Paxton & Whitfield's cheese journal

I'm the sort of person who goes upstairs for something and can't remember what it was until I've walked back down again, so remembering all the different cheeses I've scoffed is a frankly impossible task.

I've got a database on my desktop, which I naturally forget to update, and I scribble things on bits of paper, which I immediately lose.

So I was intrigued to hear that those clever cheesemongers at Paxton & Whitfield had come up with a journal for jotting down cheesey thoughts and musings. Since getting one, I've found it much easier to keep track of what I've eaten, what it tastes like and what I'd drink it with it.

Appleby's Cheshire: the fall & rise of British territorials

In the early 1980s Britain's specialist cheesemakers were hanging on by their fingernails as cheap, industrially produced supermarket products ruled the shelves. It's hard to believe now, but the future of traditionally made territorials from Red Leicester to Lancashire and even farmhouse cheddar were in the balance. 

Cheshire cheese was no different. Before the second world war there were dozens of small farmhouse producers making traditional raw milk, cloth-bound Cheshire, but numbers rapidly dwindled until in the early 80s there was just one left. Appleby's had been set up by Lucy Appleby (the famous Mrs Appleby) and her husband Lance in 1952 at Hawkstone Abbey Farm in North Shropshire and the couple were determined that proper Cheshire cheese shouldn't be lost to the nation.