Havarti is hot – it’s among the fastest-growing cheese categories in Canada. Smoked cheese is hot – sales of smoked cheeses have tripled in Canada in just one year. So it just stands to reason that new Dofino® Smoked Havarti is smokin’ hot.

While we normally keep the focus here on Tre Stelle® cheeses, this new cheese from Tre Stelle® sister brand Dofino® — available now in grocery stores across Canada — is just too good to resist, especially with casual summer dining on the way.

Made with 100% fresh Canadian milk and no artificial preservatives, colours or flavours, Dofino® Smoked Havarti combines the buttery taste and soft texture of Dofino® Creamy Havarti with the flavour of natural wood smoke. I’m a sucker for that woodsy, smoky flavour. I love smoked fish, smoked meat, smoky ribs on the barbecue – even that wonderfully smoky, creamy eggplant dip and spread known as Baba Ghanouj.

Dofino® Smoked Havarti is delicious melted on a burger. It breathes new life into sandwiches – I find it pairs particularly well with turkey. I love it melted in an omelette, cubed in a salad or just on a cracker, maybe with a little red pepper jelly for sweet contrast. It’s also delicious with crisp slices of apple or pear.

I like the fact that Havarti Cheese was invented by a woman, more than 120 years ago, when women weren’t necessarily encouraged to be inventing things – or at least rarely received the credit. The ‘mother’ of Havarti was Danish cheese pioneer Hanne Nielsen. Havarti was named after her farm Havartigaard by King Christian IX in the late 1800s.

You can purchase Dofino® Smoked Havarti in chunks or in convenient slices ready to be placed on a sandwich, melted over a grilled chicken breast or just enjoyed as a quick snack.

I always love cooking for Moms, because for so many years Mom(s) cooked for me. Mothers work so hard and give so much, so it feels great to watch them sit back sipping wine while I do the work.  (I’ll even forgive the odd comment about how they would do things differently.) Besides, some of my best friends are Moms, especially the one responsible for the two fantastic young men in our household. I’ll have her to cook for on Mother’s Day, and her Mom too. They’re both food lovers, so they’re a pleasure to feed.

These Moms know to expect the involvement of cheese in my cooking. This time I’m going to feature the “small mouthfuls” Italians call Bocconcini. Trestelle.ca’s Cheese Gallery describes this fresh cheese as being characterized by a “firm but yielding” texture, which I think is an appropriate metaphor for Moms. At the 85^th British Empire Cheese Competition last year, judges chose Tre Stelle® Bocconcini as the first prize winner in its class. Mom would approve.

I’m going to begin our Mother’s Day meal with Bocconcini Antipasti, a simple dish brimming with Mediterranean flavours including roasted red peppers, sundried tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and fresh basil. Those flavours are soaked up by smooth, creamy balls of Tre Stelle® Bocconcini, drained and cut in half.

You’ll find 34 more recipes featuring Tre Stelle® Bocconcini at the Tre Stelle® Recipe Gallery. And don’t forget May 12. Mom’s the word!

My love affair with Feta began when I made my first Greek-Canadian friends in high school. They had cold rooms in their basements with big plastic tubs of Feta in brine. They had big jars of olives too, along with homemade sausages and homemade wine. It was heaven for a budding foodie and wine lover. Later, I spent years living near Toronto’s Greektown, where Feta was an important part of any restaurant meal, and not just in the iconic Greek Salad. (By the way, there’s a great Tre Stelle® Greek Salad recipe here.)

With the versatility of Feta in mind, let me share a couple of my favourite recipes from the Tre Stelle® Recipe Gallery.

Chardonnay Infused Scallops with Feta & Rapini: Dazzle your guests with this delicious dish that is almost embarrassingly easy to make.

Lentil Salad: A Mediterranean delight, this recipe combines cooked green lentils with complementary flavours including lemon, olives, oregano, sweet peppers and Tre Stelle® Feta Cheese, crumbled.

Winter’s cold encourages the consumption of hearty comfort food, but that combined with reduced outdoor activity often results in a few extra pounds around the middle by season’s end. While I’ll never be a swimsuit model, this is the time when I try to shed a few pounds, putting an extra spring in my step to go along with the joy of watching nature’s annual green miracle.

More green is my ‘secret’ to a lighter diet. I have friends on a variety of restricted eating plans these days, in hopes that depriving themselves of wheat or eating like a caveman will melt away their excess. The results are impressive, but are they sustainable? I love all kinds of food too much to deny myself entirely. I’ll eat less of the high fat, high carb, high calorie stuff, but that’s as far as I’m going. (Don’t touch my cheese!) My spring ‘lighten up’ campaign consists of more salads, more veggie dishes and less pasta, bread and starchy ingredients. It’s really not that hard. Especially when you kick up the flavour with the addition of cheese.

Green beans are delicious with Tre Stelle® Parmigiano Reggiano grated on top. The same goes for grilled or broiled asparagus. Broccoli and cauliflower take flight with the addition of a variety of cheeses – just a little – shredded or grated on top. I’d have to say, though, that Tre Stelle® Feta is my favourite cheese for spring and summer consumption. It’s fresh and light and I use it in recipes from trestelle.ca like the classic Greek Salad, the delicious Chunky Hummus-Style Feta Dip with Market Fresh Vegetables, the Fetalicious Couscous Salad and the Shrimp & Rice Vermicelli Salad. What’s your favourite trestelle.ca Feta recipe?

At ages 14 and 12, you might assume that my two boys are too old for an Easter egg hunt. You’d be wrong. Yes, Santa is out of the bag and the Tooth Fairy a distant and not particularly fond memory (he/she was a little forgetful at our house) but when Easter rolls around, their expectations are that the hunt will be on. And why not? If I could get people to hide chocolate around the house for me to find, I’d be all over it too. The only change is that they’re demanding a better grade of chocolate, which I see as a good sign. Maybe they’ll outgrow white bread soon too.

Once the hunt is over and done with, I’ll be in the kitchen preparing for an Easter dinner with the in-laws. They’re great guests, always willing to try new recipes and never expecting a traditional holiday meal. (They never get one either!)

I always find Easter to be a holiday filled with promise, not only for its symbolism of rebirth, but also for its timing, as a long winter nears a welcome end, and the first hints of spring emerge. With creamy, milky Ricotta the feature cheese this month at trestelle.ca, I’ll be working that into the main course, and it will probably be the star of dessert as well. With 74 different recipes featuring Ricotta on the website there’s an abundance of choice. Here’s my pick for our Easter dinner main course.

Mediterranean Lasagna: Hot Italian sausage gives this version of the ultimate comfort food some real zip. The meat and sauce layers are packed with Mediterranean flavours including red and green peppers, onion, sliced black olives, oregano and tomato sauce. A deliciously creamy layer is created with a combination of Tre Stelle® Ricotta, Tre Stelle® Grated Parmesan, parsley, and egg. A Tre Stelle® Mozzarella Cheese Ball is sliced for a layer of melted goodness, with a portion shredded as the final topping.

For my Mom, cooking was more of a requirement than a passion. With five kids and a husband who expected dinner on the table at 5:07 p.m., give or take 30 seconds, that’s not a big surprise. As kids, we were not expected to do much of anything in the kitchen except raid the fridge and lick the odd spoon.

Our house is a little different. Dad does most of the cooking and the kids set and clear the table each night. They don’t have to cook, but that’s mostly because I’m hoping they’ll see the joy I take in preparing meals and an interest will be sparked. Since the boys are only 14 and 12, I’m holding back the trump card that a young man with some kitchen skills may have a slight edge in finding that special someone.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m beginning to see progress. The youngest is keen on helping his Mom bake, mainly because he wants first dibs on the results. Hey, it’s a start. The older one is preparing to enter high school by thinking about university, when the ability to prepare a meal might just come in handy. When I asked what he wanted to make in his first lesson, the response was “grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken quesadillas.” Clearly the son of a cheese blogger.

They’re perfect choices though, along with pizza, sandwiches, pasta and other kid favourites. When cooking with kids it’s important to keep it simple, keep it fun and keep it short. If they enjoy it, they’ll be back for more. Here’s a kid-cooking-friendly recipe from the nearly 400 choices at trestelle.ca.

Ricotta Pancakes With Ambrosia Salsa: It doesn’t get much more kid-friendly than this. Featuring Tre Stelle® Extra Smooth Ricotta, the featured cheese of the month, these pancakes are delicious and fun to make. The topping of fruit along with coconut and marshmallows adds a whole other level of fun and great taste.

It’s Oscar time, with Sunday, February 24 hotly anticipated by fans of the silver screen. There are nine flicks vying for best film of 2012, and established stars and up-and-comers duking it out for the acting and directing laurels. The awards are just part of the fun. The real drama concerns who’s wearing what, who will get the hook for thanking everyone and their mother, and who will be ungracious in defeat.

For the small group of guests walking up the red carpet to watch the Academy Awards chez moi, I’ll play my typecast role as a hard-nosed cheese lover and offer up some curd-based treats. I’ll get the show started with a cheese platter presenting my personal award winners from the Tre Stelle® lineup.

My choice for Best Cheese? Mature, ripened Tre Stelle® Asiago. I love it’s sharpness, and the fact that it practically demands the company of a bold Italian red wine. For Best Cheese In A Supporting Role I’m going with the Tre Stelle® Mozzarella Ball, a finalist in the Mozzarella Cheese category at the 2011 Dairy Farmers of Canada Grand Prix Cheese Competition. With its mild flavour and pleasing texture, this is the ideal supporting character cheese with both savoury and sweet condiments. Finally, for Best Cheese in a Foreign Language, I have selected Tre Stelle® Borgonzola, only partially because I don’t believe Borgonzola is an official word in any language. It’s an awesome cheese, though, with the smooth, mild flavour of Brie kicked up with a dash of sharp Blue.

As well as the cheese platter, here’s a delicious recipe I plan to serve up to my star-struck guests.

Ricotta & Potato Pancakes with Plum Ketchup: Who doesn’t love a potato pancake, especially when Tre Stelle® Traditional Ricotta Cheese is in the mix, along with a sprinkling of Tre Stelle® Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, grated. You could make it easy and use a store-bought plum sauce, but the DIY plum ketchup is well worth the effort, with the spicy additions of cinnamon, nutmeg and fresh ginger.

Saint Valentine’s Day, commonly known as Valentine’s Day, was originally a celebration of early Christian saints. But the day’s association with romantic love is nothing new: as early as the 15th century February 14^th had evolved into an event where lovers expressed their passion by presenting flowers, candy and handwritten missives of love.

But like so many of our holidays, from Easter to Halloween, Valentine’s Day now comes with extensive advertising and the suggestion that a big effort (or better yet, a big spend) is required to celebrate it properly. To this I say, ‘Not so!’

Everyone is different, of course, but I think most Valentines simply want a reaffirmation that they’re loved. You can say it with flowers, sweeten it with chocolate or enrich it with jewels, but it truly is the thought that counts. Personally, I’ll stick to what I’m good at and say it with food. What says love better than a home-cooked meal of favourite ingredients?

My Valentine is a cheese lover, so that will be reflected in the menu, as will her desire to eat a little lighter in 2013. Here is the appetizer and main course I’ve selected for this February 14, both featuring Romano, the Tre Stelle® featured cheese of the month for February. Check out the nearly 400 recipes at trestelle.ca and I’m sure you’ll find choices just right for your sweetheart.

Sole & Spinach With Romano Béchamel: A healthy main course of flour-dusted sole on a bed of wilted spinach, with the sensual addition of a creamy béchamel sauce flavoured with Tre Stelle® Grated Romano Cheese.

Romano Dippers: Quick and easy for a weeknight Valentine’s Day, these finger foods consist of breadsticks with parma ham and basil or baby spinach wrapped around them. The combination is then placed in a shot glass, in which you have placed a spoonful of Tre Stelle® Grated Romano Cheese. Dip and devour – or better yet, feed your partner by hand.

Last year at this time I resolved to lose weight and eat more cheese. It sounded like a tall order, even to me. For one, I’ve never been on any kind of diet at any time in my life. (Which is why I ended up at 49 years old looking like a late-term pregnant woman with a beard.) But here we are 12 months later and I’m nearly 30 pounds lighter – and I ate a whole lot of cheese last year.

I did it through making better choices, cutting back on breads and other carbs, eating more fruit and vegetables and avoiding too many late-night snacks. I also started exercising frequently, which has brought a host of other benefits and enhanced my general feeling of well-being.

Part of my approach came from a conversation with nutritionist Lise Larsen, who works with Arla Foods in Denmark.  She told me there has been a change in mindset in the nutrition world over the past few years, with more focus on dietary patterns and the combination of foods required for optimum health, rather than singling out nutrients and foods in isolation. “Today, we look at everything people eat, rather than saying you should eat this or shouldn’t eat that,” Larsen told me.

The more holistic approach is good news for cheese lovers because cheese is a natural product with health benefits that are sometimes overshadowed due to worries about its fat content. Cheese is a concentrated source of the many nutrients found in milk, including calcium, protein, phosphorus, zinc, B Vitamins and more. “Cheese is a food that makes sense for the human body,” Larsen said.

That was good enough for me. So I say: bring on the Brie, pass the Provolone and hand over the Havarti. Yes, everything in moderation, but when it comes to cheese, I’ll have a little bit of everything please. From all of us at Tre Stelle®, we wish you a Happy New Year and we look forward to sharing our passion for great cheese with you for another year, on this blog, through our many recipes at TreStelle.ca, on our Facebook page and in the pages (digital and otherwise) of melt Magazine and melt Online.

I’ve often found New Year’s Eve to be a stressful occasion. People seem to try too hard to have a good time, and as a result, often don’t. My wife and I have tried various approaches. One year we went out for dinner with friends at a restaurant we hadn’t tried. Turned out they booked about three times as many people as the place could hold. We’ve done the bar thing, the concert thing, the crash the party at the big lawyer’s house thing, the stay home with the kids thing.

Maybe it’s just because we’re getting older, but we’ve lately settled on an intimate friends and family New Year’s Eve, with good food, good tunes, good wine and comfortable company. We eat together with the kids (they won’t be kids for long) and make it fun by doing a fondue or something messy and decadent like lobsters or crab legs. There’s a fire in the hearth and relaxation in the air after the busy holiday season. For us it’s a time to celebrate our blessings, not to lament the past year or worry about the next.  We barely notice midnight, and we’re just fine with that.

Since my friends have long realized that they’re cheese guinea pigs, they’ll be expecting some cheesy appetizers at our New Year’s Eve soiree. And since my two boys are showing an interest in cooking – while still being annoyingly fussy about the range of flavours that go in their mouths – I chose recipes they can help out with. I may not have mentioned that the cupcakes were lasagna cupcakes, but we’ll still have some family fun putting them together, a great way to end the year.  Here are the two choices I’ve made from the 400 recipes at trestelle.ca.

Sliders with Shaved Parmesan: Mini beef burgers get a Mediterranean turn with the addition of oregano, mint and ground coriander. They sit atop mini pita halves and are garnished with shavings of Tre Stelle^® Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese. Additional garnishes could include roasted red peppers, caramelized onions, arugula or sundried tomato slivers.

Lasagna Cupcakes: Wonton wrappers are layered with seasoned ground beef, pasta sauce and three types of Tre Stelle^® cheese to create these appetizer-sized mini lasagnas, perfect for entertaining.