Sarah Zaborowski, 27, says "cheese" every day. It's her job! She works as a cheesemonger at Murray's Cheese in New York City. Murray's sells more than 7,000 pounds of cheese each week. Zaborowski is required to know all about the store's 300-plus cheeses.
Each day, the native New Yorker arrives at Murray's around 10 a.m. and works until the store closes at 8:30 p.m. She has to recognize the taste, smell and look of all of Murray's cheeses. The cheeses come from many countries, including Britain, France and Spain. Zaborowski must also know the type of goat, sheep or cow that the milk for the cheese came from.
Zaborowski admits that writing labels for the cheeses can be fun. She enjoys using wacky words like gooey, fudgy and barnyardy to describe cheeses. Some also have funny names such as Stinking Bishop or Drunken Goat. Zaborowski says it is exciting when famous chefs stop in to buy cheese for their restaurants.
Last summer, Zaborowski traveled to France for two weeks to study for her job. She visited cheese caves to learn the complex process of aging cheese. In cheese caves, bacteria, mold, temperature and moisture are carefully controlled to produce the final product.
This cheese whiz has always been interested in food. After college, where she read cookbooks "like novels," she worked in a restaurant in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. In 2003, she moved back to New York and started to work at Murray's nearly a year ago.
Zaborowski suggests that kids visit local dairy farms "to see how cheese is really made." She likes being a big cheese at Murray's because she "gets to taste so many different cheeses while opening customers' eyes" to the world of cheese.