After being on the road for almost a month and a half already, it’s easy to start missing home a little bit! My cheesy family and I always get together once a week for a “family dinner” where we all make something to contribute. These last couple weeks have been a lot of fun with everyone cooking up recipes that make them think of home!

Potato + Broccoli + Onions + Cheese = Yum!
When Tillatastic Ash is missing her hometown of Walla Walla, WA she whips up a perfect recipe to make her feel at home again! Her cheesy, baked Idaho potato, broccoli, and Walla Walla sweet onion dish is quick to make and leaves the belly feeling happy!

Cheese and Crackers
If you’re wondering how I spend my Friday nights at home, it’s usually sitting around a table with friends playing games and snacking on cheese and crackers! My favorite combination is with an array of crackers to choose from and the 3 Year Aged Vintage White Extra Sharp Cheddar. The cheese is so decadently delicious, I usually just end up using the crackers as a vehicle for the cheese to get in my mouth!

Gluten-Free Pasta
Although ShellBe Sharp can’t have gluten anymore, that hasn’t stopped her from making delicious gluten-free meals that even gluten lovers like PepperJack Matt enjoy! Her favorite dish to make when away from home includes gluten-free brown rice pasta, a little of this, a little of that, and of course some Tillamook Cheese! Her cheese of choice is usually the Vintage White Extra Sharp Cheddar! To ShellBe Sharp this colorful dish reminds her of Fall in Portland, OR when the leaves are changing colors and the weather starts to get a little cooler.

Grilled Salmon with Butter, Rosemary, and Garlic
One of the perks of spending my Spring in Texas has been the 70+ degree weather on a regular basis! If I were at home this time of the year, I know I would not be uncovering my BBQ for at least another couple months! During one of our “family dinners” we grilled up some salmon with Tillamook Salted Butter, a little salt and pepper, garlic, and some rosemary! It was juicy and scrumptious and reminded me of warm and sunny summers in the NW!

Waffles
Food carts have really come into their own over the past few years in the NW, specifically in Portland. One of my favorite food carts to visit is Flavour Spot. They have several cheesy waffles featuring our very own Tillamook Cheese, but one of my favorites is their Sausage and Maple combination! To help me recreate this tastiness on the road I usually add Tillamook Unsalted Butter, maple syrup, and sausage on top of my Texas shaped waffles! While my version is a little different from Flavour Spot’s, it still helps me reminisce of all the wonderful food carts in my hometown!

Now that I’ve shared some of my favorite NW dishes, what are some of your favorites? Share with me on Twitter or Facebook!
Twitter: @AprilFoCheezy
Facebook: April FoCheezy

By Tillamook

Every week, I get a box of yummy, farm-fresh vegetables (courtesy of CSA) delivered to my doorstep. When figuring out what to do with them, I inevitably start thinking “how can I make this into a pizza?” (I eat a lot of pizza – like here and even here). This recipe hit the spot for a warm winter comfort food. Make it just like this recipe or with whatever winter veggies you have around.

Ingredients
1 yam or sweet potato
1 package pizza dough, room temperature
1 bunch of fresh basil (15-20 leaves)
½ cup olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
8 oz Tillamook Shredded Italian Blend Cheese
Tillamook Salted Butter
¼ yellow onion (preferably a Walla Walla onion)
½ red bell pepper
Garlic
Arugula (or any green leafy vegetable)

Preparation
Preheat oven to 400°F. Slice yams into ⅛ inch discs, and cover in olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and bake until just tender (about 10 minutes).

Spread room temperature pizza dough on a salted and oiled pizza stone or baking pan and poke holes with a fork so it doesn’t bubble up. Bake for 6 or 7 minutes, or until dough just starts to harden (this will help keep it from getting soggy later!). You can do this at the same time as the yams. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce for the pizza by blending basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and a ½ cup of Shredded Italian Blend Cheese in a food processor.

Melt butter in a large frying pan. Slice onions and bell peppers, then cook slowly over medium heat with loosely chopped garlic until onions just start to brown, then set aside.

When pizza dough is ready (when it’s about half cooked), spread the sauce evenly on the top. Spread yams evenly (like you would with pepperoni). Spread arugula over this, then top with onions and bell peppers. Top it all off with a giant handful of your Shredded Italian Blend Cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted. Let sit for 5 minutes before slicing.

By Katie

Food Network Celebrity Chef Amanda Freitag takes a plug of Tillamook Cheese.

In late September Tillamook was a sponsor of Feast Portland, the first large scale epicurean event the city has seen. There were many other local companies like Jacobsen Salt, Widmer Brother’s, Moonstruck Chocolates and Portland Creamery (Goat Cheese). There were also a number of large profile chefs who attended this inaugural event. From Chef Amanda Freitag to Brad Farmerie to Chef Duff Goldman, they came out in force to enjoy a beautiful fall weekend in Portland. If you didn’t have a chance to go this year, this Eater article has all the information you need (as if you needed any) to help you make your decision to go next year! Because, YES, there will be another Feast!! 2013 is already on the calendar and we can’t wait to see what amazing things co-founders Mike Thelin and Carrie Welch have in store. If you can go, what are you most excited about?

Sandwiches and judges at the Sandwich Invitational.

Comfort Call

The year is 2012. The place is Portland, OR. The venue is Feast. All of the world’s top culinary stars our out to shine on our humble and ‘weird’ city. They are here to experience Portland – a mystical place to those who don’t know it. You recycle? You grow your own vegetables? You know your chicken’s name before you eat it (ok, that doesn’t really happen)? They come to see what all the fuss is about. They will leave knowing exactly what the fuss is all about!

We were very fortunate to partner with Mike Thelin, Carrie Welch and their incredible staff at Feast to not only be involved, but to work with them to give a once-in-a-lifetime experience – the kind only Portland can offer! Tillamook, being the cheese-nerds that we are, couldn’t just hand out samples. Yes, we wanted to hand out samples, but we couldn’t just stop there. The next logical choice was, of course, grilled cheese sandwiches. But how do we make grilled cheese sandwiches that are perfectly crisp on the outside and perfectly gooey on the inside and get them to people who are all over the city at food parties? With phones of course.

Flip-phones to be exact! We handed out 200 flip-phones to super fans, chefs, writers, and generally, people who looked interested. The phone’s sole purpose was ordering a grilled cheese sandwich from Tillamook between midnight and 3am – just when you need it most! As soon as the order came through, our chefs went to work and made some pretty yummy combinations (think Apple Cinnamon and Vintage White Medium Cheddar, Bacon Waffle with Medium Cheddar and Tarragon Zucchini with Medium Cheddar and Pepper Jack).

At first people didn’t believe that we would actually deliver the sandwiches, thinking that it was just a marketing thing. But then, we did! We hand-made and delivered – in our yum bus – over 100 sandwiches in two nights! The smiles on people’s faces when they got their sandwich after a long day of cooking or eventing or twittering, were priceless and validated just how much we love our jobs! The last thing we did, because we couldn’t just throw the phones out, was ask the recipients of the phones to leave them with the front desk at their hotels. We then donated the phones to a local charity.

The year is now 2013. The place is still Portland, OR. The venue is still Feast. All of the world’s top culinary stars will be out to shine – won’t you please join them!? We’ll be there to meet you…You won’t regret it!

Updated: 4/16/2013

By Matt