Cheese with pears. Pears with cheese. Either way, it’s a wonderful pairing. Or pearing. Serve honey-roasted pears with ricotta cream or Gorgonzola dolce. Add sliced red pears to a salad with crumbled Roquefort and toasted walnuts. Sometimes I’ll poach pears in a light Port syrup and then steep them overnight so they soak up the deep ruby color. Pair with any blue cheese you love and you have a gorgeous dessert. And then there’s the easiest finale ever: blue cheese, ripe pears and sweet wine. Hard to top that.

We’re done with insalata caprese, right? Even in sunny Napa Valley, where I live, the tomato plants are saying, “Enough already.” Time to move on. I’m looking forward to revisiting some cool-weather favorites, like these six from my personal autumn hall of fame.

With raw milk experiencing surging demand in the U.S., it seems a good moment to revisit raw-milk cheese. Almost certainly, it’s on the decline. Both here and in Europe, cheesemakers are abandoning raw milk. And almost certainly, many of the “raw milk” cheeses in the marketplace are not raw—at least not in my estimation. That’s because the definition is not as cut-and-dried as you might think.

First at last! Almost 50 years after American vintners upended the wine world by beating the French, an American cheesemonger has done the same, topping the podium at the recent Mondial du Fromage, a biannual competition informally known as the Cheese Olympics. And the story gets better.

Seven blue-ribbon winners on one plate. Am I fantasizing or what? Thanks to a little help from my friends, it happened. Guests in last night’s World Cheese Tour class got to taste not only a hand-picked selection of first-place finishers from the recent American Cheese Society competition. Among those seven were the Best of Show, the first runner-up and another cheese that finished in the Top Ten overall. For us cheese lovers, that’s a Grand Slam.

I know full well that a single Sungold plant generates more tiny tomatoes than my two-person household can eat. Still, you can’t grow less than one, so every year at this time I am inundated. We snack on them like peanuts, but even so we can’t keep up. When we’re really getting backed up, I’ll roast a baking sheet full of them.

For the second year in a row, a Canadian cheese has taken Best of Show at the American Cheese Society’s prestigious annual judging. More astonishing, the winner was the same creamery. Québec’s Fromagerie La Station won with a different cheese this year, but still. It’s back-to-back victories for this fourth-generation family business specializing in farmstead cheese from organic raw milk. What a validation for traditional practices, and a reminder of how much we are losing by not having freer trade with our northern neighbor.

How is it that I’d never heard of Japanese cheesecake until now? This jiggly, airy, cloudlike creation is so crushable—a shoo-in for the Cake Hall of Fame. Part cheesecake, part spongecake, part soufflé, it had me at the first fluffy bite.

Napa Valley’s V. Sattui Winery has long boasted a substantial cheese counter. Yet, despite living nearby, I almost never shopped there. Driving past it, I channeled Yogi Berra. (“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”) Sattui’s St. Helena tasting room is one of the most visited in the valley, its parking lot perpetually filled with tour buses and its grounds thronged with picnickers. Navigating that scene for a pound of cheese was something I rarely had the patience for. But boy, have I had an attitude adjustment. After an extensive remodel, the tasting room looks like a Ralph Lauren store and the vast cheese counter—now in the hands of one of the nation’s most experienced mongers—repays braving the hordes.

Most Fourth of July menus are all about the meat. But in my view, it’s not a meal without salad, preferably plural. I’ve gathered five summer favorites—most of them portable and all of them likely to upstage the ribs.

How many dip recipes does a girl really need? Whatever the number, I’m not there yet. Early summer is a vegetable-paloooza around here, with cucumbers, radishes, sugar snap peas, beets, cauliflower, sprouting broccoli and new potatoes sending me into my dip archives, where I quickly found seven favorites to share. I love all of these dips so much. How to choose? Fortunately, you have the whole summer to work your way through them. Chill some rosé, slice a baguette and let the dipping begin.

My husband and I are planning a trip to South Korea, so we were watching Korean food videos on YouTube one recent evening. In one travel vlog, a young American couple is checking out a popular fast-food chain called No Brand Burger (definitely not on our itinerary). The official motto of No Brand Burger is refreshingly un-American: “Why pay more? It’s good enough.” The frankness made us laugh, but at a cheese tasting the day before, a guest had basically asked me the same question. How much do you have to spend to get good cheese, he wanted to know, and at what point are you spending more but not getting more quality?

People often ask me when I’m going to run out of cheeses to write about. Not gonna happen. Every time I’m at a well-run counter, I find a cheese I’ve never seen. And that’s the one I want. I know it’s tempting to stick with what you like, but if you take the occasional risk on a cheese you don’t know, you’ll become a better taster. That’s how I discovered this crazy-good washed-rind cheese, which is now a must for my upcoming “Cheese Meets Beer” class. I’ve experienced a lot of memorable matchups in my life, but this meaty cheese with Saison Dupont was Hall of Fame great.

Oakland’s Market Hall Foods has been a destination for food lovers since opening in 1987. Originally named The Pasta Shop, it has endeared itself to its affluent neighborhood by supplying top-of-the-line pasta, olive oils, vinegars, prepared foods and—most notably for me—cheese. Under the guidance of cheesemonger Juliana Uruburu, who was 18 when she started working there, Market Hall Foods has become one of the nation’s most influential cheese merchants.

Guiding cheese from birth to maturity is a lot like parenting, albeit with less at stake. There’s no school for it, you learn on the job and the desired outcome is not guaranteed. Affinage, as the French call it, is all about keeping your precious charges on track, but every cheese—like every child—needs its own sort of nurturing.

Bread and cheese are my love languages. Hot, crisp focaccia stuffed with oozy Crescenza? I would travel for that. Alas, I still haven’t made it to the birthplace of the fabled focaccia di Recco, but the dish was born again in my kitchen last week thanks to recipe assistance from Lidia Bastianich. After watching a couple of YouTube videos of bakers making this Ligurian specialty on its home turf, I wasn’t convinced I could even get close. But take a look. I’m pretty proud of what came out of my oven, and you won’t be surprised that it vanished immediatemente. If you can track down some Crescenza or Stracchino, you’ve got this.

My fava beans are happening and a friend just brought me a fabulous Tuscan pecorino. Is that an opportunity or what? Young favas straight from the pod. Nuggets of buttery sheep cheese. Crisp white wine. It’s the antipasto I fantasize about when I plant the beans in the fall, and now’s the moment. Every good cheese counter will have an aged pecorino suitable for pairing with fresh favas—an Italian spring custom—but I am smitten with this new-to-me cheese.

Still finalizing your Easter menu? Or maybe, like me, you’re a guest and need to bring something. To that end, I’ve gathered some of my favorite ricotta recipes for right now.