As many of us cheese-lovers know, goat cheese has the ability to kick up flavor in any dish. Check out these new dinner recipes for a fresh take on many staples.

Luckily, goat cheese is an affordable cheese so feel free to indulge in its richness. It's mild enough to meld with most flavors, yet zesty enough to contribute to the recipe. Click through our slideshow below to see how you can incorporate this cheese into your dinner dishes. From Roasted Asparagus and Goat Cheese Tarts to Goat Cheese Phyllo Stack with Crushed Olives, goat cheese makes it all taste better.

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Photo by Rebecca Siegel

Recent studies confirm that drinking warm milk or eating other dairy products before bed (including cheese) can help us sleep better. Apparently cows milked after midnight have higher levels of melatonin in their milk which helps regulate sleep as well.

Warm milk has always been a bedtime tradition, and now research has shown why it helps. In addition to tryptophan, milk, yogurt and cheese are all rich calcium, which may help reduce stress. Combined, tryptophan and calcium may enhance one’s ability to fall asleep by producing melatonin, a key role in regulating day-to-night cycles in the human body.

You may get nightmares though.

Read the full story here.

Photo by Glutnix

An update on the village of Stilton's campaign to get back the right to call their cheese Stilton:

On Monday the village of Stilton applied to Defra for an extension of the protected designation of origin (PDO) for the cheese to cover their parish.
The village launched their campaign at the start of National Stilton Week 2012, and will boost their efforts by adding the phrase 'Original Home of Stilton Cheese' to a sign outside their village.

Read the full story here.

How does string cheese pull apart in such appealing uniform ribbons? Is it gross processing or toxic chemicals? Nope. Turns out it's all about the milk proteins:

String cheese is just mozzarella cheese that has been heated to 140 degrees. At this temperature the cheese becomes very stretchy and the milk proteins move around and line up together in a row.

Read the full story here.

Max McCalman, uses zinfandel for all it's worth when it comes to cheese pairings:

Zinfandel became the default red wine partner for those mixed groupings of cheeses. As I looked over my catalog of cheese and wine pairings, I found successful matches with a full range of cheese types: fresh cheeses, aged cheeses, goat, sheep, wash-rinds, bloomy rinds, Goudas, and blues. Several pairings were outstanding and only a very few disappointed.

Read the blog post here.

Didn't think pizza could get any more delicious? Plan a trip to Forcella Pizzeria in Brooklyn or PizzArte in Midtown Manhattan to sample the art of montanara pizza. The dough is lightly fried in hot oil, then topped and baked as usual. We can't wait to try!

The use of frying is subtle, and for that kind of refinement, America needed the Italians, who have been quietly frying pizza dough in Naples for years before anyone noticed.

Read the full story here.

Photo by The Pizza Review

Raw milk from Foundation Farm in Wilsonville, Oregon, was officially connected with E. coli infections in four local children and intestinal issues in thirteen other people. The Oregon Department of Public Health conducted the testing at the farm and confirmed the connection, warning Foundation Farm shareholders to discard any remaining milk.

"He told his customers about it as soon as he knew there was a problem," Pokarney said. Foundation Farm, which distributes raw milk to 48 families, operates as a herdshare, a type of enterprise that allows people to buy shares in the herd or even an individual animal. Under that sort of arrangement, they are not considered customers. Pokarney said herdshares are legal in Oregon because there are no laws prohibiting them.

Read the full story here.

Folklore claims that eating cheese before bed can give you nightmares. In fact, cheese was the culprit behind Ebenezer Scrooge's lifelike, scary dreams in the A Christmas Carol. The BBC's Claudia Hammond offers some insight:

A few years ago there were reports that different types of British cheese gave people different kinds of good and bad dreams, though none of the study volunteers reported having nightmares as such. Stilton-eaters had bizarre dreams, fans of Red Leicester dreamt about the past, and those who ate Lancashire before bed dreamt about the future. If you want to dream about celebrities, apparently you should make Cheddar your bedtime snack.

Read the full story here.

The New York Times visits with painter Mike Geno, who's spent years refining his particular art: painting portraits of food, particularly fine cheeses.

We featured Mike's work in our Winter issue, and we're very pleased that his art is getting the attention it deserves. You can read the Times profile here, and go to our gallery for even more mouthwatering cheese portraits.

Jeanne Carpenter of Cheese Underground, blogs about the environmentally friendly Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese: their farm is so green it's carbon negative!

When he's not making cheese, and not making jokes about making cheese, George works with brothers Charles, Tom and Mark on the farm, making sure all aspects of the 2,000 acre operation are running smoothly. In 2008, the family installed an anaerobic digester to break down cow manure in a process that ultimately produces methane gas. The gas is then burned similar to natural gas, thus generating clean, renewable energy for the farm and nearby community.