I love hearing about our customers’ holiday traditions. My family has few traditions, lacking sentimentality and desire to do the same thing over and over again. However, we have a few that are important to us. One is hanging candles on our tree and lighting them on Christmas Eve. It’s a Danish tradition I didn’t realize was weird until I went to college, told people about it, and they looked terrified that we made our tree into a giant ball of raging fire. In my eyes, though, it’s beautiful and connects me to my Danish grandmother and her grandmother and her grandmother and the Vikings, naturally. Another important tradition for us is the Christmas Day breakfast. When I was young, I woke up at 5am on Christmas Day, went downstairs, stared at our bursting stockings, and sat there with an overflowing excitement for PRESENTS. Finally, my parents, brother, aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered at the unbearably late hour of 7am. We’d tear into our stockings, tissue paper flying hither and thither, exclaiming at the pencils or a toothbrush or box of paperclips Santa brought us (Mr. Clause was a practical gift giver in our household). Then, we headed to breakfast. 

These days, we’ve ditched the stockings, but breakfast is still essential. We have fluffy scrambled eggs, biscuits, cinnamon buns, coffee cake, gravlax, and of course, cheese. What will be our breakfast cheeses this year? Well, I think the mellow, Italian cow’s milk Raschera will appear in slices on the table to eat with butter and jam on toast. Mountains of finely grated Granaresu will add a salty, savory depth to our eggs. We need the fresh goat’s milk Capri from MA to eat with gravlax. And let’s throw in a luscious French triple cream, Gratte-Paille, for good measure because it’s breakfast, which is the best meal of the day. 

Happy holidays to everyone! I hope your day(s) are filled family and/or friends and/or pets and/or an awesome movie on the couch and, of course, lots of tasty cheese!

For the love of cheese and breakfast,

Kiri