National Cheese Lovers Day: January 20

Food Holidays are a personal favorite of mine. Think of your favorite traditional holiday. Maybe it’s Christmas, or Halloween, or Thanksgiving. Whatever that day is and however that day makes you feel; I believe a Cheese day is it for me. I’m lucky in that there are a bunch, according to the plethora of food holiday calendars available online. But for the sake of today’s rantings, I give you National Cheese Lovers Day. Whereas there is plenty of discussion of how to celebrate, with recipes and sales and presentations at various markets, there is little on the history of how this particular day became such an auspicious holiday. The only link of cheese to January 20th, I could find was ironically my birth year – 1964. It was at the New York World’s Fair when the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation presented the world’s largest block of Cheese, weighing an astounding 34,591 pounds. 16,000 cows provided the necessary 17,000 quarts of milk for the unprecedented block of cheese. You read that right – 16000 cows!

With no official origin of this Holiday, I henceforth personally choose to credit the 1964 World’s Fair with National Cheese Lovers Day. This can be added to equally notable World’s Fair introductions, like the Ford Mustang and Belgian Waffles.

So, as you go about your Saturday, take a cheese break. Stop to smell the Roquefort, so to speak. And, with all that is happening in the world, remember this one important fact: What is the word you say when asked to smile for a picture? CHEESE!  🧀 = 😁

And today’s CHEESE is…

xoxo DDJ

P.S. A little shout out love to my Arepa family, Patti, Danielle and Karen, because what Cheese brings together, let no man put asunder. 💋