they started making cheese in 1925. Our partnership with this family owned, third generation operation began back in 2002. Even though they are now a large company, they only work with 85 locally family-owned dairy farms and because the milk is fresh, the cheese is deliciously fresh too. My personal favorites include the Mediterranean feta and the feta with black pepper.