New Year, New Cheese

I hate New Years resolutions. They're an easy way for you to feel less guilty about being a subpar human being the rest of the year. Making a resolution on January 1st is like waiting until you run out of underwear to do your laundry.

When you realize something in your life needs to be fixed, then put your man pants on and do it immediately instead of waiting around for an opportunity or excuse. So the timing of my next move and the title of my post are purely coincidental. This was a few months in the making. 

I hinted at the fact that I was starting to stagnate in my current cheese station. The purpose of moving to this city, in a nutshell, was to parlay my cheesemaking experience into learning an equally ample amount in the retail world. I needed to work with fellow cheese nerds in a real cheese shop, guided by cheese mentors who could impart their retail cheese wisdom and product knowledge on me. I wouldn't be fulfilling any of those needs being a manager of panini grilling, mac and cheese scooping, and pointing people to the house-made pre-cut cheeses. I need professional training in a store a little more focused on promoting the real star (cheese) and a lot less corporate and bent on promoting the extraneous, and often insincere, money-making foodie culture. 

I know way more about cheese than I did a year ago, but I still have a lot to learn beyond the ceiling I had hit in my current position. I'll just wait it out until I leave NYC and move on to the next thing wherever we end up, I thought. I almost fell prey to the easy route of drudging along in ever-growing frustration and belligerence  until an opportunity presented itself to me. Then, a revelation thanks to a very obvious question from a very good friend. Why don't you use your last few months here to gain experience at a different shop? Stupid, stupid. Why didn't I think of hunting that opportunity down myself sooner! No other city in the county has more opportunities to work with cheese experts in as many cheese businesses than NYC. This is a learning playground and I've just been taking repeated trips down the same slide.

So, in two weeks I'll be leaving Beecher's to take a position slinging some serious cheese at Bedford Cheese Shop. Bedford is an established shop with roots in Brooklyn that are expanding into Manhattan. It's all cheese all the time. Their cheeses are impeccably maintained, and they know their cheeses and producers...and want to teach you in a fun, welcoming way. The space is small, old school, and wreaks of delicious, stinky, cheese odors. Plus, I'll be forced to learn about imported cheeses, which I have yet to work with. In sum, I'm kind of terrified. Despite technically taking a step down from manager to good old fashioned cheesemonger, I feel unprepared for the hardcore, badass cheese shop world. But they were willing to take me on, and I jumped at the chance. Stay tuned for how it turns out and how badly I soil my pants on day one. Stay cheesy until then. 

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.

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.

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. 

Wearing the Title

A few nights ago, on my drive home from my once-a-week Tuesday gig in Waco, Texas, it occurred to me how ridiculous the lengths to which I had gone to be a productive member of cheese society seemed. At 10 p.m. I was on a desolate stretch of West Texas highway pushing hour-five of my 5.5-hour commute. This would be like living at my parents house in Omaha, bored and tired of wearing clothes that smelled like my mother's curry, and suddenly announcing "what say I drive on down to Wichita for my part-time job at Boeing today."  Even more ridiculous is the thought that if I worked in New York City part-time and lived in DC for a lower cost of living, the commute with normal traffic would be about the same as or less than what I was doing now.

Maybe because of my nomadic, living-out-of-my-car, lifestyle, I had misjudged the substantial size of this kind of mileage. After all, I was the only one who seemed unphased by the feat of my weekly trek. I quickly consoled myself, realizing that this drive wouldn't be worthwhile just to kill time at any old bootleg cheese operation. Sure it beats sitting around in the afternoon watching Leprechaun: Back 2 the Hood on cable television and feeling IQ points quietly slip away. But more importantly, the drive is reasonable for the value I get in exchange: a sense of worth in a job I love and in a field I'm proud to make my life. I got lucky once again and found a wonderful cheesemaker to work with.

My first day at Brazos Valley Cheese was a couple weeks ago. Somehow my mere six months of experience gave them the impression that I knew what I was doing. Right from the start Rebeccah, the head cheesemaker, put me in charge of my own mini batch of brie. She showed me where to find equipment and cultures and how to heat the vat. Other than periodically answering my questions about the recipe and where to find things, I was set loose on my own.

Brie is a cheese I had never made before. The cheese room has a large vat and a small vat. My batch was in the small vat, so the potential for disaster would only affect 50 gallons of milk -- only mildly reassuring. The milk is brought in from an outside source every morning by others, so I don't bother with the mechanics of pumping the milk. Plus, there's always extra muscle to help with cutting and hooping. So honestly, supervising my own batch does not make me any kind of cheese badass. Most everything is spelled out in their recipe. I simply watch the temperature, add the correct amount of cultures and rennet per the recipe, periodically check the pH and stir. After hooping, I watch the time for flipping, flip, and with this particular batch of brie, sprinkle vegetable ash in the center. If I hadn't figured out these basics by this point, I would make a far worse cheesemaker than I was lawyer. And that is a dismal thought. Yet, having someone set me loose on their product and so quickly trust my abilities, basic as they might be, made me feel like I had actually reached the point of being worthy of the job title, cheesemaker.

I was also encouraged to chime in with any suggestions I might have on methods and techniques based on my experience. This request came on the heels of a friend from cheese school calling me to look for advice on washing a washed-rind cheese he was developing. What alternative universe was I in? When the hell did I go from someone who just liked melting piles of cheese on everything I ate to being a source for cheesemaking advice?! This feels different. I was hesitant to adjust someone's long-standing methods by introducing my own style of, say, hand-salting or hooping. But my confidence received a boost knowing that at least a couple things I mentioned were well-received and potentially helpful...or else they were just being really nice to me. Either way, win for my ego!

Despite having developed some knowledge about the craft, there are still techniques and cheeses I've never experienced. My newest cheese job is also providing me with learning opportunities, such as wrapping my first wheel of cloth-bound cheddar. Aging the wheel in cloth, as opposed to letting a natural rind develop in the open-air, provides a different flavor profile in cheddar. To bind the wheels they are wrapped in several pieces of cotton muslin, which are adhered to the wheel with vegetable shortening.  Maybe I just really like dumping my hands in a tub of Crisco, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I've never worked with brie or mozzarella before, so I have volumes to learn there. I'm also continually learning more about the science of the cheesemaking process from Rebeccah and her crew: pH levels, aging temperatures, what have you.

Let's not forget, I'm a fatty, and I couldn't be more pleased that they treat me to lunch at their community's cafe. I mentioned before that the cheesemakers are a self-sustaining homesteading community, which opens itself and its crafts to the public for visits, classes and purchase. Everything at the cafe is freshly made using their own beef, veggies, and homemade bread. Best food in Waco!!...for what that's worth to any of you.

In the Meantime: In Search of Something Cheesy

No cheese, but plenty of natural beauty

During the month or two after my Black Sheep internship and the end of my roadtrip, I slowly began to have a meltdown -- not of the delicious melty cheese variety, but more of the metaphysical "what am I supposed to do with my life now" variety. Cheese and I had physically, not emotionally, grown apart while in Del Rio, which left me with a lot of searching on my hands. I could feast on all the Queso Fresco I wanted, or take it back to old school college days with Wal-Mart brand cheddar and Easy Cheese galore. That was about it, at least until I drove the 2.5 hours to the nearest cheese counter. Potential cheese employment would require just as much searching and driving. I was in some sort of cheese-free purgatory, with great experiences behind me and hopeful optimism for the future. But until that future arrived, I'd have to figure out how to gain more knowledge while in Del Rio for the next year or so.

I started emailing cheesemakers and cheese stores in (relatively) nearby and bigger Texas cities. The response rate was low. Most that did respond didn't have any open positions. The response from one cheesemaker in Waco was promising. I soon thereafter arranged a follow-up visit with them on my way up north to visit friends and family in the Midwest. On the same trip, I arranged to visit a cheesemonger in Dallas who didn't have any open positions on staff but was kind enough to speak with me anyway. Like I've always said, unlike legal "networking," cheese "networking" is actually enjoyable and not at all humiliating. On the way, I also made a point to pop into Whole Foods, Central Markets, and cheese stores in Dallas and Austin with a more personal employment inquiry.

My first stop was Brazos Valley Cheese (BVC) in Waco. I had heard of a few of their cheeses through the ACS awards, where they placed in a couple categories. I had never tried their cheese. Actually, I had never tried any Texas cheesemakers' cheeses. The BVC cheesemakers are part of a larger self-sustaining craft community, which includes services such as a blacksmith, pottery studio, grist mill, and cafe. They offer classes to the public in these and many other skilled trades. I got the grand tour and sampled several of their delicious freshly-made food stuffs...including handmade ice cream, which remains the fastest way to win me over. Still, when I described the opportunity to others, and the words "Waco, Texas" and "self-sustaining agrarian religious community" were placed in combination, it elicited some understandably curious reactions and half-joking queries regarding stereotypical media images. I know what you're thinking, but there is no such thing as a cheese cult. Though I could see myself starting one. Everyone was very kind and I enjoyed the cheese I tasted. I was surprised to hear that nobody had ever asked to come on staff and help out with cheesemaking. I actually discovered in my searching process that most Texas cheesemakers didn't have a hiring or internship program. The cheese scene was growing but relatively new here, and cheesemakers seemed used to doing it on their own. BVC, however, seemed receptive to my help. A part-time opportunity that would allow me to go back and forth from Del Rio was available to me if I could manage the driving. More on that soon.

I checked in with larger chains that have full cheese counters like Whole Foods to no avail. If it wasn't posted on their online job bank, it didn't exist. Cheese stores, likewise, were fully staffed. Nevertheless, I enjoyed scoping out the cheese store scene here. If Cheesy Street were to open in Texas in one of many potential business models I have schemed up, I started to get an idea of what would work and where. First, direct cheese retail competition with the bigger natural foods chain stores like Whole Foods and Central Market seems rough here. Their cheese counters are baller. The natural food stores with which I'm familiar never had cheese counters that could be their own free-standing cheese store like the ones here.  As for free-standing cheese stores, Antonelli's in Austin and Scardello's in Dallas are amazing. Both had a great selection and friendly, helpful cheesemongers. They have now been added to my list of cheese store heroes. In any city where my cheese heroes exist, I would have a hard time opening up anything unless we could all be friends. A non-competitive spirit might be my downfall in business.

Mozzarella Company in Dallas is probably the most well-known and highly regarded cheesemaker in Texas. They have many non-mozzarella style cheeses, but the mozzarella itself is amazing. It's so rich and creamy that I've never felt so guilty eating mozzarella. I decided to check out their store to discover it's not really a store at all. It's just a small room with a cooler full of cheese and a viewing area of their production room. Making cheese there seemed just as awesome as selling their cheese. Unfortunately, staff turnover is almost nonexistent. I was told most of their cheesemakers had been there for decades.

While it seemed next to impossible to get anyone in this state to let me help make or sell cheese, I had a wonderful time making the rounds and starting to re-establish my cheese knowledge.

There was only one major fail: a cheese store in Dallas that shall remain nameless. I'll just say it was in an area of town that upon driving into, I knew before even seeing the shop that it would not be the right fit for me. The store itself was across the way from a Jimmy Choo store and down the street from SMU (where rich kids keep it classy). My car was the most busted looking thing in a two mile radius. I suspected the clientele would fill me with throat-punching frustration on a daily basis.  Let's be real, I'm not gonna hate on money. Sure my dirty, road warrior CR-V could eat your stupid Lexus SUV for dinner. But some disposable income is necessary to buy artisanal cheese and for a cheese store to survive. And, sure, I'd like to be able to afford a nice house someday too. Yet, the complete sterility of the place was discomforting. Upon walking into the store, I was not greeted with the same warmth as I get in most other great cheese stores. The display and selection was depressing. It was obvious that shopping for a $400 shirt was the main goal of the retail area. Cheese was just an afterthought. Anything European seemed fancy enough for this place to survive with its customers I suppose. I entered, not wanting to judge a book by its cover, but left even more disappointed than I had expected. It was the type of store that makes artisanal cheese experimentation seem like a useless and snobbish exercise to cheese lovers and cheese novices alike. Promptly casting aside all pretensions, I used the application to pick a feather, which must have drifted off some roadkill on my long journey, out of my outcast-car's grill. The diseased-looking scrap and application thereafter went in the trash.

It became quickly apparent that I would have to find a way to self-educate while in Del Rio and make multi-hour trips to buy cheese or make cheese commercially. I'm okay making some adjustments to get things done. And, it turns out, I'm starting to really like long-distance driving (cheese trucking business here I come). In the meantime, I just received some home cheesemaking supplies in the mail! Here's to hoping that in search of something cheesy I don't make all our furniture smell like spoiled milk....