Bonnie: As Berta tells the story, I bounced (yes, that’s the word she uses) up to her at Cabot’s exhibition booth at the summer fancy food show in Manhattan, said “I love your cheese, have it delivered to the Good Morning America studios by 6 am tomorrow I want to use it on the show,” and bounced off. There was something about me that made her take me seriously. She got the cheese to the studio and it appeared on my GMA segment the next morning.

Berta’s been my champion—and friend—ever since. And I’ve been hers and Cabot’s. I love Cabot Cheddar.

Berta MacDonald, the face of Cabot, is recognizable at any event. What other grown woman walks around in black and white cow pants? She never stops working for the farmers in Cabot’s cooperative, always creating new ways to tout the merits of their dairy products.

Take her Calcium Crisis Challenge, for instance, an event that culminated at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. She challenged DC/Baltimore area kids, grade six to nine, to creatively teach their peers about the importance of calcium—a topic I’ve been writing about since the early ’80s, or long enough to be dubbed the “Calcium Queen”. Those kids rose to her challenge producing clothing, computer programs, sculptures, humor skits, magazines and other teaching tools so incredible that I, and seven other judges, had difficulty selecting the winners from the seventy finalists.

Most important—with almost three-quarters of all kids not getting enough calcium in their diets— the students in the schools who took the challenge learned the importance of that nutrient for their health.

Calcium is an important nutrient. Research says it lowers blood pressure, prevents cavities, and reduces the risk of colon cancer and osteoporosis – the crippling bone disease that’s epidemic in the US. To paraphrase something I’ve said so often I forgot where I first read it, osteoporosis is a pediatric disease with geriatric consequences.

Whoa!

Enough about nutrition and disease.

Back to what got me on my calcium rant: Cabot’s Cheddar. It’s won almost every major award including The World’s Best Cheddar. I prefer their Vintage Choice, but like all the aged Cheddars. And of their flavored ones, my favorites include the horseradish (pungent) and the chipotle (smoky and spicy).

Bryan: Cheese is one of my life’s staples; a diet of wine, cheese and bread can get me through weeks of traveling and a hunk of Cheddar is always in my fridge… There is simply not a better topping to a tuna melt on an “everything’” bagel than a thick slice of Cabot Cheddar. Great as a snack, this textured flavorful cheese is a favorite, a welcome taste in a world of processed, bland cheese substitutes. Artisan in quality though reasonably priced, I thank the culinary gods that I can get it in Atlanta.

Eric: I never grew up as a cheese fan, and seldom did I ever open the refrigerator door in search of cheese as a treat. When I think back now, I thought the single slice of American cheese was a specialty when sandwiched between two pieces of bread; but then there was the day the black-wax covered block arrived. At first, the difficulty of getting the cheese open (similar to the frustration of first trying to open a coconut) deterred me from putting in the effort for just plain old cheese. I cannot think of a fonder food memory than breaking off the first piece of this vintage Cheddar and placing it in my mouth.This cheese has become the definition of Cheddar and was my “gateway” cheese.

Win 3-pound Cabot Extra Sharp Cheddar Wheel
Click here to enter!

cowpants.jpg