Holiday Entertaining – Just Say Cheese
Photo by Rose Elena on Unsplash
The holidays are filled with opportunities to gather your friends and family. For a fun, relatively easy way to feed a party, consider a beautifully curated cheese board. Aside from being creative and easy to assemble, we’re big fans of cheese because it contains calcium and probiotics, which build strong bones and teeth, and the casein and whey build enamel to stave off cavities.
If you are hosting any gatherings this holiday season, this blog is for you! Here are a few tips to create a welcoming cheese board that’s delicious AND good for your guests’ oral health.
Choose the Right Cheese.
When it comes to your oral health, all cheeses are not created equal. Smile friendly cheeses include aged cheeses like Cheddar and Monterey Jack; soft-ripened cheeses like Brie and Camembert; and blue cheeses like Gorzonzola and Roquefort. Avoid packaged cheese dips and cheese sprays. This leaves a lot of room to get creative. Ask your cheese monger to sample these cheeses you’re considering. Get a sense of their smell and their taste. Explore!
Label It!
If you have a cheese board with more than one cheese, let people know what they’re choosing. Label the cheese. This can be as simple as putting a toothpick in the cheese with a sticker label or go the extra mile and write a description, including the region or farm where the cheese is from. Perhaps it’s just us in the dental business, but we’d also note the benefits of eating cheese for your teeth!
Room Temperature, Please.
Cheese is best served at room temperature. As it acclimates to the room, the intricate smell and taste of cheese becomes more prominent. Set cheeses out about one hour before your guests will start snacking. One thing to watch for — be sure your cheese doesn’t start to sweat.
The Wedge.
It’s part of the fun to cut the cheese as you’re eating, but more importantly, the cheese is more likley to dry out if it is pre-cut. To keep your cheese board fresh, serve hunks and wedges. Don’t cube it or pre-cut into small pieces.
Have Tools at the Ready.
A cheese knife is typically the perfect tool to cut and serve softer cheeses on a cheese board. However, when it comes to harder cheese, you might want to cut the chunk you want to serve with a chef knife.
We hope this provided some ideas to try at your next holiday get-together. As you snack through the holidays, don’t forget to brush at least twice a day and clean between your teeth with floss. And take the time for your twice a year visit to your dentist for your check up to ensure your smile stays merry and white through the holidays and all year long.
