Cheese Tasting with Anatole & Heluva Good!

Posted by Jul 20, 2017 Book Based Activities, Books, Family Fun

Standard Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Heluva Good! Cheese as part of an Influence Central campaign and all opinions expressed in my post are my own. This post also contains affiliate links.  I may receive a commission from purchases you make through the links in this post.

I think it is fairly safe to say that cheese is one of my daughter’s favorite foods. From mac and cheese to grilled cheese, she loves it in all forms. I can’t really blame her, since I do too! So when I was offered the opportunity to work with Heluva Good!®, I was thrilled to have some cheesy fun with my daughter! We decided to try some new things together with a cheese tasting for kids!

We started out by reading Anatole written by Eve Titus and illustrated by Paul Galdone. This book tells the story of Anatole, an honorable little mouse living in France. Anatole has a family to feed, so he sneaks into the homes of humans and takes their leftovers. When he discovers that this upsets humans, he decides to find a more honorable way to earn supper for his family. He comes across the Duvall Cheese Factory, and takes it upon himself to taste the cheeses in their tasting room and provide his thoughts on each product. When the workers find his notes, they realize that he is right, and soon they are making the best cheese around! This sweet story teaches kids about being honorable and earning what you get. It also provides a fun opportunity to taste different kinds of cheese with your kids!

Preparing our Cheese Tasting

To prepare for our Anatole inspired cheese tasting, my daughter and I headed to Walmart to pick up some different varieties of Heluva Good! Block Cheese. We were pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of Heluva Good! cheese available, and my daughter had a lot of fun picking a selection. Cheese and crackers have always been a popular pairing, but we decided to branch out and find some other snacks to pair with our cheeses. We had fun shopping around the grocery area and finding different things to try.

Cheese tasting party

The different varieties of Heluva Good! cheese allowed us to create a nice range of cheeses to try and to play with for our cheese tasting. My daughter really enjoyed helping me to cut the cheese blocks (using a cheese slicer, so she couldn’t hurt herself). They cut very easily, which allowed her to help without getting frustrated. I sliced a few pieces out of each of our cheese blocks into little mouse shapes for our tasting. (Check out the video below to see how). She loved taking a bite out of the little mice! I set out our cheese blocks and additional foods on a tray for after our initial tasting.

As you can see in this photo, she liked the mice so much she snuck a bite out of my model!

Let kids be creative and figure out some foods they want to try paired with the cheeses. Some suggestions to try include:

  • Strawberries
  • Grapes
  • Apples
  • Tortilla Chips
  • Tomatoes
  • Pretzels
  • Pepperoni

 

Rating the Cheeses

I wanted my daughter to have the opportunity to try different cheese flavors and decide which ones she likes best. Since she is only two, I decided the best way to do this would be to create an easy printable with happy and sad mouse faces on them. As she tried each cheese, I encouraged her to circle or color the appropriate mouse on her page. She really enjoyed coloring her page, and I liked watching her think about the cheeses she was tasting. You could use this printable for older kids as well, and encourage them to write in their thoughts, or write what food pairings did or did not work with the cheese.

Patterning

After we had tried the cheeses, I set out the cheese platter we made with the other food items, as well as some skewers. I encouraged my daughter to make a pattern out of the cheeses and foods, and then we stuck them on skewers. (Young children will need a lot of help/supervision for safety). This activity provided practice in patterns, as well as fine motor skills. Plus my daughter loved creating her own snack! These skewers are great for everyday snacking, but can also be dressed up as appetizers for a party. My daughter will love making these for guests and sharing her “cooking” with family and friends!

 

Thoughts

Overall, our cheese tasting was a definite success! Since my daughter loves creating in the kitchen, I think she will want to make these skewers again. Heluva Good! comes in a lot of varieties, so the snacking combinations are endless. I like that the cheese is made with milk and it is a great source of protein and calcium for her growing body. It is also gluten free and has 0 grams of trans fat per serving. There are lots of mouthwatering flavors available including:

  • Colby Jack
  • Pepper Jack
  • Extra Sharp Cheddar
  • Sharp Cheddar
  • White Extra Sharp Cheddar
  • White Sharp Cheddar
  • Extra Sharp Cheddar
  • White Mild Cheddar
  • Muenster
  • Monterey Jack
  • Special Reserve Extra Sharp Cheddar
  • Colby
  • Mild Cheddar

You can find Heluva Good! Cheese in the dairy aisle of your local Walmart in New York (New York, Syracuse, Buffalo/Rochester, Albany), Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, Harrisburg/Scranton, Philadelphia), Connecticut (Hartford), Massachusetts (Springfield, Boston), Ohio (Cleveland, Columbus), Rhode Island (Providence), Florida (Tampa/St. Petersburg, Orlando) and Virginia (Roanoke), Maryland (Baltimore), Washington D.C.

Check out the Heluva Good! Cheese website to learn more: http://goic.io/QKVTsK and check out their Walmart Ibotta offer here: http://goic.io/ipdm0d. Limited quantities are available since there isn’t an expiration date on this offer. It is available until all of the rebates have been used.

Does your family enjoy trying new foods together? How do you make trying new foods fun? Share in the comments!


 

62 comments on “Cheese Tasting with Anatole & Heluva Good!”

  5. SUCH cute ideas!! My kids are all little (4 and under) but I am doing what I can now to instill a love of reading and these are all great things I will definitely be incorporating 🙂 My two year old will especially appreciate the incorporation of food, haha!

  10. Such a fab idea!! Love the cheese mice and how you’ve managed to get some great concepts into it to help support development!

  15. This is such a fun idea. I had no idea Hellavagood made so many varieties of cheese. Your selection of activities is inspiring. There are so many spin off ideas that my head is spinning!

  17. The cheese activity with the book is adorable! Such a fun way to be creative with food and learning about different cheeses – just darling!

  22. Cheese tasting parties are among my favorite types of parties! This looks so fun, I’ll have to try it when my son is a little older!

    • I hope they do! My daughter had a lot of fun with it, and I can see us doing this again when she is older.

  29. I love the idea of pairing this cheese tasting with literacy. How fun for kids to be exposed to new foods and turn it into an experiment of being like mice! Brilliant, as usual, Vicki.

  31. Yeah, BIG mistake to read this right before dinnertime as my tummy Is not loudly growling! I haven’t tried the Heluva Good cheese, but my family Is obsessed with their French onion dip so I’m excited to give their cheese a try. Love the idea of a tasting. Thanks for sharing!

  32. I will have to look more into this cheese for my next wine dinner party as well my meal prep sandwiches. It is such a good idea to teach kids about food pairing.

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