Last year we spent a great deal of time writing a farce about cheese. Yes, it's true, the idea of taking spoiled milk and eating it seemed, to us, to hold a great deal of comic potential. And, while we don't believe we gained enough practical knowledge to actually open up our own dairy, we did learn enough to buy Ricki Carroll's "Home Cheese Making." What we really gained though, was an incredible appreciation for the brave new world of dairy that's going on around us. Researching a good brand of milk to use to make the cheese eventually led us to Straus, and our world was quite profoundly, in the best sense possible, rocked. All the Marmalade shares the joy and blogs about his recent tour there. Also, congratulations to Gordonzola on his new love.

Bacon Press has a long post on mental blocks and diet hurdles, including a long, funny rant on the relative absence of fine cheese from the South Beach Diet. How could you not like any post that includes such sentences as "And, what the hell? A 'dairy-free cream cheese substitute'? You mean like Tofutti? Oh, hell no." Also funny and incredibly detailed, which we appreciated, was Gastronomie's very in-depth look at how to survive food-wise on a cruise. We never really wanted to go on a cruise until now--it actually made us feel hopeful about the food on such things.

Since our friends have had kids we've had a harder time eating instant oatmeal, since it only reminds us of baby food. Tackling the tricky subject about what to feed kids, and when, is never easy. Citymama has a great post about what she started feeding her kids, when--peanut butter sandwiches before they're three, and if you aren't aware of just what kind of apostasy this is in parenting circles, consider yourself lucky--and how they reacted. The next generation of foodies is born. . . Or not. Spicetart chronicles the bumps along the road to feeding her four-month-old. While it's mostly been positive, there's still those off-days and paper binges.

Pic is of stuffed zucchini from Simply Recipes, because it made us want to lick the screen.