Rockin' Around the Christmas Cheese

I get buck wild for Christmas season for many reasons. One, the lights and shiny things. Two, the generous, giving spirit. Three, the food. Four, the classic cartoons, movies, and television specials. Five, the warm blankets with warm drinks. Six, Santa.

Holiday destruction

I could go on. Now, in my recent station in the cheese world, I can add graft to the list. Okay so it's not really graft. But one of the nice things about my job this season is that as a merchandise buyer and thereby supporter of various small businesses and food producers, I receive the thanks-for-supporting-our-business presents that go out this time of year. So far that's amounted to chocolates--many chocolates, and one bottle of Italian wine from our mozzarella supplier.

Chocolate and wine, what a perfect pairing. That got me thinking: I like interesting food combinations (see post on doughnuts and cheese plate). I like Christmas, and we know I love cheese. I wonder if there are ways to combine all these things I love so much.

I took this hypothetical world of Christmas cheese pairings to a new creative level -- and by creative I mean outlandish ways to bring cheese into the Christmas mix. I haven't tried all of these out, so some might be an epic fail. I don't have the pocketbook or the stomach capacity to try out all these pairings at once, but I intend to slowly do some reconnaissance for future Christmases. Feel free to try them out yourself and give me feedback...or yell at me for making you combine these things in your mouth.

I'm a firm believer that there are no strict rules to pairings. Yes, some things work better than others. But flavor perception is all a matter of preference, biology and experience. So while some of these might sound disgusting, indulge me for the sake of those with twisted palates and/or an overabundance of Christmas spirit.

First I tried to list as many singularly holiday items as possible:
Gingerbread, Fruit Cake, Egg Nog, Candycanes/Peppermint Bark or Mint related items, Frosted Holiday Cookies, Hot Chocolate and/or Fudge, Mulled Wine (aka Glugg or Glogg), Wassail, Figgy Pudding.

Gingerbread:
One style of cheese could easily be left out of the holiday cheer is the washed rind, or stinky, cheese. The pungent, sometimes bitter or abrasive flavors and odors of a stinky cheese seem out of place with yuletide joy. But I'm not willing to place a cheese on the naughty list, so I'm going out on a limb and saying gingerbread might hold up to a good washed rind. The mild sweetness would complement the pungency (which is how dessert wines and blue cheeses hold up so well together), and the spicy ginger may behave like the tongue-tingling hops in an IPA beer (which is a washed rind's favorite beer pairing friend). You could also work with an approachable washed rind like Gubbeen, or a creamier Reblochon. On the more adventurous, stinkier side, I'd try Epoisses, Tallegio, Meadowcreek's Grayson, or a creamy, fatty Hooligan from Cato Corner's winter milk.

Fruitcake:
This one is pretty easy because fruitcake carries a very similar flavor profile to various fruit-nut loaves and crackers that are traditionally sold as cheese accouterments. Typically these sorts of fruity and sweet items go best with sharp cheddars that have citrusy, pineapple notes or Alpine cheeses with mild fruity and caramel profiles. Try Montgomery Cheddar from Neal's Yard, or an extra aged cheddar from domestic producers like Shelburne, Grafton or Cabot. On the milder Alpine style, I would go with something like a Tarentaise (domestic), an imported Beaufort or an older Gruyere.

Egg Nog:
How do you combine dairy with dairy? Is that like trying to get two positive sides of a magnet to touch? Of all the pairings, this one appears to carry the highest likelihood of failure, so I'm going to keep it simple. Ricotta with light honey. Done.

Mint Items/Candycanes:
With this Christmas item you want a creamy cheese that will complement the mint but disappear in the background. Something that will turn this into a scoop of mint milk shake in your mouth. Something like a triple cream brie. A soft or surface ripened cheese with any earthy, bitter, ammoniated or mushroomy notes would destroy the harmony. On the domestic side, Old Chatham's Nancy's Camembert might work, but avoid Camemberts with strong mushroom notes on the rind. You need a cheese that exists solely for the purity of its buttery, creamy lactose dance. A young Brillat-Savarin, Pierre Robert, or Nettle Meadow's Kunik (domestic) are possibilities.

Frosted Holiday Sugar Cookies:
This is tough because only in my twisted mind, or that of a mouse, would someone consider eating a cookie with cheese. One of my favorite sugary flavor partners is lemon. I think something sweet and citric would work here. I would keep it basic, a white stilton with lemon peel seems natural. That's a cheese that already tastes a little bit like dessert. I'm envisioning a lemon creme cookie in my mouth. A bit more risky would be a  Jarlsberg pairing -- plain and sweet, but saltier.

Fudge:
This pairing has a lot of variations depending on the type of chocolate. If the fudge has any kind of cherry, brandy, cordial or liqueur situation involved, it could accompany a creamy blue cheese very well, like Fourme d'Ambert or Cambozola; or anything washed in brandy or liqueur, like Rogue River Blue, an amazing domestic blue wrapped in grape leaves and washed with pear brandy. I've also seen cheddar in pairings with chocolate items (and Guinness, which is chocolatey). So a milk chocolate fudge might mix with a mild cheddar or Welsh Caerphilly. A darker fudge could also complement a Shropshire Blue (a combination of stilton and cheshire cheese). Think sweet and salty with this one. Or think fondue. Raclette and Gruyere also fit here.

Hot chocolate:
This might be trickier than fudge since we potentially have the same dairy on dairy problem as eggnog. Plus, the chocolate notes are usually much milder in powdered drink form. Maybe a salty choice with milder flavors like a Swiss cheese, say Emmenthaler. I would venture into some of the fudge pairings here just for fun as well...but not the blue cheese...I'm not a monster.

Mulled Wine/Glugg:
I've actually tried this pairing, so at least for me, it works. The main difference between Glugg and Wassail (mulled cider) comes down to the rich tannins from the red wine in Glugg versus the tartness from the citric fruits in Wassail. The spices in both call for a fairly mellow cheese that acts as a cheesy wallflower. Avoid too much saltiness. The richness of Glugg allows for a heartier barnyard flavor from a sheepy, sweet Ossau Iraty, a pairing that I thoroughly enjoyed. Aged Gouda or Tomme de Savoie and its earthiness could also carry some weight here.

Wassail:
Lemon, citric or lactic are words that seem to fit this holiday item. The apple cider nature of wassail signals a traditional apple-cheddar pairing, but I would be worried that the saltiness may be too much since Wassail is more tart and not as sweet as pie. Something with a touch of sweet citric flavor but less salt is needed -- Mimolette perhaps (the colors would match at least). Or a mild, fruity cheese like Comte matches up well. This might also be a great place for a fresh goat cheese to make an appearance. A lemony mild fresh chevre -- perhaps infused with a touch of flavor like Rollingstone's domestic Orange Zest and Pecan Chevre -- on an oat biscuit sounds like a party.

Figgy Pudding:
This is the archetype for the salty and sweet harmony. Sweet figs with blue cheese is one of my favorite pairings. A hearty blue would work well here, especially if the figgy bread pudding is soaked in any kind of booze. A fruity cheddar would also work. Salt and bold flavors are welcome here. Pecorino could be a risky move that pays off. I also welcome the idea of smoked or meaty cheeses here to go with the sweet, booziness. Idiazabal would probably mix well. I recently had Uplands' Rush Creek Reserve, a smoked-meat flavored, scoop-me-with-a-spoon, bark-wrapped, washed delight that almost brought tears of joy to my eyes. As a winter treat that comes around just in time for the holidays, Rush Creek or it's model, Vacherin Mont d'Or, are perfect Christmas cheeses. While some may say these two cheeses are so good that enjoying the cheese on its own is best, I can't think of any cheese pairing that would bring me more Christmas joy than figgy pudding next to a cheese that tastes like cured meat.

And that's the point of these Christmas pairings, really. To appreciate the variety of things that we love coming together...which I suppose is the point of Christmas itself. Happy Holidays to all, and to all, a cheese-filled night.

The Grind

Every Monday through Friday I make a very silent march alongside a few dozen faces I've memorized. It's 5:30am. There are 40 to 50 people waiting for the train. And footsteps are the only sound. You'll never hear a populated subway platform quieter.

It's a moving mural, really, of working class faces, mostly grim and sleepy. A sea of Timberland boots, hushed conversations, uniforms and union hats that signal electricians, carpenters, construction workers, nurses, postal workers, delivery drivers, administrative assistants, hotel clerks and doormen. Seldom is there a stodgy suit with a briefcase -- maybe one or two every month, awake early for a big case or deal.  Generally it's the commuting crew we rarely appreciate or thank for being up and at the grind before dawn. While I'm quite honored to be in the ranks of this seemingly hardworking, reliable bunch that keeps our city and our world going, I also wonder what the hell a cheesemonger is doing commuting to work at 5:30 in the morning. For a farmers market? Of course, gladly. To milk the animals? Perhaps even earlier. For a cheese shop in the middle of Manhattan?...

"Eight a.m.! Why is a cheese shop open so early," I'm often asked. I have no answer for that question as I'm not the one making these types of decisions. All I can say is that, yes, it's bad for labor costs when all you're doing is selling $2 cups of coffee in a 8,000 square foot store with astronomical overhead. Nobody is buying $40 worth of cheese at that hour. C'est la vie. There's a lot you learn about what not to do in running your own business when you work for someone else's. That in itself is a worthy learning experience for me.

Yet, to be blunt, much of the reason I've been derelict in my blog postings (yes, I know I skipped all of November) is because I've been trying to recharge from a month or two of watching that shiny gleam wear off my latest cheese venture. I'm happy I came here and learned as much as I did; I'm glad to have met many of the wonderful people I've encountered. Still, I may have reached my growth limit here.

Since opening, I've taken on a more administrative role as the store's cheese purchaser. I do all of the ordering, receiving, and dealing with vendors. It's great experience for a future business and I love that I sometimes get to play cheese god to our cheese case. I'm very thankful to have been trusted with that responsibility, which I guess means I'm doing something right.

But, dealing with the administrative side, coupled with scheduling that puts me right in the middle of the weekday lunch rush, has spread me thin with little relief and left me little opportunity for one-on-one time with my real love: cheese. Instead, much of my my non-administrative time on the floor is occupied with cafe management, which can bleed even the strongest soul dry. You serve people food and they treat you like trash. Yet, you cut a piece of cheese and suddenly your words are gold. (Everyone should be forced to work the bottom rungs of the food service industry before they are allowed to speak to people.)  The cheese case is a much happier land.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the store well-staffed and all my ordering tasks wrapped up in advance, I was able to spend the entire day hawking cheese ideas to would-be dinner guests wanting to impress their Thanksgiving hosts. I didn't want to leave work that day. Last Saturday, due to a scheduling swap, again I was able to spend the entire day on the cheese case because weekends are particularly busy for cheese sales (unlike 8am on a Monday). For a person giving up their Saturday to work, I likely seemed obnoxiously eager. I suppose these were exactly the spirit re-ups I needed to reconnect with Cheesy Street. Cheese, I still love you, I'm just learning there are ways to taint you.

There are also all the mounting frustrations inherent in a larger business or company: the red tape, the staffing decisions, the equipment breakdowns -- and in the midst, feeling like you have no control over any of it and your concerns are being ignored. A lot of things are starting to smell and feel like the law firm again. Grilling paninis for two hours feels a lot like doc review. Organizing the mess that's been left behind in the backstock areas I've so diligently tried to keep looking sane feels a lot like fixing partners' Bluebook citations

When I started to spend every lunch break, as I did at the firm, looking at Daily Puppy just to keep my spirits up, I knew I had reached my "cheese" low. No longer was I in the midst of happy cheese people and consumers who really cared about the product and the business. I had fully entered the twilight zone where cheese meets an overly greedy bottom line in an environment that encourages dehumanized drudgery.

Wow, this is harsh. But there's good news. Lots of it. A bad day at the store is 1,000 times better than a bad day at the firm. I choose the bustle of running around on my feet over office work, even if it's on the cafe side. A smiling customer always lifts my spirits, as much as, if not more than, the Daily Puppy's puppy of the day. I really cherish the few hours a day or week I can physically sell cheese to people. I've grown a lot in learning about cheese buying, which, when coupled with time on the cheese case, is a fuller, more enjoyable cheese experience.

Plus the grind, as it were, has ground me down to the point where I'm able to distill a clearer path for the future. Remember back when I was on road trips working on idyllic farms with happy cheese people and moving on to the next farm before things got too heavy? Yeah that was great. I also had no idea what I wanted to do. The cheddar brick road has led me to a vision for a career:  If I open a cheese food business, I don't want a food empire where I spend countless spirit-breaking hours as an over-educated panini griller while disgruntled office workers yell at me because they didn't get their sandwich in a timely manner. If I open a cheese shop, I want it it to be successful, bustling, and challenging, yes; but I also want it to be a cozy place where both customers and staff are appreciated, befriended, given value, and able to easily find a delicious piece of joy. If I start a cheese farm...well, it will be hard, but the baby animals will keep me happy.

Sure cheese empires are nice, but at what cost? You can grow, but your business ambitions should never get the best of the object of your love -- be that a personal or professional lesson. So in keeping with the cheese education I expected to embark upon, I discovered that the workplace issues I had at the firm can be recreated almost anywhere. Learning to dodge that bullet in the future is a gold-mine of happiness.

Plus, even though the 5am grind usually starts my day off in dejected and incoherent fashion, I sort of like my commute. I don't know anyone's names but I enjoy seeing the same faces every day and imagining what their work days and passions are like. In my subway platform dawn-dreams, I imagine us all getting together to talk about our ambitions...and then they all welcome me into their circle with an honorary pair of Timberlands. Hey, whatever it takes to keep me awake and motivated.

My First Cheese Plate

Last weekend I built my first cheese plate.

Yes, I've been eating cheese for a long time. Indeed, I've been a legit member of the cheese industry for more than a year. True, sometimes I've had an impromptu cheese party or tasting with friends and loved ones at home. But until now, everything has been a casual affair, often involving randomly selected cheeses from the sale bin. At best, my cheese consumption has involved cramming a bunch of cheeses onto a round dinner plate next to a box of water crackers. At worst, it's feasting on chunks and slices over the sink. The beautiful black cheese slate I bought for plating cheeses has been seeing great use as an oversized coaster for my coffee mugs.

I've never had to put together an honest to god cheese plate for a bonafide social gathering -- for which the cheeses needed to be curated and selected with a purpose, paired with thoughtful accompaniments, and plated in an aesthetically pleasing manner. My roommate and buddy, Ambyr, gave me that chance when she hosted a baby shower for our friend at our apartment last Friday night. My attempt to be helpful involved putting together a pre-dinner cheese partay.

Curating cheeses involves several variables: size of party, format, venue, and taste sensibilities of your crowd.

First and foremost, being that the guest of honor was with child, I selected three pasteurized milk cheeses. Whether to eat raw milk cheese during pregnancy is a matter of personal choice and cultural influence -- and in some circles a controversial matter at that. Opinions vary on whether raw milk cheeses pose a risk to the fetus by harboring certain harmful bacteria. Even soft pasteurized cheeses like blue cheeses and feta may be discouraged because of the fear that said bacteria are more likely to thrive in a high moisture environment. Given that (in our health system) the medical advice commonly given to pregnant women is, at the very least, to stay away from raw milk cheeses, I suggest erring on the side of caution when selecting and/or labeling cheeses for such an occasion. If you do select raw milk cheeses and you know some people in the crowd may be pregnant, always clearly label or announce which cheeses are raw. I eliminated any uncertainty by avoiding raw milk cheeses altogether for the shower. Besides, there are PLENTY of delicious pasteurized cheeses to choose from.

Pregnancy can also cause sensitivity to smells. So I also didn't select any super strong or stinky cheeses for fear of assaulting the guest of honor's gag reflex. I love me a good mnemonic, and someone once gave me this great adage for picking cheese varieties for a party: "Something old, something new, something stinky, something blue."  If you're only going with three cheeses, you can pick between the stinky and the blue. For quantities, it's best to go with three or four cheeses. Any more would be sensory overload. And as an appetizer course, one ounce of each cheese per person is usually more than enough.

Knowing that I was dealing with ten to fifteen laid back, fun people, who wouldn't taunt me with cheese snobbery or comment on the pedestrian nature of this or that cheese, I picked three fairly well-known (at least in the artisanal cheese/foodie set), crowd-pleasing 3/4- to 1-pound pieces.

My something old (i.e. hard) was Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. My something new (i.e. soft) was Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog. And my tamer version of "stinky or blue" was Beecher's Marco Polo Reserve (actually an aged hard cheese with peppercorns).

I paired the cheeses with some dried fig bread, a fruit and nut crostini, caramelized pecans, and honey hazelnut crackers -- all phenomenal with the sweet, fruity, sharpness of the Cabot, and also good to tame the mild kick from the Marco Polo's peppercorns. If I had a little more room on the plate I would have added a dried tart fruit to give the Humboldt Fog's acidity a better friend. I did some fancy cubing, slicing and design work with the hard cheeses and SHAZAM! Cheese plate. Even my new cheese slate was given a chance to dress up and make an appearance.

Save for a few chunks of rind and leftover fig bread, the cheese plate was pretty much devoured by the end of the night. I heard phrases such as "this cheddar is amazing" or "this soft cheese is really something special" or "these candied pecans are like crack" bandied about. So I can only assume people were genuinely pleased with my first attempt at a bonafide classy cheese plate. And not a single person had to eat it over the sink. I count that as a success.

In my excitement, I forgot to take pictures.
I stole this from a friend, but I should have gotten an aerial shot. 

Cutting Crust from the Equation

Have you ever wondered if there was a way to wad up all the toppings on a pizza into a ball, pile it onto the tiniest of crackers, and shove that all in your mouth? No, that's disgusting and weird, you say. Mmmm delicious food ball, I say. Welcome, my friends, to my lifelong neurotic phobia of crusts. (And yes, if the Tracy Jordan Meat Machine was ever a real thing, I would be the first to buy ten.)

If I were to write a Crust Manifesto, my definition of crust would go something like this.
Crust /krust/
noun
1. The least delicious part of a food item
2. That portion of a food item which serves as a vehicle to transport more delicious parts into your mouth
3. Ingredients in any dish that take up belly space, which could be filled by more delicious parts of the dish
4. Appropriator of chewing effort
syn: culinary chicanery

As a rule, I will eat only as much crust as I need to transport and enhance the part of the food I find to be most delicious, leaving the rest as a disastrous canvas of mutilated crust carnage on my plate.

This isn't just a starch issue. This is an efficiency issue. I have a limited amount of space in my belly and I want to make sure I use as many hours as I have on this earth to fill it with what I love most. So piles of steamed rice with just a dollop of stir-fry on top is an assault on my face-stuffing sensibilities. Crust can also be counter-intuitive. The crunchy outside of the pancake, to me, is more delicious than the soggy inside. If I have limited time and space, I will eat the outer ring and leave the inside "crust" of pancake.

Imagine my delight when I rediscovered a cheese that, for me, serves the purpose of eliminating the bread from a grilled cheese sandwich.

Not only is it delicious, but it also
looks like bacon. 

If I were to name favorite cuisines, Greek/Mediterranean would definitely make the top three. In college, when my roommates and I would dine at our favorite Greek restaurant, everyone would order sensible meals. Salads. Gyros. Seafood. I, however, would feast on one thing and one thing only. A slab of cheese set ablaze by flambe before my eyes.

At the time Saganaki, as the dish is called, was awesome for two simple reasons. One, cheese. Two, fireball. Not until recently when I brought home a piece of Idaho Golden Greek Grillin Cheese by Ballard Family Farms -- a tribute to Greek Halloumi cheese -- did I realize the true beauty of this style of cheese. Halloumi and other Greek grilling cheeses are designed for pan-searing until a thin browned crispy film forms a shell around it. On the interior, the cheese is heated to a gooey, stretchy perfection. It's a perfect recreation of the flavor profile in a grilled cheese sandwich, but with all cheese.

I look down at my crust-less dairy dinner, which I have supplemented with broccoli and hummus (I've learned a lot since college: You need vegetables. Pop-Tarts are not a fruit), and I realize how much I've missed this cheese.

Setting aside my delight that the role of bread has been outsourced to the cheese itself, there is a lot for the general ("normal") population to like about grilling cheeses. You don't get the perfect outer layer of salty crunch from pan-searing just any cheese. Try that with a block of cheddar. You'll have a melty, charred grease fire on your hands. If you need a firm, salty cheese to add to a warm dish without causing a runny mess, here's Halloumi to the rescue. It's like the paneer of the Mediterranean. It stays true to its form, and can even bring a little crunch to the party.

Enjoy Halloumi in all the normal and socially acceptable culinary modes you desire. As for me, I have rediscovered that cheese is the new bread.

Cheesemonger to the Stars

I'm not one to floss about grand achievements, but from here on out, I'm no ordinary cheesemonger. I'm cheesemonger to the stars.

There was this one time Spike Lee...was outside of the store filming a carpenter's protest. Or at least it looked like him from our side of the window. Ummm...okay, okay, so there was this one time one of the crazy clients from Millionaire Matchmaker came in... and loudly discussed the calorie content of our tomato soup and left after eating some samples...and, umm, yeah I guess reality tv does not a star make. Okay okay, I have a real one! This other time Jon Benjamin (who has some show on Comedy Central but is only relevant to me for lending his voice on Archer and various Adult Swim cartoons) hung out in the store...eating sandwiches. Right, so.... Oh, I have it! Once, Jimmy Fallon came into the store...and I mostly avoided eye contact because real celebrities make me nervous, and all he did was buy a bunch of frozen mac & cheese.

Alright so I haven't actually mongered to any stars. And truth be told, the greater the celebrity, the more I wouldn't know what to do with myself and just act a fool. But all these celebrity pseudo-encounters in New York, as well as the generally demanding nature of customer encounters in this city's service industry, got me thinking. Someday, if I own a business, whether it be in an important city or small town, my mission statement will be "to provide a service or product that is so innately awesome that I don't have to kiss a bunch of ass to get people to like me."

Both law and cheesemongering are service professions. Both industries have taught me that I would sooner re-live that day I had kidney stones than spend my life kissing everyone's ass and ingratiating myself in a gratuitously saccharine display of self-prostitution. Right, so that sounds a little harsh.

Okay let's put it this way: The stores and business in which I feel most comfortable are those that employ a normal amount of courtesy to the average customer, are totally free to bust your balls if you're truly being a rude cretin, joke with you when you do something silly, and treat everyone like a normal human being. Whether you're kind of a big deal celebrity or just an average joe, each customer is deserving of the same respect when it is returned in kind. If a store/business serves me up something phenomenal, delicious, comforting, or unique, then I don't care if I'm greeted with feigned friendliness, high-pitched queries, and painted smiles. I'd actually prefer not to be. Just imagine the customer is a friend you've known for years. At least that's what I do when I try to help people pick out cheeses from the case. I smile because that's what you do when you're having a good time with friends.

It's pretty easy to tell when a corporate customer service model has jammed a friendliness micro-chip into its employees' brains. And there's nothing more distasteful. If people like your stuff and feel at ease doing business with you because you're innately a nice person, then they will buy your product whether you're having an incredibly smiley day or not. That's what friends do. They welcome your varying and normal levels of joy because the most important thing they get from the relationship is you.  So obviously, I just need to approach the next celebrity that comes in and ask to be their friend. Yes, by god, that's the trick! I'll let you know how that goes.

One Ticket on the Wabash Cannonball

In a word, today was lame. It was the first day I've wanted to cry at work since my days at the law firm. I held it in until the subway station, when I could easily pretend as if I had gotten trash debris in my eye.

So what did I do to make myself feel better? I tried to re-kindle some cheese fun. I made a few pit stops on the way home and sat down in front of a feast of: doughnuts, summer ale, and cheese. It's what I like to call the Homer Simpson cheese plate. And let me tell you, I'm sitting fat and happy at my computer right now. 

The Homer Simpson cheese plate.
Complete with robot beer cup. Because
cartoons make me happy.
Wait a minute. Who put that
doughnut in my hand and forced
me to start eating it before I got home...

It was an accumulation of confounding frustrations building throughout the week. Big things, little things, and expected things. Box after box of shipments arriving with glass bottles packed in freaking styrofoam peanuts (why do we still manufacture these things?! why can't I get them off me?!). Little things. A few days of negative energy and smattering of passive aggression (maybe it's the low pressure system). Big things. The stress of learning how to navigate new responsibilities. Expected things. 

I began to miss the simpler days of farmers markets, when rude customers didn't phase me; when everyone was happy to be outside in the fresh air; when all I had to worry about was what vegetables to barter my cheese for. It had me sitting at my lunch break, angrily shoving a panini in my mouth and reading the latest issue of Culture cheese magazine. I flipped through page after page of grinning cheesemongers posing next to elaborate displays of fromage-tastic mountains of cheese wheels. "What's that moron so damn happy about," I would grumble to myself. 

What. Is. That. 

Therapy would be appearing on my horizon. I went home with a piece of cheese I newly discovered a couple months ago. When it arrived in the store, I was ready to send it back to the distributor, unsure how we could sell such a god awful monstrosity. Those who knew better assured me that it was in its proper state and did in fact taste wonderful. Today I say, Wabash Cannonball, you my only friend. 

In all honesty the piece I ate was, in fact, a bit on the ugly side and too old to sell, but I'm not too good for old cheese. Instead of going into the trash at work, it might as well go into my belly. I sat down with this little monster, which I now find unquestionably beautiful, listened to the Townes Van Zandt rendition of "Wabash Cannonball" (I'm all about themes), and ate away my sorrows.  The Cannonball is a small goat's milk ball from my hood, the Midwest...though I hate to claim Indiana. On its journey from Capriole Farms, it looks like it's lived a hard life. Wrinkled from the work of the mold forming the rind and aging the cheese from the outside in, and covered in a layer of ash, at first it reminded me a little of what an old wad of gum would look like under various public handrails. But this thing tastes amazing!

It's a little chalky on the inside, but buttery and oozy on the outside where the mold is doing its work. The ash, which helps the mold do its thing and peaks out from the white fuzzies might look a little scary, but it all works together in a wonderful lactose synergy. The flavors are lemony and dense at its youngest and oozy with a bit of tongue tickling pungency as it gets along in age. I love this cheese all the time, any time. 

Wabash fit the mood for what I needed in a cheese pick me up. It reminded me that even ugly things can surprise you with some nugget of awesome. Be it a delicious food or a lesson learned -- the hope is that even the tough days have a reason for being. 

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Cheese is a business. So just like in any business, you'll find your everyday moron. Even in the cheese world -- a world I've described as home to some of the warmest people I've ever met -- there is a smattering of undesirable personalities.

Once I found myself trapped in a conversation with an otherwise well-intentioned cheese guy/business guy who was suffering from a severe affliction of self-involved verbal diarrhea and smarminess. Not only was he unable to stop talking about how awesome he was --the words "I'm a hustler" actually came out of his middle-aged suburban mouth--, but he also thought so highly of his sense of judgment that he took it upon himself to psychoanalyze me on our first meeting. To him, the cheese counter was a stage, and he proceeded to question whether I really had the stage presence for "cheese theater" if I were to open a potential store of my own.

It was completely idiotic. I felt dumber for having participated in the conversation. Cheese store guests should feel like a cheesemonger is their friend and cohort in an adventurous hunt for a delicious food experience. Customers shouldn't be treated like a detached audience while their cheesemonger makes a fool of himself by over-dramatizing the relationship. And while some people (me) can't get enough of cheese or may joke about running a black market raw milk cheese trade, I sure as all get-out don't want my cheesemonger to hustle the stuff on me like a dime-bag of dairy goodness. Having now spent many successful weeks behind the cheese counter, I see how full of crap that guy was.

Pretty much everything that came out of his mouth exuded the two character traits that have cast the artisanal cheese industry (foreign and domestic) in a pretentious and elitist light:  narcissism and vanity. When people vomit that kind of nonsense, it makes customers think the reason they're paying $30/lb for cheese is because someone with a big vocabulary and fancy attitude wants to make a buck on spoiled milk. They don't see the hard work the farmers and cheesemakers put in to develop the recipes, care for the animals and make the product, or the effort the cheesemongers should be making to help them discover something new and delicious. They just see a buffoon, a court jester, a dairy thug, trying to sleaze their way to some dollar-dollar bills.

On both sides of the counter -- among cheesemongers and customers alike, people who think they're members of some cool kids club because they know a thing or two about cheese make it really difficult for the other person to enjoy the experience and the exploration.

There are self-involved, sleazy types everywhere. Having seen plenty of that in the corporate world, a fear of turning into a cheese counter cretin has hindered my own self-promotion in the cheese world. Many dear friends and supporters have encouraged me to do more to "brand" myself, if you will. Post more on the blog, review products, teach classes, link to my posts on Facebook, give Cheesy Street information out to strangers and new contacts, advertise. Instead, I have yet to burn through a 100-count deck of business cards I printed for myself, and a lot of acquaintances and old friends still have no idea what I'm doing with my life. Telling new people what I do usually begins with a hesitant stutter that I use to fill the space I anticipate from the awkward silence that will ensue.

Let's be blunt, though, every business needs a palatable amount of hustle to keep enough green paper flowing through its veins to stay alive. I realize that talking about what I do with people is essential to long-term survival, and, really, not so terrible. I handed out a very rough first draft of my business card to former classmates at my 10-year high-school reunion -- the epitome of awkward situations. I even unloaded a card to a stranger on the Subway a few weeks ago -- a native Brooklynite who spent some time in Wichita and struck up a conversation with me about my Kansas t-shirt. His wife loves cheese, I'm told. I'll probably never see or hear from that guy or his wife, but at least my card and web address are floating out there somewhere.

Talking about my cheese life has gotten much easier, and led to some really great conversations. Even strangers can sense your character pretty easily when you start talking about yourself. I've learned that as long as you are genuine and enthusiastic, people are really interested in hearing about your craft - be it accounting, lawyering, painting, cheesemongering, what-have-you. Everyone wants to talk to real people, not hustlers, clowns, or showmen. As long as you keep the smarm out of it, business-talk ain't so bad.

This is also a long way of self-promoting two things: 1) So you might have picked up that I have a first draft on a business card. It's really DIY and needs a lot of changes, upgrades and updates. But it looks like:

Biz cards with pictures from the blog and info on the back.

I look forward to dropping it in fish bowls for drawings at various restaurants and hotels.

2) Cheesy Street is blowin up homies!! Soon....well as soon as I figure out how the hell to design a web page...it'll be moving to its very own Dot Com! Without the hyphen! The Cheesy Street url was something I tried to reserve over a year ago when Tad and I came up with the name. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of Internet trolls who poach urls and purchase them shortly after someone runs a search for the name on services like GoDaddy, with the hope of selling or auctioning the domain at a higher price to those who really want it. The day after I searched for cheesystreet.com and was ready to to buy it, I realized some fool in Utah had bought it from under me hours earlier. Eventually he realized there was no burning demand for cheesystreet.com and transferred it to my friend Chris who will be helping me figure out how to design the page...which will happen ...someday...in the future...Okay so I have no idea when it will happen, but at least the option is there now and it WILL happen. 

An Ode to the Inanimate Object that Changed My Life

Say what you will about us folk who believe in signs, luck, omens, intuitions, various superstitions and the arguably delusional belief that everything happens for a reason. We might be a naive, gullible lot, hung-up on cliches and hell-bent on seeing what they want in all portents. Or we might just be on to something, suckas!

I'll be honest. Moving to New York alone to start working at a brand new cheese store scared the crap out of me. I'd mongered markets here, but the store would be a completely different beast. There would be managing duties, setting up for opening, dealing with daily crowds of customers, knowing about 100 cheeses versus 12, regulatory and operational protocol, handling customer complaints, inventory and ordering. The weeks leading up to my move were filled with a secret panic of whether I could hack it.

I thought, life sure would be easier if I just stayed in Del Rio, making cheese and pies at home. Instead, I tried to focus on how good it would feel to conquer the challenge. We all survive the complete helplessness and ignorance you have the first day of starting any new job. If I could do it in the most complicated of circumstances, I would be well-prepared if I ever opened my own business. Or, at least I'd feel pretty proud of myself for leaving pies and comfort behind to give it a try.

I've moved four times in the last year to pursue different cheesy adventures. Before each new beginning there were varying degrees of fear accompanying the uncertainty. Each time I reminded myself that everything happens for a reason and remembered the eerie sign I received just before I began a life of cheese last year.

During my last few weeks at the firm in 2010, I was paired up with a career counselor to help me figure out my next move. It wasn't unusual for confused, despondent lawyer types to receive similar counseling either through the good-will of their firm or through their own procurement. Times were lean for interesting, fulfilling legal jobs, so we needed all the help we could get in figuring out which waters to test. Despite the rampant cold-heartedness in BigLaw, at least everyone was unified in realizing that we all needed a hand in earning a living and paying off our massive student debt.

The counseling started with a thorough aptitude and personality test -- your standard Myers-Briggs style tests, but on crack. The results, which, in a nutshell, told me I had certain skill sets lawyers needed but would be a damn fool if I pursued lawyering as a vocation, steered the rest of the meetings with the counselor. We mulled over various careers that fit with my personality -- things that would keep me active and/or creative.

I had already started considering and researching cheese apprenticeships on my own, but was hesitant to bring it up with anyone for fear of being ridiculed. Eventually, I revealed my secret desire, shrouded as a tentative objective that I would consider alongside a back-up plan.

Soon it became obvious that coaching me for backup plan applications was a weak-willed way to deny what I really wanted for fear of presenting something unconventional to the world. So we switched to focusing on cheese, writing, and meeting people. At one of the last two sessions, my wonderfully positive and encouraging counselor opened up a book she recommended I read about a guy who travels around the country profiling people in various stages of figuring out what they want to do with their lives.

Inside the book, which she pulled from a colleague's office and thus would have no reason to know what was inside, there was a remarkable surprise: a copy of an old newspaper clipping about the growth of artisanal cheese in the United States and the joy of cheesemakers pursuing a life that suited them. It had no connection to any of the profiles or content in the book. And it freaked the hell out of us both.

It's as if this phantom book knew my dreams and was telling me to make the leap. Literally telling me. I've never to this day read a word of the book. I don't even remember what the title was. My only encounter with the book was that day, when I opened it to the middle, letting its anthropomorphic jaw gape wide enough to spit out that article at me.

That was the first moment I was certain. That was the point at which I stopped searching databases for other possible jobs.

Call it cliche or coincidence, but I always remember that peculiar moment when I'm feeling low. I'm positive it was some kind of sign. Hate on us sappy intuitive types all you want. We all have our tools to conquer negativity en route to a goal. We all have our ways to convince ourselves of a certain decision. Mine are just a bit spookier than most.

The Grand Opening Report

I know I've been a bit derelict in my posting duties. The weeks since store opening have been action-packed. But I'm going to try my best not to leave Cheesy Street to the wayside going forward.

BOOM, Food Safety Certified, Blouses!
Ok, so it's not a picture of the store.  But I had
to take a test to get this card! And for now,
 it's the best I can do on pictures. 

Three weeks in and being an official cheesemonger and manager-on-duty at a giant cheese store feels like second nature. That didn't take long. Beecher's is huge, and we do a lot. We have a cafe area, an evening lounge/restaurant area downstairs, a charcuterie case, a coffee bar, a cheesemaking facility...a petting zoo. It's a carnival of cheese and cheese-related fun.  Not only did I need to quickly learn the cheese case, but I also needed to know the ins and outs of the cafe area, the charcuterie case and meat slicer (love cured meat but I know nothing about it), the espresso machine (which freaked me out at first), and various miscellaneous tasks that arise like receiving orders, building sandwiches and cheese plates, and answering customer questions that baffle me.

The first day was a non-stop explosion of customers and curiosity. I ended up working an opening to closing shift. Fifteen hours, and a I loved every second. My feet, not so much. Since then, things have been a steady but sane flow of people.

I know names, locations and stories of domestic cheese and cheesemakers pretty well. Yet, I've never had the opportunity to try many cheeses. So describing the flavor of each cheese is a completely different matter. That included most of the cheese in our case when we first opened. I felt pretty confident about being able to direct people to the right cheese. But the first couple of days was a lot of looking at cheeses and guessing what they would taste like and hoping for the best.
"Do you have anything similar to a manchego?"
(To my self) "Gah, I have no idea."
Scanning labels frantically; finding one with a picture of a sheep.
(To myself) "Mmmeh, this one looks like a semi-firm sheep's milk cheese. I bet it'll work."
"Yes we do actually. Here try this one. I think it comes pretty close."
Nom, nom, nom.
"Man alive, this is delicious! I'll take a slice."

I would try the cheese with the customer or after they left and discovered that my guesses were usually pretty accurate. Not always, but surprisingly often. It worked well. I guess lawyering taught me a thing or two about making things up on the fly.

It only took a few days of tasting and exploring along with the customers before I learned 90% of the cheeses in our case and didn't have to rely as much on panicked assumptions. Now, I can look at a wheel of cheese and know which cheese it is without seeing the label.  Plus it didn't take long to know the cheeses that are crowd pleasers and the ones that aren't.

In a nutshell, I love my job. I love conversations with random excited customers and regulars. People in NYC love cheese. I knew that from my farmers market days. But now I can explore up to 100 different cheeses with them and figure out which is the perfect cheese for each person, and this may sound strange, but that is inexplicably fulfilling. And if my brain is ever fried from figuring out which cheese hits the mark for every single person, I can always escape to the solitary, focused zen world of the espresso machine or sandwich press. Waking up for an opening shift at 5:00am can be difficult, not to mention the alarming introduction to an early morning/late night cast of characters on the subway. Once I'm at work it flies by and I love being there.

One of the best aspects of the job is continually trying, discovering and re-discovering new cheeses I love ...or even ones that I don't love so much. As I keep going, I'll try to share as many as I can with you. Just because not all of you can come into the store and find out directly from our cheese counter, doesn't mean you should be sheltered from new and delicious cheese discoveries.

Dairy: America's Food Cyclops of Destruction?

One of my favorite memories of my early cheese days was the pure energy of cheesemongering at the Union Square market in NYC last summer. The hungry, excited, and often sample-greedy crowds. The love of cheese, fresh food, and yes, free samples. The questions: "What cheese is that?!" "Is that soap?!" "Do you have any cheddar?!" bombarding the stall from various indiscernible directions. And the adrenaline of being thrown into a food zoo and having to cut every piece to-order in plain view.

Now that I call NYC my home, I walk through the markets regularly. Though I am still a cheesemonger in my own right (this time in a nice temperature-controlled building), a wave of jealous nostalgia sweeps over me when I see the farmers and producers setting up their stands. Yet, something is not quite the same.

There are several new cheesemakers on the NY farmers market scene, which is wonderful. Nevertheless, the excited energy is somewhat diminished by the neatly pre-packaged cheeses I see at every turn. Even my own beloved Cato Corner is forced to either pre-package cheese (a monumental task for small cheesemakers who are seeing almost 1,000 pounds of cheese traffic per week in markets) or take cheese behind a curtain to a mobile kitchen trailer and cut away from the penetrating view of customers. I sucked at cutting cheese in front of gawking patrons, but that was half the fun for both the mongers and the customers!

New regulations in NYC have stopped cheesemakers from cutting cheese to order for customers at farmers markets. Something something, food safety. Something something, sanitation. Begin ragey rant now:

Cheese and dairy have always been the target of various ludicrous regulations. Then again, what hasn't really? You have to age it 60 days if it's raw milk. You have to store it at 40 degrees even though it ages, often for years, at ambient temperatures of 50-60 degrees. In some states, selling raw milk is like selling heroin. Cheesemakers and mongers have learned to cope with every requirement that's thrown at them. But like I've always said, every food carries a risk. When did dairy become public food enemy #1?

I've gotten food poisoning from a gyro sandwich once, but I'll still eat the hell out of a legit hole-in the-wall kebab stand. Once Applebee's made me sick, but I still go back for their maple blondies. In fact, I might be the most food poisoned fool I know, but I've never picked a category of food to whine about like this no-account Dr. Douche. How this jerkface makes the leap from a tragic E.Coli outbreak likely caused by dirty vegetables -- the leading culprit in many recent mass breakouts of food-borne illness -- to raw milk and juice baffles me.

I'll use pasteurized milk if it's all I can get, and I really enjoy many pasteurized artisanal cheeses. But I also love drinking raw milk. It's easier to digest (beneficial bacteria, as well as enzymes in milk that aid in lactose digestion for lactose-intolerant people, are killed off during pasteurization), and it tastes better. I've never gotten sick from dairy -- and I've gotten sick from a lot of foods. I've even witnessed how the animals are milked. This guy reads one article in the Seattle Times, regurgitates what he learned in his thesis program, and thinks he's an expert on small dairy producers. You sir, impress nobody. Lactating cows on small farms everywhere are crying tears of sorrow at your wholly spurious assumptions.

Sanitation is important, and I would always get my raw milk from reputable producers. You can even do your own research about the relative rarity of listeria outbreaks from raw milk. Or how campylobacteriosis is as much of a risk, if not a greater risk, in chilled pasteurized milk than it is in raw milk. You can check the sources and the CDC reports yourself, and decide to agree or disagree. It doesn't really matter to me which way you lean on the issue. You get your pasteurized milk, I'll get mine raw. You get your burgers cooked medium rare, I'll get mine medium. Just know that raw milk, cheese, and other dairy products carry risks like any other food. They are not singularly evil in any outstanding way.

Banning a product from an essential food group or installing needless obstacles for small farms and producers, instead of targeting the sanitation problems that make all foods dangerous, causes much more harm than good.

Rounding the bases to an astounding argument put out there by people who think dairy is always bad for you. There are those who choose not to eat dairy at all because of ethical reasons, and I'm not touching that. We'll agree to disagree, and you are completely entitled to that dietary choice, which I will agree to respect. But there are those who just think eating dairy will turn you into a fat, un-healthy zombie blob.

I ran across a lot of articles on how terrible dairy is when I was uncovering the similar chemical reactions in the pleasure portions of our brain induced by both cheese and chocolate. (see my Valentine's Day post). This one in particular got my rage juices flowing.

Apparently people out there were completely outraged by the "cheese industry" pushing it's "cheese agenda" on food, ensnaring people into a cycle of addiction. Last time I checked, dairy was one of our essential food groups. Last time I checked, I also didn't want to be a brittle old hag with osteoporosis. Also, last time I checked, I like extra cheese on my pizza because I think it tastes good. Not because I'm addicted to "dairy crack." I've gone days without cheese and haven't turned into a sweaty, twitchy mess, fighting withdrawal nausea on my couch. When I do enjoy cheese, I've never, to my knowledge, become a bloated, dairy stenched Jabba the Hutt, waiting for a coronary. Why did our culture start vilifying entire categories of food? Food is food. We need it, we should celebrate it, enjoy it (in moderation). Be a little European about it for god's sake.

Despite what my frustration sounds like, I'm not here to be political about all this. For the record, I do believe that there is a public safety interest in ensuring our food is produced in a sanitary manner. I'm all for initiatives that encourage healthy choices and lower health problems associated with diets. Sugary drinks will turn your kid into a fatty fat fat, and we should probably reign those in. I think disparaging said public initiatives with "food police" barbs is just a way for angry, unhealthy people to stay angry and unhealthy, guilt-free. I don't need to be eating maple blondies every day because nobody should directly or indirectly have to foot a six-figure open-heart surgery bill when I'm 50. I would prefer to help out small producers rather than continuing to subsidize large agricultural industries.

Maybe you could say I'm an equal rights foodie. I am against -- and hope more people will join me in this -- irrationally and illogically singling out entire categories of a food group as your pet enemy; sensationalizing a diet trend or a food-related tragedy as a public platform to demonize a fresh, natural food that poses no greater risk than other products, that is part of a well-balanced diet, and that many small producers rely upon to make their living in an agricultural tradition that has lasted since early civilization. Is that too much to ask for?

Note: In a previous version I was unclear in stating where raw milk sales are available (in NY state it is just at licensed farm stores; in neighboring states it is available in retail stores). This graphic clears it all up, and also lets you know states in which you can't enjoy raw milk, but your pet cat Mittens sure can. 

Steady Chasin that Cheese Curd

Adios Hwy 90. It's been real. 

I’ve come a long way from the naive cheese traveler wandering into Del Rio, half-panicked by my own preconceived notions and by all the border-town fear mongers regurgitating what they heard on the news or read in the travel section of Reader’s Digest. I remember driving the stretch of Highway 90 that dips within two miles of the Rio Grande at dusk, nervously expecting gangs of drug mules, cartel henchmen, and human-traffickers to be leaping across the road like legions of West Texas deer.  

That was 7 months ago. I’ve learned a lot since then.

Still, some things don’t change. My belongings remain mostly stored in boxes and I continue to use suitcases as bedroom furniture. As I put Del Rio behind me in my trusty CR-V, the radio couldn't have selected a more apt farewell serenade: Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again on My Own."

Because, indeed, like a drifter I was born to walk alone. And this particular lonely street of dreams has led me from the Texas-Mexico border to New York City. The unlikeliest of transitions. 

NYC -- the cradle of big dreams. Some people come for fame. Some for fortune. Some in search of love, purpose, or identity. I came here for a modest wage, relative obscurity, and dairy products.

It was the next logical and exciting step in my cheese schooling. I’ve worked with great cheesemakers. So, it was about time I finally found a great cheese retail opportunity. I told you about my failed retail search when I first arrived in Texas last Fall. Nevertheless, I found a great cheesemaking fit in BVC and used my own kitchen as a platform for productivity with home cheesemaking. 

  

I had to tap some serious ingenuity to make a cheese life for myself in the desolate West Texas desert. It took some mileage to Waco and and several cheesemaking fails in my kitchen, but I did it.

Of course, it was unsustainable. I couldn’t continue the 11-hour weekly commute for much longer. And the grocery store cashiers started to get curious about my frequent milk purchases, giving me suspicious looks as if I had developed some new way to cook up meth or Molotov cocktails with dairy.  

It was time to move on even though it would require another solo adventure. Tad would wrap things up in Del Rio over the course of the year, keeping dutiful guard over the meticulously labeled boxes I have stored in his closet.

Meanwhile as I strategized my next move, the previous year's journey came full circle. Last Fall, I arrived in Del Rio en route from my internship in Washington State with Black Sheep Creamery -- an internship that not only taught me a lot about cheesemaking and farmers markets, but also gave me the gift of an opportunity that once made my skin crawl in professional circles: networking. Through Meg and Brad, I connected with several local cheesemongers and cheese retailers, including a Seattle-based cheese institution, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese. Beecher’s incidentally was boldly entering the East Coast cheese field by opening a second branch in New York City. Even then it seemed like an exciting opportunity with a great company that is as passionate about good food as I am. Before happenstance led Tad and I to Del Rio for a temporary period, I assumed I was heading back to the East Coast after my cheese internships ended, so I expressed interest in getting involved with the new branch. Then, adventures in a border town came calling. 

Fortunately fate, good timing, and “networking” with the people I had met at Beecher’s would nevertheless allow me to grow my cheese ambitions with them. The opening of the new store had been pushed to mid 2011, at just the moment when I was ready for the next step.  And, thankfully, my year of cheese learning cast a sheen of marginal competence on me, and they took me on to the opening team. So, now I'm back on the East Coast, helping put the gears in motion for a major NYC cheese store opening. A bonafide cheesemonger in the big city. I wanted to know how deep the Swiss cheese hole goes and there’s no turning back. This is it. This is what I do. Cheesemaker. Cheesemonger. Cheese stalker – I’ve followed it everywhere; my CR-V can attest.

There are such things as proprietary secrets and non disclosure agreements I vaguely recall from law school that are usually involved with successful companies, even cheesy ones. So while there may not be much in the way of daily details anymore, don't worry. Every chapter of this cheese story seems to have developed its own voice based on the circumstance. I think we’ve grown past the details and the baby steps together. There will be discoveries to share in this chapter, just like the others. 

As I leave the last stage of the adventure, Whitesnake resonating truth through my speakers, I know one thing. If we can find cheesy happiness for the better part of a year in desolate West Texas, we can find it anywhere. 

On To The Next

After logging almost 11,000 miles of commute, plus one windshield replacement from an errant flying boulder on highway 90, two late-night near deer-to-hood encounters, several incidents of suppressed road rage, countless rendezvous with swerving semis, too many protein-bar-dinners on the road, and five or six gas-price hikes later, I bid adieu to another chapter in my cheese life. My last week at Waco's Brazos Valley Cheese was bittersweet. I wouldn't have made that trek if I didn't also really enjoy the people and the job that awaited me at the end. At the same time, there sure as hell will be no love lost between me and that 5pm to 11pm drive home to Del Rio every week.

Making the commute for almost five months is respectable, right? A part of me felt like a punk bitch when I had to explain that I would be leaving something I love because the drive had gotten too hard. It's not you, it's me. Never mind the emboldened sense of achievement I had each time someone questioned my sanity for making that commute in the first place. Anything for you, cheese.

It was time, though. Deep down I knew when I started that I couldn't make that commute forever. Hopefully I can parlay everything I learned with BVC and all my other cheese teachers in the last year (a little over a year to this day that I started this journey) to an equally wonderful and fortunate next chapter.

The next move will likely involve continuing to improve my home cheesemaking (and pies) while resuming my nomadic ways. Del Rio has few cheese ties to keep me here for long, so I'm following leads for the next opportunity elsewhere. At some point, Tad and I will be in the same city for more than a few months, and I'll finally be able to figure out what CheesyStreet actually is or will be. For now and the near future, I'm still living out of suitcases.

But before I move on, a tribute to the job that gave me my cheese swagger.

Big vat, dutch press in the background,
and my mini vat in the left foreground.

I've mentioned that my job at BVC made me feel more like a real cheesemaker. I started to list "cheesemaker" without hesitation in the occupation blanks for profile data, surveys, and doctors' office forms. The good people at BVC gave me more responsibility than I expected for having only six months of legitimate cheese experience. Are you sure you want to put me in charge of my own batch, I kept thinking? It seemed hasty, but I was thankful they unintentionally pushed me further. I hope I didn't let them down.

I've mentioned a few notable events at BVC, but I haven't gone into great detail about my daily tasks. The reasons are several-fold. First, a lot of the basics would be repetitive with slight variations in procedural technique. Too many details would have been a lot like listing the different varieties of high-fiber cereal I've eaten this month. Second, my new hobby of home cheesemaking and related mishaps became a big part of my cheese life in Del Rio and needed some introduction to the spotlight. But, most importantly, there was no true schedule at BVC that lent itself to an easy description of a day in the life.

Milk delivery in the morning. Milk
was purchased from nearby farms.

On a daily basis, there was rarely a moment to pause and nothing seemed compartmentalized. Everyone was shuttling back and forth between cheesemaking, flipping, pressing, affinage, packaging, doing inventory, checking pHs, stretching mozzarella, marinating cheeses, mixing ingredients for flavored cheese, and cleaning.  There were general duties; one person manned the big batch of cheese while another (usually me) manned the smaller second batch. And certain tasks had to be done on certain days; bries blooming mold needed flipping daily, munster needed washing every Wednesday, mozzarella needed stretching every other Tuesday. But there was no set course plotted for any given day of the week.

The particular nature of a cheesemaker's day-to-day routine is usually a factor of both workplace preferences and differences in production between cheese operations.

The hairnets weren't
my favorite part

The notable difference that I targeted as the big reason for the fast-paced BVC work-day was the variety of cheese. Taking into account the types of cheese (Cheddar, Brie, Havarti, Mozzarella, Feta etc.) and the flavors or variations for each type of cheese (Horseradish Pecan Cheddar, Brie with vegetable ash, Blueberry Havarti, marinated Feta, multiple flavors of cheese spreads etc.), there were more than two dozen cheeses for us to make and tend after. There was always a cheese, sometimes multiple cheeses, that needed attention at any given moment.

Yet, never was there a neglected cheese if someone could help it. It takes dedication, and a village, to care for that much cheese. BVC was nothing if not dedicated. It was always an 8am to question-mark sort of day. If the cheese or pH isn't ready on your timeline, then you wait. Or if more than one cheese is ready at the same time...well, then, god help you. Patience and fortitude is key when you're awake early making two batches, caring for a dozen more, and returning at 9pm that evening to work with whatever got left behind. If an order of 500 jars of marinated feta needs to be packaged and ready, then everyone comes to work and pitches in until the job is done at midnight. I slept-over on Tuesday nights for my two-day stint, so I wasn't exempt by the commute. We were doctors of cheese, always on-call.

At first I was a little nervous about what to expect when I started working at BVC. The commute would be difficult. My wages would be shoved directly back into my gas tank. Waco was...well, Waco. And I was the only person working there who wasn't part of their homesteading community.

I worked with interesting, warm people, who welcomed me in two days each week to basically live with them. I was given agency over my responsibilities, never bored, always on my feet, and continually learning. Until BVC, I had never wrapped cloth-bound cheddar (a simple task involving layers of muslin plastered to the cheese with a lubricant like Crisco). There were cheeses I had never made that involved new recipes with different temperatures, cultures, and affinage techniques. I had never stretched mozzarella or used a hand-milling machine (for milling cheddar or other curds into long strips). As I left, I was thankful that I found them during my time in Texas. I was able to stay a productive and active member of cheese society despite being in a sleep border town in West Texas. I made friends and gained confidence in my abilities as a cheesemaker. Plus, I convinced myself that if I can fashion a cheese life for myself in Del Rio (or even Waco), even temporarily, I can probably make this endeavor of mine work for me just about anywhere.

BVC's larger homesteading community specializes in restoring and relocating historic barns and turning them into houses. The guest house where I stayed on Tuesday nights was one such impressive and cozy structure. 

Movin On Up to the Cheese Pie

Half the week I'm stirrin' up some curds and haulin' large wheels with some great cheesemakers in Waco. The other half, I'm playing a proper 1950s housewife back in Del Rio. I make pies. Many pies.

It all started three months ago with one of my favorites, southern lemon chess pie. The chess pie was my first ever pie and pie crust attempt; it met rave reviews and is likely the main reason my boyfriend put plans in motion to propose marriage. The obsession progressed to the point where I was making three pies in one day.

Cheese is no stranger to pies. So, eventually, I decided to set up a play date for my good friends cheese and pie.

You've heard of cheesy desserts incorporating smooth, sweet cheeses like cream cheese (cheesecake) or mascarpone (tiramisu). Stronger cheeses can also participate in the dessert party as a standalone treat (cheese plate, or see blue cheese-honey-Sauternes combo from my Valentine's Day post). But I'm a believer that non-traditional cheese desserts have a place in the sugary pantheon as well. Enter pies.

Remember that ricotta I made in the last post? It would meet its sweet fate in my first cheese-based pie attempt, a "Cheese and Honey" pie.

Stumbling through several online recipes, I discovered that the so-called "cheese and honey" title that initially caught my eye was actually a traditional Greek dessert called Melopita. Generally the pie is made with either Ricotta or Myzithra cheeses. Myzithra (also Mizithra) is a Greek cheese made from whey remaining from feta production and a bit of added goat or sheep milk. The cheese is then pressed and salted, so it resembles Ricotta Salata in texture and taste. Myzithra would have been the more exotic and daring choice, but my castaway ricotta from my mozzarella debacle needed a home.

Because whey ricotta is a by-product of an initial cheese-make, it's a fairly low-yield cheese. I needed 16 ounces total, so I had to combine my small ricotta ball with some whole milk ricotta I purchased at the store. Because whey is high in protein and low in fat, my ricotta was the healthier of the two. Whole milk ricotta is made entirely or partially from the actual milk. The milk is curdled by vinegar in a manner similar to paneer, so the finished product still has all of the fat and cream from the original milk.

Melopita dusted with cinnamon

The pie was fairly simple: mix ricotta, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup honey, 2 tablespoons flour together for the filling. I then added cinnamon, vanilla, and a bit more honey according to my own taste. I also boozed up my basic crust recipe with some bourbon and vanilla. My final result tasted like a fantastic pumpkin pie. It was creamier in taste and a bit thicker in texture, but very reminiscent of fall.

The first Melopita recipe I found called for either ricotta or "other curd cheese." Translated, the vaguely stated instructions simply direct you to either ricotta or cottage cheese. In the comments one hapless woman, confused by the term "curd cheese," decided to use cheddar curds she had laying around. Fortunately, she said her pie turned out fantastic. While that's not what the Greeks had in mind, I'm just crazy enough to be intrigued by the blundering variation. If I can get my hands on some cheddar curds (not in Del Rio), I might just experiment with such pie insanity.

For now, I'll just tell you about the other, far more "traditional" (so-to-speak) cheddar and pie experiment to which I progressed. A surprisingly sizeable portion of the U.S. population has likely heard of apple pie being served with cheese melted on top or on the side as curds or chunks. I believe it's fairly popular in New York and other Northeastern states. The rest of you probably just threw up in your mouth a little. You have no reason to trust me. I'm the type of person who likes weird food combinations like ice cream and cheese sandwiches when I was a kid or Funyons with a Fig Newton when I was ...bored.  But believe me, you haven't lived until you've eaten apple pie with cheese.

I'd seen the combination on menus before and in a scene of Taxi Driver where Robert DeNiro's character orders apple pie with cheese. But I wanted to try to make cheese get cozier with the pie. I wanted to add the cheese directly to the pie as it appeared in many recipes for Yorkshire apple and cheese pies. In fact, our pie-with-a-side-of-cheese tradition was likely brought over to the colonies from English and Scottish settlers.

I found the best white cheddar Del Rio had to offer (some $10/lb blocks from a random New York cheesemaking factory I'd never heard of), and let my madness unleash itself. I found four or five recipes to start from, mixed and matched, and ended up with two experiments.

This unassuming crust holds
a delightful hidden ingredient

One was a streusel pie with the cheese in the filling: standard crust, sliced apples tossed with 1/2 lb of shredded cheddar and the other filling accouterments (cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, corn starch, brown sugar, vanilla, and yes, bourbon), and a sugar-flour-butter streusel topping.

The second pie incorporated cheese into the crust instead of the filling. So I made the same filling, minus the cheddar. Then I folded a 1/2 lb of shredded cheddar into the crust instead. The dough tasted like a cheddar biscuit. It was so good I started to eat raw dough with glazed, crazed delight in my eye. Feeling ill, I returned to pie-making.

I lined the pan with the cheese crust, added the filling and covered the top with the cheddar crust as well (no streusel). Then, I made a maple-*ahem*bourbon sauce to be added to either pie. In the end, neither pie needed the sauce, so I just used it as ice cream topping. The pies were amazing standing alone. The classic combination of sweet fruit with salty cheese. Incorporating the cheddar into the recipe made for a cohesive and subtle cheese flavor. I imagine that taking bites of curd alongside pie would pack a stronger punch.

I'm obsessed, so I could have actually used a bit more cheese flavor in my pie. Next time I might try a pie with cheddar in the crust AND the filling. Convention and moderation can't hold me down.



I was too excited to eat these pies in immediate succession to make time to focus my camera

Through Thick and Thin

As I observed the children's cheesemaking class a few weeks ago, I watched 11-year-olds beat me at my own game. The mozzarella they made in class was a gooey, elastic beauty of dairy Gak. (I miss Gak.). My curd never quite looked like that. It always falls apart into smaller grains. Though, eventually it does come together in the stretching phase. For instance, the last batch of accidentally successful mozzarella I made started out a little grainy, but stretched out to a smooth ball that was fully functional for cooking and melting.

I was jealous of their novice success, yet, undaunted and determined to create an equally attractive mozzarella curd at home. My hypotheses for the cause of my shortcomings were 1) an overly dry curd, caused either by stirring too much, cooking at high temperatures, or a small cut; or 2) a bad set/coagulation, caused either by too little rennet, a short set time, or the poor quality of my store-bought milk. Milk quality was likely the biggest factor. The children's class was using raw milk straight from the cow. But there's nothing I can really do about that, short of getting a goat to feed off the tumbleweed in the desert bordering Mexico out back.

I attempted to mimick the curd of my pre-pubescent nemeses first with a citric acid batch, and then, with a cultured batch. I changed just a few of the factors first to see if I could pinpoint the problem. I used a little more rennet, barely stirred the curd, and cut the curd into large squares to retain moisture. It immediately fell apart. The curd was so weak and grainy that I couldn't even drain it. The curds never molded together and, instead, slipped right through my strainer, mocking me as they poured down my disposal.

So, on my next attempt, I increased the set time as well as the rennet, and I reduced the temperature to about 100 degrees during stirring. I also went back to my original 1-inch checkerboard cut. Same problem. It wasn't the size of the cut, the temperature, or any of my guesses relating to the coagulant, unless it was a combination of all three, in which case I would be making a new batch to control for each factor and sub-factor individually. I did not have the patience or milk funds to be quite that mad of a scientist.

I also surmised that the omission of calcium chloride, which I usually add to strengthen curd from store-bought milk, may have been a culprit. But the mozzarella help page on New England Cheesemaking Supply Co.'s website indicated that the omission shouldn't be a problem even with store-bought milk. In fact, depending on initial calcium phosphate and ionic calcium levels in the milk, calcium chloride may be counterproductive when making mozzarella because during the stretch you are trying to elongate the protein matrix which is held together, in part, by the bound calcium.

Bewildered, angry, and dejected, I drained my second weak batch in cheese cloth instead of a strainer so that I could actually capture some of the useless curd. For what purpose, I don't know. Punch it into submission? Face it down before it ran away in the drain and threaten that soon, very soon, its comrades would be mine to eat? Scare my mess o' curd into working for me, I suppose.

Ricotta ball

Both times my curd looked more like ricotta than mozzarella. Why not just make some ricotta with the whey, I thought, and salvage some of the cost of this failure. Ricotta, translated from Italian to "recooked," is formed when protein and minerals leftover in the whey are precipitated out with heat and acid levels.

I boiled the whey from my cultured batch until flakes of ricotta started to rise, drained it, and formed a small ball (ricotta from whey is a low-yield cheese). You can only make this style of ricotta from whey left after a culture ripened batch, not an acid precipitated batch. In other words, I can't use the whey from my citric acid batch to make ricotta. All of the specific protein that rises out to form ricotta has already been precipitated into the curd when you use acids such as vinegar or citric acid as the ripening or curdling agent.

The ricotta success was met with mild satisfaction as I casually tossed the ball into my fridge. (Stay tuned next time for the delicious journey that ball of ricotta takes.). I had wasted two gallons of milk, and was forced to re-up once again for my final attempt at a really good mozzarella curd. I had regressed from moderate success to colossal disappointment in under two weeks.

Third time's a charm, they say. But "they" say a lot of stupid crap, so I wasn't convinced. Regardless, I started again on a citric acid batch. No calcium chloride, diluted citric acid, a slightly increased amount of rennet, a longer set time, usual cut (1-inch checkerboard). Curd with store bought milk would always be weak, so again I stirred very slowly. I also heated the curd a little more, inching past the usual 110 degrees to about 115. Higher temperatures form a drier curd, which I was hoping would also be firmer and more likely to hold together in the whey. And, while the moisture would take a hit, I was hoping the the slow stirring would compensate. My last correction: using bottled water to dissolve the rennet instead of tap water.

Chlorine, which can be found in trace amounts in most tap water, will kill your rennet. When I started making cheese in the kitchen, I always used bottled water. Then I got lazy and cheap and started using tap water without any repercussion. My curd always set. It wasn't hard to believe that Del Rio's public utilities employees might be cutting some corners in their water treatment and failing to add a chemical or two. So maybe there's no chlorine, I thought? In reality, my guess is that a combination of factors in previous cheeses, maybe varying levels of chlorine or the effects of calcium chloride, masked my tap water problem.

THAT is a good stretch. That
 is also what unrestrained
glee looks like. 

A combination of poor quality milk, the omission of calcium chloride, and tap water interacting with the rennet likely had confounded my two recent mozzarella attempts. Then again, all of this is wild conjecture. The one change to my dilution, however, seemed to do the trick. After draining, I had the best mozzarella curd of my short cheese life. It was still grainer than the class curd, but I think milk quality will always affect that texture somewhat. After it was completely drained, it gelled together into a moist, gooey blob that stretched and stretched until the joy numbed me to the fact that I was burning my hands on hot mozzarella.

Home cheesemaking of late has been a series of peaks and valleys, peaking soon after I simply own the valleys of really, really, sucking at this game. I couldn't make a cheese with a proper meltable texture, so I owned my foibles and made a successful Paneer, a cheese that is meant to be unmeltable. Then, bam, my next attempt at cultured mozzarella sans pH meter worked, almost by accident. Then, I had batch after batch of mozzarella curd that was more aptly identified as bad ricotta. So, I make a proper batch of whey ricotta for the first time. Shazam! No more cheese funk and, on the next attempt, I make mozzarella curd with the best stretch yet. I'm not really sure what to call this pattern of existence. But I'm pretty sure that such a pattern -- one of simply repeating the product of failure in order to become better at the original goal -- would rarely work in other facets of life...at least not without (hilariously) tragic results. And that is one of many reasons why, despite our struggles, cheese and I remain BFFs.