Well Memorial Day is this weekend, and Father’s Day is just around the corner. There is no better way to honor  our country and our dads than by firing up the grill! …And our stores can provide you with all your grilling needs; from meat at Jacobson Bros’ counter (Konig’s in Monroe) and all the toppings, sauces and sides throughout the store.

We have an array of traditional BBQ sauces such  Southern and (a fan favorite) Sweet Onion. These sauces are fantastic to use to top ribs, chicken or steaks. For a more non-traditional flare, try using one of our great fruit spreads or jams as a glaze. Mix our Orange Maramalde with soy sauce and fresh grated ginger to make an Asian-inspired glaze for salmon or shrimp. Or try combining our Red Raspberry Fruit Spread with chopped chipotle peppers for a sweet and spicy glaze on top of chicken breasts.

Hamburgers, brats and hot dogs are always a grilling classic, and we have all of the fixins! Fabulous Clinch Mountain Tomatoes, crisp lettuces, sweet Vidalia onions, and a wide variety of mustards. Top off your burger with a pile of shredded Smoked Pepper Jack or 3-year Aged Cheddar for a little pizazz. If you are looking for a burger alternative, try grilling Portabella mushroom caps stuffed with cheese such as our Fresh Basil Farmer or Blue Ribbon Blue. Drizzle with Brennan’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Barrel Aged Balsamic Vinegar; top with a large slice of tomato.

For our vegetarian friends, skewers stuffed with vegetables are always a good option. Try using mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers and onion wedges to get a wide variety of flavors. Brush with Brennan’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil and chopped garlic before putting on the grill.

And don’t forget the sides! We have a great selection of chips, dips and salsas to complement your meal.  And of course, there’s Jacobson Brothers’ famous Potato Salad!

Enjoy the summer holidays!

We hope you can join us April 26 – April 28 for Brennan’s 1st Annual Cheese Curd Days!

• We’re giving away a free 1 lb bag of Brennan’s Squeaky, Fresh Curds with a $40 purchase*.
• Free Balloons for Kids!
• Help us choose our next great cheese curd flavor by tasting three new flavors and voting for your favorite
• Sample wine and micro-brews.
• Jacobson Brothers Brat Tasting
• Brat and Hamburger Buns – Buy One Get One Free.
• Prize drawings and more!

So, come to Brennan’s & Get Your Squeak On!

*While supplies last. Excludes gas purchase in Monroe. Mixed curds only. In store purchase only. 1 per customer, per purchase.

Our Holiday Gift Guide is available in stores or check it out here to see our fantastic selection of  Wisconsin Cheese Boxes, Fruit Baskets, Specialty Wine Wine Baskets and More! Our Cheese Gift Boxes can also be purchased online.  Tis the season!

Master Cheesemaker Steve Stettler and Brennan’s owner Skip Brennan introduce the newest Dream Cheese Collaboration… Farmer Blueberry Cheese. This is another tasty combination following in the footsteps of our phenomenal Farmer Basil, Farmer Cranberry and Farmer cheese made with our Famous Sweet and Hot Relish.

Farmer Blueberry is a  nourishing cheese for the kids to snack on all summer, to take “up to the lake” for those picnics after a hike, and to cube and put in refreshing summer salads when out on your deck with guests. Stop in today to try a sample!

The great thing about Easter is that the menu is that no one expects you to reinvent the wheel. Most people want a ham, lamb or brunch. It’s tradition, right? So, I’m not going to post a bunch of complicated recipes. In fact, I usually don’t. Instead, here are some very delicious, easy  recipes that we cooked up for a segment on NBC15 and the wines (and beer!) that go with them.

Of course, there’s going to have to be a cheese tray. This is Wisconsin. For ours we selected 3 cheeses that will also be great on leftover ham sammies. We paired World Champ Havarti with Brennan’s Apricot Spreadable Fruit for a tasty combo, and Marieke’s Foenugreek Gouda with it’s mapley characters is another World Champ. Our best-selling Sweet Swiss perfectly rounds out the trio.

For the cheese platter, I recommend a Prosecco like Italia or La Corte. I think of these wines as work-horse wines because they could really take you all the way through  the meal, including dessert. Light, and refreshing, with low alcohol, you create sparkling cocktails like Mimosas or Bellinis or enjoy simply chilled. If want a drier style Prosecco, the Italia Prosecco is rich with lemony notes. The La Corte is a bit lighter and a bit sweeter, but not overly so.

In my family there wasn’t a choice between ham and brunch; it was both, so that’s what we did here. We made an Apricot Mustard Glazed Ham, Lemony Asparagus, Crustless Quiche and a Strawberry Spinach Salad. Again, could do Prosecco , but if you want to mix it up Riesling is a great choice here. Try Tarkine Forest Riesling is a sweeter style. If you love Rose, try Viu Manent Malbec Rose which pairs nicely with the fruity elements of the glaze and the strawberry salad. If you simply must go red, try a lighter-bodied red like Pinot Noir (Tarkine Forest).

Now I would be remiss if I left out micros because we have a brew from Scuttlebutt Brewery that tastes like it was made for Easter– Scuttlebutt Belgian-Style Tripel. It has huge aromas of pear and clove (yes!). Very much a chameleon beer, it will easily adapt to different foods with ease and your Uncle Larry, if necessary.

I hope that try some of these yummy recipes and pairings. Let us know what you think. Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring Solstice!

Every week this time of year from our customers I hear the following statement, “I love this time of year when all the contest cheeses come to Brennan’s!” Longtime Brennan’s customers are “in the know” about this event and now you can be to! Here’s a little history: Since the 1980′s owner Skip Brennan has been purchasing all of the available World Championship Cheese  entries after they have been judged. The contest is held every two years and continues to grow in the number of entries submitted. This year over 2,504 cheeses were judged!

Just some of the entries in our coolers awaiting cutting.

Since the Contest (March 5-7), most of those cheeses have now made their way to our New Glarus cheese cellar. We sort them and determine what can be cut right away for our stores and what can be aged.  A big project for us, but we like to say that opening the boxes is like Christmas morning for cheese lovers.

Now the cheese has begun to arrive in our stores! First to land are soft  fresh cheeses like Brie, Blue, Fresh Mozzarella  and some semi-soft cheese. Every Brennan’s store has a different mix, and we are sampling one variety every day. One of the most exciting things to me is that I know how much effort and time cheesemakers put into selecting the cheese they enter into the contest. About 7 years ago, Brennan’s visited one of our favorite cheesemakers. While going through his coolers, I noticed a wheel of cheese sitting all by itself on a stainless steel table. I asked what it was. The cheesemaker replied, “That’s the cheese I’m submitting the World Championship Cheese Contest.” It was like his baby.

Our cheese team with award-winning cheesemaker Marieke Penterman at the final judging.

So, don’t miss this  awesome one time opportunity to try cheeses that cheesemakers around the world selected as their best. Stop in and ask your Brennan’s store cheese specialist about all the options, and don’t forget to visit our microbeer and wine selectors for some perfect pairings.

Happy World Championship Cheese Season!

Tailgating Dip and Super Queso Dip with Brats.

Since the Packers aren’t in the Super Bowl this year (don’t get me started), this year’s game will be all about eating great snacks with a few commercials thrown in. I considered putting together a New York or New England menu, but  realized that just because our team’s not playing doensn’t mean we need to eat Chowder. So, I put together a menu that consists of Wisconsin classics with a few healthy options, too. That way you won’t feel guilty about dessert!

Vegetable Crunch Dip with Romaine Scoops

For another hot dip recipe, try our Super Queso Dip made with our Brennan’s Pilsner Jalapeno Cheese Spread. Serve with sliced brats, tortilla chips and fresh veggies.

long van ride with no snacks. I wondered if I would like this dip as much when I wasn’t starving. Turns out I do. You can serve it already in the lettuce leaves or serve with the lettuce on the side. Either way delicious and very fast to make.

Of course, salsa and Guacamole are synomous with football snacks. Rather than a traditional tomato based salsa, I made one with blood oranges and Cara Cara Navel Oranges. So yummy and colorful! The key to this tasty

Cara Cara and Blood Orange Salsa with cut Pretty Belle Navel, Blood Oranges and Cara Caras for color comparison.

recipe is knowing how to segment oranges. After that, it is a snap.

Super Fruit Dip

Finally for the afor mentioned dessert, I made a super easy fruit dip with cream cheese, mascarpone, vanilla and a little sugar.  I paired it with our Florida Strawberries, 900 Series Grapes, Honeygold Pineapple and blueberries. When you dip strawberries in, it tastes like strawberry cheesecake! Coincidently, chocolate brownies also pair well with it. Let your kids make little skewers and dunk them in. At least they’re eating fruit, right!

I hope that you put together a fun menu for game day, try some of these recipes and enjoy watching the ads, and perhaps a bit of football, too!

Have you ever been making your shopping list for a party and realize you need 7 packages of cream cheese? I have. Of course we love cheese at Brennan’s, but we also happen to sell some awesome fruit. So, we came up with four festive appetizers that feature seasonal fruit: Pretty Belle Navel Oranges, Kiwi, Pineapple and D’Anjou Pears and visited Amy Carlson at NBC15 to show them off. All the recipes are available on our recipe tab. Bon Appetit!

The local harvest is in full swing at Brennan’s, as are our Chin Drippin’ Idaho Peaches. Chris from our Watts Road store visited NBC 15 in Madison to share some easy and delicious recipes to celebrate the season. Being that Chris is the Cheese Guy, it’s no coincidence that all the recipes featured include Wisconsin cheese. Big thanks to our friends at Channel 15 and great job Chris. Check it out! All recipes are available on our recipe page.

Today, Chris the cheese guy from our Watts Road store and I prepped and recorded a segment that will air on NBC15 Madison this Sunday morning. I do the behind scenes writing, recipe selection and preperation, so you won’t see me on the show. Just Chris, who did a great job, by the way!  Watching all those episodes of the”Next Food Network Star” is really paying off.

Our theme was fruits and vegetables that are in season now and how to include them in recipes with Wisconsin cheeses. This seemed like a great combination for us because of Brennan’s history. Did you know that Brennan’s started out in 1942 as a roadside stand in Monroe?  Frank Brennan sold fruits and vegetables  and soon added local cheeses to his selection. So the recipes we choose really celebrate Brennan’s heritage.

Sugar Baby Watermelon, Heirloom Tomatoes & Feta Cheese Salad

The first recipe we made was Watermelon, Heirloom Tomato & Feta Salad. We used locally Amish grown Sugar Baby Watermelons and Heirloom Tomatoes and our favorite Feta from Klondike. The results was specatacular with the greens, oranges and yellows from the tomatoes, red from the watermelon and white from the Feta. It’s a savory, sweet and salty salad all at the same time. I was kinda concerned about tomatoes and watermelon in the same salad. No worries. It was wonderful!

Grilled Veggie Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

The second recipe was a Grilled Vegetable Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing. Despite the fact that I got up at 6am to grill veggies this morning, I am still super excited about this salad and will me making it again for dinner. It doesn’t have meat, but I don’t miss it because the vegetables are so flavorful and the blue cheese, in this case our Rock n’ Rolla Gorgonzola, adds so much. The grilled potatoes really add texture and the peppers are so colorful. I substituted balsamic vinegar for the red wine vinegar and Baby Bella’s for the Shitake, and the salad was awesome. Some crusty bread and a glass of South Island Pinot Noir or Pomona Winds Merlot. Yum.

Here is where I should mention that I forgot to take pictures of the set. I was able to recreate the salads with leftovers, but the Peachy goodness was gone. So I didn’t take pictures of the 2 recipes that Chris made with our IDAHO Chin Drippin’ Peaches: Peachy Grilled Cheese and Grilled Peaches with Honey Mascarpone. I really kicking myself right now. The sandwich had only sliced,  ripe peaches, Brown Swiss Havarti, bread and butter. It is kinda unbelieveable. You’ll have to try it to believe it!

The dessert (because after all that salad dessert is a must!) was Grilled Peaches with Honey Mascarpone. I could drink the pan juices with a straw. Yum! A super easy summer dessert, especially if you already have the grill going. Rich and creamy cheese and the sweet fruit that gets kinda carmelized. Out of this world.

Hope you get a chance to try these dishes to celebrate the season. Sorry about no pics on the peach recipes! I will post the video on Sunday after in runs.

Happy Labor Day Weekend everyone! Be Safe and have fun!