You just can't argue with good cheese

I would like to spend a little time today talking about Hickory Farms. Now as a child (growing up as a Texas country girl and all), Hickory Farms was the height of sophistication. Whenever some rare occasion came along when someone in my family received one of those fabulous card board boxes full of Easter grass and tiny exotic cheeses (exotic being flavors such as “smoked” or “potted”), not to mention the possibility of some kind of summer sausage and those ridiculously delicious strawberry candies (you know the ones with the liquid center wrapped in the paper that made it actually look like a REAL strawberry), I could only hope some of the exotic cheese would be bestowed upon little me. What a treat. So now, even though I am grown and have married a Frenchman, and so have been exposed to even the stinkiest and most European of artisan, sold at an open market in a tiny French village cheeses, I still love good ole Hickory Farms. A couple of years ago I mail ordered my father some Hickory Farms cheese as a Christmas gift (what a good daughter am I?), so now I get emails from Hickory Farms on a regular basis. I get the Hickory Farms Newsletter. You see, apparently there is enough new and exciting work going on in the laboratories of Hickory Farms to necessitate the regular mailing of such news to the masses. Today I found out that Hickory Farms has a Mother’s Day collection. Darn it all to heck! I already purchased Mother’s Day gifts, but I might as well pass the information on to you. There are the NEW Mother’s Love Tower, Mother’s Day Fruitful Wishes Gift Box and the Ultimate Mother’s Day Basket. However, none of these seem to contain any exotic cheese. So I did some research- and here is why. I am a mother myself now. This will be my second Mother’s Day (last year I got a fabulous pair of cowboy boots). And if anyone asks you what kind of exotic Hickory Farms gift box I want for my special day, you can tell them to go to the Hickory Farms website and click on the Beef & Cheese link (don’t you just love a link called Beef & Cheese?) and if I had to pick it just by the name, I would go for the Just Snacky Gift Box

which contains:

- 7 oz Beef Stick® Summer Sausage- 2 oz Cheddar Chub- 1.75 oz Chedam- 1.75 oz Mission Jack®- 1.3 oz Old Fashioned Crackers- 1.25 oz Sweet Hot Mustard - 1.5 oz Blueberry Jelly- Strawberry Bon Bons

By the way, what the heck is a cheddar chub? But I think I really would want what Hickory Farms describes as a classic gift of the Tempting Twosome Gift Box (which I also like because it sounds a little bit naughty).

This set contains:
- 2/7 oz Beef Stick® Summer Sausages- 2/2 oz Hot Pepper Triangles- 1.75 oz Smokey Bar - 1.75 oz Mission Jack®- 3 oz Apple Pie Cheddar- 2/1.25. oz Sweet Hot Mustards- .5 oz Cracked Wheat Wafers- Strawberry Bon Bons

I mean that really has it all. You get sausages, cheese that tastes like pie and the all important smokey bar (because it ain’t Hickory Farms for me without smokey cheese). And also by the way, every Hickory Farms order does come with the Hickory Farms © Farmer’s Handshake and Shipping guarantee (which according to the newsletter is “As solid and simple as a farmer’s handshake.”) Thank heavens for the simple farmer folk. I do miss the cheddar chub but I guess you can’t have everything. I strongly suggest you spend some of your hard earned crapping around time looking through the Hickory Farms website. It’s cool to be cheesy.