BzzAgent and Arla Dofino recently gave me the chance to review Arla Dofino cheeses. I love cheese, I love cheese so much, that I will snack on it before I snack on candy or anything else. I love cheese so much that when I buy sliced cheese for my husband's lunches, I will end up eating it all before the weekend is out and he will be left cheese-less for the rest of the week, until we go shopping again. I love cheese so much, that my family didn't even get to try this with me, because I ate it ALL! I'm terrible. But, I'm so nice I went and bought another one, and I shared a few slices of it with them a couple weeks later.
BzzAgent provided me with one free product coupon and several $1/1 coupons to share with my friends. I gave them all out the very day that I received them in the mail. Again, none of my friends have reported back to me, so I don't know if they have tried the product yet, and what their thoughts were.
I think the most exciting thing about this campaign (other than the fact that it was cheese) was the fact that Arla Dofino is an amazing company. They don't add hormones to the milk, and they use natural ingredients. In this day and age, that is a really hard thing to come by! To me, knowing that there are no added hormones, means I can eat this cheese and not break out on my face.
WHAT!?
Well, let's rewind some 17 years...imagine me in high school...you poor poor thing having to imagine that! I had acne SO bad. It was terrible. I was in a constant state of breakout, I'm surprised a hazmat team didn't come to scoop me up and quarantine me for the large/numerous pustules that adorned my face! I wish I was exaggerating! So fast-forward now to 6 years ago. My son was born, and I was sent to an allergist for my dermatographia (silly doctors, you cannot allergy test a person with dermatographia by using skin-scratch tests). The doctor tells me I'm allergic to everything, including milk (lactose and casein both). I seized the opportunity to ask her if all these allergies could be causing my acne. She says, why yes, a lot of people notice that milk causes them to break out, because of the overuse of hormones. Yes, the powers that be tell us that those hormones don't affect us, but they do. And I'm proof. After suffering with acne for my whole teenage, and even up into my adult years, I gave up all milk. Within a week, I was almost acne free. Within a month, you would never have know that I had a problem.
So, what does that have to do with anything? Yes, I'm straying off track a bit. I still indulge in cheese and ice cream. I told you, I'm a sucker for cheese! But the problem is, any time I eat cheese or ice cream, I break out. UNLESS it's a great cheese like Arla Dofino that does not have added hormones. This is awesome news for me!
Arla Dofino has a whole line of these amazing cheeses, and for more information, go check out their site here. I have only tried the Havarti so far (the dill and the smoked). I truly loved them both. The dill was not overly dilly (and this is important, we don't want the cheese to taste like a pickle, but I definitely enjoy some dill in my cheese) and the smoked Havarti was the perfect amount of smoked as well. So they really nailed it on the flavors. The cheeses were slightly soft (as they are supposed to be), and perfect for putting on crackers.
BzzAgent asked me to write a blog post and maybe show a recipe that I used the cheese for.
People cook with this amazing stuff?
Are you serious?
How can they keep it in their house long enough to cook with it?
That's crazy talk! Unfortunately, this cheese never made it past the cracker, I'm sorry BzzAgent and Arla Dofino, I'm a pure, unadulterated cheese lover. The only time I really like cheese on anything is pizza...and then, it's just cheese. But the cheese didn't last long enough to do anything else with.
Have you ever cooked something, and nibbled on the ingredients as you were cooking, and then maybe you didn't get enough of that ingredient in the recipe because as you were cooking you were happily munching? Like chocolate chips while making cookies? This would have been me with the cheese ;) On a serious note, Arla Dofino has some amazing looking recipes on their Pinterest Boards which you can check out here.
These cheeses are readily found in Walmart, Safeway, and King Soopers here in our area. Unfortunately, the only types I was able to find were the Havarti varieties (though I did find one single little wedge of Gouda at our Safeway recently. So, the variety that I can find here leaves something to be desired. These are not found in your typical "cheese isle", but rather, you will find them more towards the produce or deli areas of your local store. The only con to this cheese is that it is a lot pricier than the crud you find in the cheese isle. You get what you pay for, and that rings true here, it definitely is worth the money (but that doesn't mean we always have that extra money lying around).
This was a great experience, and I am so happy that I was chosen to participate in this campaign. I'm so excited to have had the chance to try and fall in love with these cheeses. I hope you run out and try some today!
The cat is a cheese monster too!
Til next time,
-Sue
#gotitfree #HavartiParty
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