Cheese is My Life

Ah'm a Suh-thern belle.

Try not to be jealous.

I didn't actually know that Pimento Cheese was a Southern thang. Apparently it is. My mom always bought the little jars of pimento cheese spread and Chicken-in-a Biscuit crackers as a snack. Pimento cheese came in a small glass juice cup sized jar with a blue lid, right?

Then pimento cheese exited my life when I moved out of the house. They most certainly didn't serve it in the cafeteria and I never saw it at the store. Therefore, pimento cheese just did not exist in my life.

Until I went to my favorite place in Durham. That's right, the P&O, #1 on my list of places to be in the dirty-D: Parker and Otis. They have a grilled pimento cheese, it's delish. I think it's one of their top sellers. It makes my heart beat with the pitter-patter of happiness.

I decided on Friday night as I drove home from work that I wanted to pimento cheese. And I decided that I was going to make it. From blocks of cheese. Cream cheese. Pimentos. Spices. And jalapenos.

I loosely based my pimento cheese spread on this recipe from Tasty Kitchen. If you don't know or use Tasty Kitchen and you enjoy cooking, you should totally check it out. It's one of my favorite websites to find new recipes because often you find both a recipe and a blog post about it, so you can also find fascinating new people to put on your RSS feed. You don't have an RSS feed? Whaaa?!?! That's like living in this era without facebook. It just isn't done people. It's just not right.

Back to the cheese. I love cheese. I like it at room temperature much to the dismay of my SIL. She thinks it should be cold. But the true flavors of the cheese present themselves when it's room temperature. The pimento cheese spread has been consumed numerous times this week. Let's see, I had it on bread; I had it with tomatoes; I had it on a bagel with a scrambled egg; I ate it with crackers; I scooped it up with celery sticks; and I grilled it for my faux-P&O sammich. 

Amazing.

The changes I made to the original recipe: I didn't measure anything. Try not to be surprised. I looked at the ingredients and I put different quantities of those ingredients in until it tasted good. Really good. Then I added some diced jalapenos for a little zip. Except they weren't very zippy. I didn't use any of the seeds or membranes so they just added some fresh crunch which I found very enjoyable. I also like the green with the red of the pimentos and the golden color of the cheese.

If you make some pimento cheese, grate your own cheese (I used a combo of a mild yellow cheddar and a medium white cheddar), buy your pimentos next to the roasted red peppers, mix up your batch in your mixer, use mayonaise not Miracle Whip, and enjoy it! Let me know what you think!