Cheese in Unexpected Places

It's the end of March. The Final Four is this weekend. I'm a ride or die Jayhawks basketball fan, and I don't have a KU-themed homemade mozzarella pizza to talk about this year. So bear with me as I explain how basketball made me think about cheese during March Madness 2012.

Nobody, not even die-hard KU fans, expected my school, given its roster shortcomings, to make such a deep run in the tournament. Yet, even when things got sloppy, this team maintained composure and proved that big things can happen when you least expect them, as long as you believe in yourself. Final Four bound and making every KU fan more proud than any year I can recall in my two decades of rock chalking.

All this underdog/exceeding expectation talk got me thinking of my trip in February to the most unlikely of homes for cheese. How does a cheese business survive anywhere but big cities and foodie havens like New York? Is it destined to fail at some point, a slave to its market shortcomings? Fade to El Paso, Texas.

Licon Dairy in San Elizario: A surprise detour during a 24-hour trip I assumed would be occupied solely by tacos and steak. I hadn't really thought about the trip to Licon as anything but a fun excursion, until now. With the likelihood of finding myself in a similarly small market becoming more real as I prepare to leave New York, I have Licon to thank for renewing my confidence.

Did I tell you they had a petting zoo?!
Free to the public and school groups.

For 50 years -- fifty freaking years--, this family-run business has been providing high-quality, fresh Asadero (Mexican-style mozzarella or string cheese) to the local community. The offerings at the cheese counter are modest but utilitarian -- Asadero, flavored Asadero, tortilla chips, chicharrones, cream cheese, and whey. There's an oddly placed Payment Agency in the back, so only a fool would expect a day-laborer to buy a wheel of Camembert and fig preserves instead of wiring money to his family. Asadero and whey are often necessary ingredients in local cooking. Tortilla chips and chicharrones? The working class' cheese pairing.

Instead of getting fancy, Licon provides the essentials and does so well. For that reason, this dairy has survived in the most depressed of neighborhoods on the outskirts of a largely middle-class city. The family makes the cheese by hand, doing what they love for the last half century. It is damn good cheese at that (and fantastic sustenance during our ridiculously difficult hike the next day). Simple, but with the intangible quality completely absent from cheeses made without love.

I would never have thought to look for a dairy or cheese counter to visit in El Paso. How could that possibly survive? In El Paso?! I heard the same thing a few years ago. How could you leave a proper day-job after just one year, with so little to invest and so many companies to compete against?  Anything can survive with a little ingenuity, talent, street smarts, self-awareness, confidence, and love. El Paso and basketball taught me this.

Barely Legal: Is it Worth the Risk?

There are a lot of directions in which this post could go...

Raw milk regulations, import taxes and tariffs, politics, the FDA, the USDA, affinage. Obviously these were all buzzword that came to mind when you saw this post, right? ...Riiight?

Well, my sleazy and chaste-minded friends, in case you didn't know, if an unpasteurized cheese has not had at least 60-days to age, it is off limits. Too young. 

The 60-day rule applies to both domestically made and imported cheeses. The given rationale being something something bacteria blah blah danger something something I'm an expert with no practical background in dairy science and/or a lobbyist with competing interests in the dairy industry blah blah yay nay blah blah dumb bill containing dumber regulation passed. (A nutshell of a potential direction this post will not be going.). 

Alas, the rule means many cheeses that the Old World has traditionally made, and made exceptionally well for centuries, as raw milk cheeses are next to impossible to find here in their authentic and historically-delicious form. These are soft, young, raw cheese luminaries that cheesemasters in Europe will age for a few weeks at most until the cheese reaches its full-flavored gooey prime. Brie, for instance, has a short life in the world of affinage. The place I worked in Waco made a rare and delightful raw milk brie. An uncommon treat that they had to carefully control by aging in temperatures that are far below normal for several weeks in order to slow down the aging process, allowing the cheese enough time to reach 60 days and not become a foul rock-hard disc of milk mess. 

So it's not impossible to find a raw milk version of these cheeses here, but it's very difficult and often prohibitively so. It's no joke to get scrutinized by a federal health inspector for making a "taboo" cheese, nor is it a slap on the wrist to get flagged by the FDA for importing a cheese that's too close to the 60-day limit.  (A restaurateur is allowed to make cheese out of his wife's breast milk and that's not taboo but apparently raw milk Reblechon is.). I've heard stories about inspectors giving importers the stink eye just because the label on a soft cheese coming off the ship says raw (au lait cru in French). Over 60 days? Yes. But just barely legal. 

But it does get here sometimes. Is it all worth the risk in making or importing dangerously young versions of raw milk cheeses? 

Cheese connoisseurs will complain about the difficulty in finding a true Camembert, for example, or the tasteless, sub-par pasteurized counterparts Europe is forced to send over (I imagine the continent collectively guffawing over all the superior cheese they get to keep for themselves). Their complaints are justified. To a degree. 

I work in a city that's crazy about cheese; therefore, it's not hard to find the bolder cheese proprietors willing to weazle and claw their way to a young imported cheese. The cheeses I've discovered in the last few months have opened up a new world of deliciously naughty young cheeses.  Pecorino Gregoriano, an extremely young and soft pecorino from the Abruzzo region of Italy, rocked my cheese paradigm. Imagine wrapping all the delicious yeasty, sweet profiles of a bread and carb binge into a compact (and totally carb-free!), fudgy cheese bite. I'd never tasted a cheese profile like that before, and couldn't begin to figure out how you could even get sheep's milk to acquire that taste. It was young, raw and legal...but dangerously so.  

So yeah, when even the average cheese-joe goes to his local grocery store in a lukewarm cheese city to find a bunch of pasteurized Old World knock offs, it does feel a little generic and underwhelming after knowing that the real deal is out there somewhere. It's true that most of those mass produced imports are boring, bland and just lame as hell. So is it worth the risk to go raw and young? Definitely. If you do it right. Keep a clean shop if you're making the stuff (inspectors don't like meth-lab bathtub style raw milk cheese cooks), and source your imports as closely to reputable European farms and producers as possible if you're selling the stuff (you can't complain about "business" trips to Europe to eat cheese). 

But we shouldn't rule out the beauty of pasteurized cheese entirely. Don't let any cheese snob, French, New Yorker, Houstonian, or otherwise, tell you that there is no such thing as a good pasteurized cheese. Because I'm here to tell you there most definitely is! Grocery store brie is disgusting, yes. Pasteurization and production can be done carefully and gently, however, such that you're not totally destroying the flavor profile of the milk and forthcoming cheese. Several of my new favorite cheeses that I've discovered at the shop are in fact pasteurized, as are many domestic cheeses I've enjoyed in the past. Tome Chabrin a tart and sweet goat's milk wheel from France actually tastes like figs, another flavor profile I hadn't experienced. Cheesemakers can control the quality and flavor of pasteurized cheese through effective use of starter cultures.

We all want a little danger in our lives. So if that means I'll have to come back to New York several times a year to find mine in raw, young, spoiled-milk, then so be it. Otherwise, wherever I end up, I'll enjoy the worthwhile pasteurized options available to me via more risk-averse cheese curators. I'm sure I can find something delicious. 

Earning My Cheese Cred

So you know that formula in movies, particularly sports movies, when the weak kid who the audience is really rooting for makes some awesome play to win the respect of the team and fans? "Nice work, kid," his teammates might casually say while giving him a playful head rub. The audience wipes away a single tear.

Well that happened to me in real life on Valentine's Day. Except nobody called me kid, nor did they rub my head. I was the only one crying, on the inside at least. Oh, and I wasn't in a movie or playing a sport. I was selling cheese.

Oh hello, my nemesis.

I am the weakest link in the machine-like cog that is the new cheese shop where I work. I am the new kid amongst knowledgeable cheese mongers who know the most delicate flavor profiles of cheeses from every which region of Europe and can cut through GIANT 40-lb wheels of rock-hard 2-year-old Gouda like it was butter. Until February 14, I had eased into my new job by working mostly weekdays and only one moderately busy, but very well-staffed, weekend day.

The rest of my two week introduction involved slowly getting to know the inventory of cheese and methodically and repeatedly wrapping cheese. I had figured out the characteristics of maybe 1/4 of the almost 200 cheeses. The fine art of wrapping the cheeses was a bit more elusive. The minutes accumulated as I fumbled to find the exact right way to make the plastic wrap practically invisible and glass-like on the surface of every oddly shaped piece. I would often re-wrap the same piece five times until I could get rid of the dreaded air pockets that can cause cheese to deteriorate. This was all good and fine on a slow day. On a busy day, our counter space is valuable. It's a tight squeeze behind the counter and quickly wrapping cheeses to go back in the case is the only way to service a hoard of hungry cheese freaks.

I'll admit my first few days, I felt like an idiot. It became immediately obvious how little I had learned about the vast world of retail cheese in the year-plus I had been working in this field. Sure, maybe I had a leg up on the average new trainee, but I felt like a lowly noob, continually asking my colleagues what cheeses to direct customers towards. Slowly I began to feel a little more comfortable with the case (or could at least guess based on the look of a cheese) and figuring out what the customer needed. I was getting better at wrapping cheeses for the case if I didn't have anyone anxiously waiting for my help. Plus, when nobody was watching I could hack off a workable piece of extra aged gouda from a giant wheel.

So when I showed up for work that Tuesday, I expected another slow easy transition into the expert cheese world. I was SOOO wrong. We were staffed for a regular weekday, and nobody saw the retail slam that was about to hit our doors. From 4pm until we closed at 9pm, nobody had a chance to eat or breathe. There was a lull for three minutes exactly, at which point I shoved a Fiber One bar down my throat. The line never ended. People wanted meats and cheeses and pairing suggestions for their loved ones and the crowded store and frantic cheesemongers were not deterring them. It didn't stop. It's 8:30pm! Shouldn't you be on your date already?!

And there I was, the lone new kid working with three dudes who REALLY know their cheese, their knife skills, and how to wrap and restock quickly to keep our cramped quarters clean. Then it happened. A customer points behind me to the giant bright orange wheel of rock hard gouda. I mentally crossed my fingers as I followed the trajectory of their gaze, hoping they were pointing to something else -- the baguettes maybe? Those are easy. Wrong.

In the middle of a crowded store, standing on a milk crate for leverage, I had to steady a giant knife through a nearly impenetrable wax rind because some fool only wanted a quarter pound of this giant wheel. It's not easy for these weak hands to steady a shaky blade and cut a razor thin slice off this behemoth. But everyone else handles the task with such apparent ease, and I'm going to have figure it out sooner or later.  It was ugly, but I did it without the luxury of assistance or moral support because everyone else was swamped. I wrapped up the giant wheel, restocked, cleaned some knives, and worked through the rest of the customers, person-by-person, keeping pace with my colleagues in trying to get everyone in and out quickly. Eventually, the store cleared out and most of the customers left seemingly happy.

At the end of the night, my co-workers applauded my work. I'm sure when the line started to back up on our understaffed cheese counter they were prepared for a worst case scenario of the new kid bringing the store to a crippling halt through nervousness and ineptitude. Granted, I did have some of that, but at least I managed to avert disaster instead of creating it. That was the day that I finally felt like I'd at least be okay at this.

There are still days that I come home feeling like a loser, brooding about that piece of cheese that fell apart because of one errant knife move or the piece that took me ten minutes to wrap. It will take me a while until I reach their level.  But at least the team can count on me in a moment of crisis.

Grilled Cheese: The Great Neutralizer of Cheese Warfare

Nobody likes a cheese snob. Nobody likes a food snob of any kind really, but a cheese snob might be the most heinous. Unlike, say, wine or a perfectly cooked scallop, cheese is a link to our childhood; the familiar comfort food without class boundaries. To engage in cheese snobbery is an affront to everyone's warm nostalgic cocoon of plebeian culinary memories. It is to say our shared history of sandwich slice American Muenster is garbage because not everyone knows that real Munster cheese is German, soft, virtually unsliceable, and stinky. It is to say your childhood joy for baseball park nachos is inferior to my piece of AOC-protected village-made raw milk Camembert. And that's just mean.

The Cuban Grilled Cheese with plantains

Expanding cheese knowledge and eating right is important, but not at the cost of being a butthead. No cheese food has taught me this lesson more explicitly than the Grilled Cheese. 

I've had my share of grilled cheese experimentation, and the one thing I love about this cheese vehicle is its versatility in conveying each individual's flavor preferences, be they lofty or pedestrian. There are a few universal cross-cultural truths to a good grilled cheese. 

1) The correct skillet or grill heat to achieve a crisp, golden brown (but not burnt) bread and crust

2) Appropriately melted and gooey cheese 

3) Appropriate ingredient ratios to avoid the dreaded sogginess

Beyond that, there are no cheese grilling laws. 

I love that grilled cheese can be a vehicle for almost any culture's street food flavors. Recently, I had a Cuban grilled cheese with Cheddar, Swiss and fried plantains. Similarly, I imagine a Haloumi and eggplant grilled cheese would be delicious if the appropriate limits to ingredient heft are maintained. The list is endless--even for cultures that don't have a cheese tradition. Throw some teriyaki chicken between some melty cheese slices before convincing yourself it's not good without trying it first. 

Sure, there are plenty of delicious ways to snob-up a grilled cheese. Pardon me lad, this poached pear on my grilled brie sandwich is far too crisp. Righto, but I said I did want onion confit on my grilled gruyere. By jove, there's no truffle oil on this?! (I don't know why my grilled cheese snobs sound British in my head.). Point being, a fancy pretentious grilled cheese with the right balance is also delicious...as long as you're not a jerk about it. 

I love the balance of salty and sweet, so if left to my own devices I add some homemade honey butter to the grill side of my bread, which is stuffed to the brim with sharp cheddar. Sometimes jam is also a welcome addition to the interior ingredients. 

Creativity is encouraged. At a late-night grilled cheese parlor in West Texas, I was introduced to an ingredient that has found a home in my grilled cheese options: the Ruffles potato chip. Hello extra crunch. Cheese it up to the maximum and throw some Cheetos in there. Do it in moderation and on occasion only, lest the crunch also finds a home in your arteries. 

My one pitfall into snobbery arises with American Cheese. American Cheese Singles freak me out, even though I've hypocritically avowed to (in moderation) graciously partake of your Superbowl Velveeta and Rotel or take a hit of your Easy Cheese on a Ritz Cracker for the sake of politeness and/or nostalgia. The Grilled Cheese, however, works its humbling powers on me. Though I prefer a sharp high-quality yellow cheddar to a Kraft Single, I'll appreciate the ooze-to-melty-stretch beauty of a good American Grilled Cheese. I'll probably even class it up by shoving some potato chips in there. 

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. 

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.