Thanksgiving Cheeseboard

    Hello again!! And Welcome to the start of Thanksgiving week! Cheeseboards are all the rage right now, a food trend I hope I hope is here to stay. They are delicious, easy, and can always be customized to be festive. A few weeks ago I did one I really enjoyed that was Halloween themed. And so I thought, what could I do to make a Thanksgiving themed board? They are so close it was difficult, it had to not be the same thing, but still be orange and pumpkins and all things fall. So instead of just orange, and pumpkins, and all things fall, I went with some of the flavors of Thanksgiving dinner. 

    When you think of Thanksgiving, what do you think of? I think of pumpkin pie, and cranberry, and herbs, and fall leaves, and treating ourselves. And that is a great place to start. I'll begin by talking about the cheese used. I went with mimolette because it was bright orange. Delicious too, but also the right color for this. Port salut because of the flavor, but also the yellowish orange exterior worked really well. From there I used a cranberry Wenslydale because cranberries go with the theme, and last but not least Humboldt Fog because it's delicious and not everything could be orange. The jam used was of course a homemade cranberry sauce, which is super simple to whip together. 

    And finally I want to talk about crackers. Usually I go for a fairly plain cracker. Nothing too heavily seasoned on it's own so those flavors don't compete with the cheese. Some people like spices crackers, I do on occasion, but for the most part I go plain. But not here. The scalloped crackers of course are, I still wanted to have those there. But then I also used rosemary and olive oil Triscuits. The wonderful herb flavor of the crackers reminded me of some of the flavors in stuffing and where a great Thanksgiving nod. Whatever you use, make sure you like the flavors in addition to the beautiful call colors and enjoy!

    The other fun thing about cheeseboards is they are so easy to customize. You can scale them up or down to feed a crowd or just for one. They make great thanks you gifts and really don't require any work on your part. But the items, arrange them nicely, and no cooking is involved! A great rule of thumb is about 5 ounces of cheese per person if it's the main meal and about 2-3 is it's being served as a snack. 

Cheese

Mimolette

Port Salut

Cranberry Wenslydale

Humboldt Fog

Crackers

Sea Salt Scallop crackers

Rosemary Triscuits

Extras

Black Grapes

Pumpkin Spice Meringues

Maple Spice Walnuts

Maple Leaf cookies

Spanish Paprika Olives

Pumpkin Deviled Eggs

Salami

Persimmon Wedges

Constellation Tomatoes

Dried apricots

Pepitas

Cranberry Sauce

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