Mashable bites into a creamy, nutty, gooey, and sometimes stinky world during our first-ever Cheese Week.
Tell me if this has ever happened to you: It's late and you're hungry. You open the fridge, pull out a tub of cream cheese, and stick your finger in it, licking it clean.
No? Just me?
What about this: You fall down an internet rabbit hole while researching the thick, velvety midnight snack only to discover that the expert on cream cheese is a rabbi. Then you call said rabbi and are told everything you assumed about cream cheese's origin was wrong.
No? Still just me?
I grew up eating a lot of cream cheese — on bagels, on matzah, in Danishes, in cheesecake, in frosting, even rolled up in a little piece of lox like a salty, pink burrito. I had always assumed cream cheese was a Jewish invention. After all, ornate glass bowls filled with cream cheese, still in rectangular blocks from the tinfoil wrappers, bookended the buffet table at my grandparents' temple after Saturday services. To end the Yom Kippur fast, the highest of holy days, we ate bagels and cream cheese. Read more...
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