The three finalists in our 3rd annual Tillamook Cheese Factory Grilled Cheese Contest cook-off competed last Saturday, April 27 at the Cheese Factory to determine who makes the best darned Tillamook Grilled Cheese sandwich on the planet. From a field of 90 entries, narrowed to seven semi-finalists, these three grilled cheese lovin’ finalists did their best to impress six judges to take the Grand Prize Winner title. And impress they did with three very different, unique, and cheesy recipes.

Colleen Bill of Post Falls, Idaho brought her Grilled Stromboli, with lots of Tillamook Shredded Italian Blend Cheese and Vintage White Smoked Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese and was our 2nd runner up. Donna Beck of Bonney Lake, WA competed with her Cheddar and Ham with Spiced Apple Bacon Compote and Maple Butter, a slightly sweet and spicy delight with our Sharp Cheddar. Donna went home with 24 pounds of cheese and a goodie basket as our 1st runner up. But at the end of the day, the creator of the unique and savory Spicy Turkey Cranberry Grilled Cheese walked away with the $500 Grand Prize, along with a gift basket chock-full of Tillamook goodies and bragging rights for the best Tillamook Grilled Cheese. Karla Pollich of Portland, OR, packed her sandwich with thick slices of Vintage White Extra Sharp Cheddar and Tillamook Swiss, then grilled it up on sourdough bread with herbed Turkey, bacon and a cranberry jalapeno jelly. Karla’s sandwich will be featured at the Creamery Café at the Cheese Factory this week so come on out and give it a try!

Our visitors also got into the act by sampling all three of the contestant’s sandwiches and voting with their applause for the Audience Favorite. This year the voting was closer than ever, with our judges declaring a three-way tie! All three contestants took home coupons for Tillamook Cheese or Ice Cream.

Join us next year for the 4th Annual Contest, and thanks for celebrating National Grilled Cheese month with us this April!

By Susan P.

Do you think you have what it takes to help choose the next winner of the Tillamook Cheese Factory Grilled Cheese Recipe Contest? Tell us why and you could be part of the judges’ panel, spending your Saturday tasting yummy recipes from our three finalists then telling the world whose recipe reigns the cheesiest!

How to Enter
1) Send an email to fans@tillamook.com and tell us why you deserve to be one of the judges for this year’s cook-off. Whether it’s your love for Tillamook Cheese, an eye for the perfect grill mark, an obsession with grilled cheese – or all three! – we want to know!
2) Submit your entry by midnight on Monday, April 15.

The winner will be selected and notified no later than Friday, April 19. The contest cook-off will take place at the Tillamook Cheese Factory in Tillamook, Oregon on Saturday, April 27. See official rules here.

Good luck!

By Loafy

Drum roll please. . . . . .
Announcing the 3^rd Annual Tillamook Cheese Factory Grilled Cheese Contest

Do you have the best tasting, creamiest melting, most unique and utterly irresistible grilled cheese sandwich recipe out there? Then enter the Tillamook Cheese Factory Grilled Cheese Contest! From March 22 through April 15, submit your one-of-a-kind recipe and you could be one of three finalists who will compete in a live cook-off on Saturday, April 27 at the Cheese Factory. A panel of judges including chefs, local personalities such as Marlynn Schotland of Urban Bliss Life, and professional cheese tasters (yes, that is a real job) will pick a winner who will get bragging rights for the best darned Tillamook Grilled Cheese sandwich on the planet – oh, and $500 and a delicious Tillamook goodie basket! There are goodie basket prizes for our runners up, too.

Three easy ways to enter:

1) E-mail your name, city, daytime phone number, and grilled cheese recipe to grilledcheesecontest@tillamook.com (check entry format for instructions on recipe format), or
2) Stop by the Cheese Factory for entry format sample and contest rules; type up your recipe and return it there, or
3) Type your recipe according to entry format and mail it to us!
4) Make sure to follow the entry format or we’ll have to disqualify your delicious recipe!

But hurry – deadline for entries is midnight, Monday, April 15. Click here for all the contest details and official rules!

You say you’re not much of a cook but still LOAF to eat Tillamook grilled cheese sandwiches? Then you will want to enter our contest to become our Celebrity “Best Tillamook Cheese Fan” judge at the recipe cook-off! Details on this contest coming soon so stay tuned as the Loaf Life Blog celebrates National Grilled Cheese month, which begins April 1!

By Susan P.

To help curd-loving fans across the country, and to support our partners at the Oregon Food Bank, we released the curds to our Online Shop for one day only on our 104th birthday! Squeaky Cheese Curds are highly perishable and start to lose their “squeak” after just a few days, so we’ve never been able to facilitate shipping them on a daily basis before. In order to ship these squeak-packed bags of curds, the Tillamook Marketing team took several days away from our regular jobs to personally hand-pack and ship orders from the Tillamook Cheese Factory! Here are some photos from our adventures in shipping Squeaky Cheese Curds.

Here come the curds! The curds we sent were taken fresh out of the vat at 6am (boy, was it early!) so we had time to pack all the boxes.

Good morning! We shipped brand-squeaking fresh curds with overnight shipping, to ensure optimal squeak when they arrived at their final destination.

Here are some empty boxes, waiting for their curds! Each box of curds was handpacked with two bags of curds, an ice pack, a packing slip, and lots of love.

Here’s our UPS truck, squeak-packed with our first day’s shipment of cheese curd orders.

We had a fun time packing all 700+ orders of cheese curds! Thanks again for supporting Tillamook and celebrating our 104th birthday. We hope you can visit us soon at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, where you can get cheese curds all year round.

Yours cheesefully,
The Squeaky Cheese Team

By Katie

If you’ve been out to visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory recently, then you’ve seen (and maybe tasted) these tasty new additions to the Tillamook Ice Cream lineup!

Fireside S’mores
We’ve taken your favorite summer camp treat and turned it into ice cream! Toasty marshmallow cream and graham cracker bits are actually inside this rich chocolate ice cream. Tastes just like those campfire s’mores you remember!

White Chocolate Raspberry Yum
This decadent new flavor has a swirl of ripe Northwest raspberries suspended in a rich, creamy white-chocolate base. You won’t be able to resist this flavor after just one bite!

Be sure to check the Where to Buy tool to see if these flavors are available in your city, or come visit us at the Cheese Factory and try them out!

By Tillamook

Photo: Flickr, Kthread

Do you think you have what it takes to help choose the next winner of the Tillamook Cheese Factory Grilled Cheese Recipe Contest? Tell us why and you could be part of the judges’ panel, spending your Saturday tasting yummy recipes from our three finalists then telling the world whose recipe reigns the cheesiest!

How to Enter

• Send an email to fans@tillamook.com and tell us why you deserve to be one of the judges for this year’s cookoff. Whether it’s your love for Tillamook Cheese, an eye for the perfect grill mark, an obsession with grilled cheese – or all three! – we want to know!
• Submit your entry by midnight on Monday, April 9.

The winner will be selected and notified no later than Friday, April 13. The contest cookoff will take place at the Tillamook Cheese Factory in Tillamook, Oregon on Saturday, April 21. See officials rules here.

Good luck!

By Loafy

What better way to celebrate a week off school than a Spring Break visit to the cheese factory!  We have lots of tasty new treats for you to try – Tillamook specialties you can’t get anywhere else.  How scrumptious does this sound:

Two new sandwiches at the Creamery Café

• Grilled Turkey & Swiss Pesto:  Lots of Tillamook Swiss Cheese and fresh turkey breast, spread with pesto and topped with roasted red peppers, then grilled to perfection on sourdough bread.

• Chicken Club Wrap:  Our Medium Cheddar generously sprinkled on grilled chicken breast with bacon, cucumber, tomato and romaine, then topped with pesto mayo all wrapped up in el grande flour tortilla.

Two new Tillamook Fudge flavors:

• Candy Bar Bliss:  Layers of chocolate and vanilla fudge, with a generous swirl of caramel and pecan throughout, topped with lots more pecans.

• Drew-licious:  Created for Loafy’s good friend Drew Carney of KGW News in Portland.  Layers of dark chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge and rich caramel, with plenty of dark chocolate chips thrown in.  Let the decadent eating begin!

And to make it even more enticing to have some fudge, donate $2 or 2 non-perishable food items to the KGW Great Food Drive at the fudge counter this week, and when you buy a pound of our fudge you will get ½ pound FREE!  Feeding your fudge sweet tooth and helping out a great cause all at the same time.

But we all know Spring Break is not complete without that creamy and delicious waffle cone filled with Tillamook Ice Cream.  Try our tempting new flavor, Vanilla Chocolate Chip.  Or opt for the new and improved Chocolaty Chip Cookie Dough, one of our best sellers.  You will begin to believe summer is right around the corner!

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Tillamook!

By Susan P.

The Tillamook Cheese Factory – the cheesiest place in the whole wide world! I always find smiling faces and hearts full of Loaf Love whenever I’m there.

By Loafy