With this Cheese, I Thee Wed

After a self-imposed hiatus from Cheesy Street to take care of a little business, namely getting married, I'm back. This serves as a brief but much needed reminder -- mostly for myself -- that the cheese dream is alive and well.

This isn't a wedding blog so I'll keep the recap brief: the wedding weekend was more fun than I could have hoped; it was an unforgettable way to begin a life with my biggest fan who has encouraged me through pounds of cheese dreams; and it made me wish I could round up all the beautiful people we have been given in our lives and force them to live closer to me. Oh and we had a cheese sculpture.

Actually we served a lot of cheese. Thanks to the three farms where I started off making cheese, I was able to curate a legit cheese plate. None of my cheese heroes were able to make it to the big day, but they were more than represented in spirit with the cheeses they sent me. It warmed my guests' bellies and it warmed my heart to know that I'd worked with such amazing, supportive people. There was a soft, bloomy offering with the raw milk brie and fig leaf-wrapped Eden from Brazos Valley Cheese. We had the firm, nutty sheep's milk Queso de Oveja from Black Sheep Creamery. And for the adventurous guests there was the soft, pungent Hooligan from Cato Corner. Along with the cheeses I threw out some staple accompaniments like mustard, fig jam, dried pears, and candied nuts.

There was also the safe option of mild Wisconsin cheddar cubes, which was no less awe-inspiring because it came from a cheese sculpture representing our KS+TX theme by depicting Tad's alma mater with a Texas Longhorn mascot marrying my beloved KU Jayhawk mascot (in a more feminine rendition). It was, in a word, badass. The sculpture was carved and shipped by the sweet and talented, Sarah Kaufmann, who is currently a Guinness World Record holder as sculptor of the largest cheese carving ever. Plus, we're basically best friends forever now. She doesn't know it yet.

My homies at Bedford Cheese Shop were also represented with the cheese wall I made with cheese label art I collected while I was there. It might attract its fair share of flies, but this thing is getting hung up on proud display when we get a new house.

There was almost no cheese leftover at the end of the night. Guests of varying cheese experience and comfort levels devoured it all. Seeing how much everyone enjoyed and talked about the cheese drove home the point that you can really get crazy with the cheeses you cater to big events. It doesn't have to be boring to please everyone. If it's a diverse group of people, a diverse array of cheeses will have something for everyone.

Now, I'm back in the heart of West Texas, trying to set up my own cheese world. First my plan involves contacting goat cheese makers and goat breeders in the area, which I've already started doing (updates on that shortly). Then...we'll see. For now, it's good to be back!

From One Empire to My Own: So Begins A Cheese Career

A little over three weeks ago I had an apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. A little over four weeks ago, I had a job in an amazing, well-respected cheese shop in NYC, learning from supremely knowledgeable cheesemongers. Today, I've put almost 2,000 miles on the road as I sit in a small border town looking for a house in city limits that will let me keep a would-be pet goat in the backyard.

Soon, you will be mine. 

Drastic changes are no stranger to me, but this time it's a little scarier. I'm back in Del Rio, starting the long arduous process of constructing a career for myself where one doesn't exist. As much as I loved making cheese in Waco the last time I was here, the 10-hour commute is off the table now. Have you seen the price of gas?! Have you seen the miles I've put on my 14-year-old Honda in the last two years?!

I'm excited that we're here on a protracted-temporary basis for a very good reason (the soon-to-be husband landed his dream job here for the next 3 years, give or take a few months). But it also means I officially begin choosing paths that carry real consequence. Grown-up financial investments and long-term plans no longer take a back seat to temporary gigs that allow me to educate myself about the industry and the product. I've made cheese for a year and mongered cheese for a year. I will always be learning, but my training is officially over. I'm on my own now.

I discovered a lot in New York that will help guide me as I move forward in earnest. One, the cheese business is not pure. The first job I had in New York, which shall remain nameless (but is easily discovered by perusing earlier posts), was awful. It was the law firm of cheese. Nay, it was worse. I respect law firms for what they are -- a necessary cog in the corporate marketplace, where I just didn't happen to fit in. At least they own up to what they are and compensate you accordingly. An evil, mismanaged cheese shop is like a PT Cruiser -- a mutant monstrosity with no business existing and ruining a perfectly fine and joy-inducing industry.

From the cheese empire that almost ruined my time in the Empire State, I learned how NOT to run a shop. I'm thankful for that. And despite dreading every work-day within the first two months there, I did learn how to be a good manager and met some life-long friends in my co-workers. I'm also thankful that it led me to New York, which I loved in its own right, and where I moved on to a magical place in Brooklyn known as the Bedford Cheese Shop. It was there I learned to really be a cheesemonger. I was introduced to hundreds of imported and domestic cheeses and learned to navigate through them all in order to satisfy customers' often passive and indecisive desires. I met some amazing cheesemongers, who taught me so much about good cheese, good food, and good times. Plus, I got pretty confident at cutting pieces off giant wheels with just a knife and brute force.

I really miss Bedford and my co-workers from both shops. I've lived in alot of places, but I've never been immediately homesick for anywhere other than my actual home in Kansas...until now. Even the good mongering experiences taught me something unexpected about my end-goal of owning a cheese business:  Unless it's really small, I don't think I want to run a true cheese shop. In the end, owning and running a storefront leaves little time to actually work with customers and the cheese. Most of your time is spent sitting in a back room on the computer or phone, which is exactly the reason I ran away from the professional world.

I would miss working with my hands and on my feet. Even behind the counter, I kind of missed getting my hands in the vat and working on the farm. Plus, as much as meeting a great customers is rewarding, the horrible ones can cancel out the day. Retail, much like law, will drive you to the bottle.

The last year re-calibrated my desires back to pursuits like cheese production and cheese education, where I can sell in small doses at farmers markets, work directly with the product, and meet interested consumers. Del Rio still has the opportunity to be a fun adventure and a blank slate of opportunities, as it was during my last stint here. This time I just I have to construct that opportunity on my own and stick with it. So begins the adventure: getting married, getting a house, getting a goat, and getting the balls to start on a career path that will cause me to loose money for years before I can make any.

Cheesemonger Hunger Games

Last month, I witnessed the WWE smackdown of the cheesemonger world. You had staged attire...adrenaline-fueled battling...rowdy yelling...drunks. Substitute a rink with a cold-storage warehouse in Queens, elbow drops with wrapping contests, and hot dogs with a Raclette machine. Cheese elite from everywhere gathered to let loose for a little "friendly" competition. Behold the 3rd Annual Cheesemonger Invitational. 

For the last three years, cheesefolk have gathered in New York every summer for what some of us call the cheesemonger Hunger Games. Nobody dies, but everyone takes it VERY seriously...and knives are involved. Each cheesemonger showcases their skills in various levels of competition: blind taste-test cheese identification, written exam, quarter-pound cutting skills, wrapping skills, marketing/selling skills, and cheese plate pairings. 

The crowd of cheesemongers, makers and enthusiasts get to really nerd out, wildly cheering for a cheesemonger's consecutive perfect quarter-pound cuts as if a hologram of Tupac just appeared onstage. Except at the end of the day nobody understands how cool that was except for us. It's the little things in cheese. 

The eventual victor hailed from Cowgirl Creamery in my old hood of Washington, D.C. The multi-hour competition concluded, and a dairy-fueled dance party ensued. 

It was an opportunity to hang out with old cheese friends (the awesome Cato Corner crew and Bedford Cheese Shop homies) and make new cheese friends (who will probably never remember my name after their last trip to the open bar). As the excitement for cheese grows in this country, so do the creative, celebratory events that allow us to come together and really enjoy each other and what we do. Next year, though, I'd like to see more headbutts and clotheslining. 

Today's Forecast: Cheese Degrees Fahrenheit

During the hottest summer days, retailers generally see a significant decline in customer traffic and cheese consumption. At the shop, even the weekends became a manageable trickle of customers when warmer weather arrived. Same goes for farmers markets. Though warmer spring weather brings more products, vendors and traffic, the crowd begins to thin again as the summer mercury inches beyond the temperature sweet spot.

Once a threshold is breached, people just don't seem to want to rub their swollen paws and sweaty face all up in a slimy piece of cheese. To make matters worse, everything smells more ripe in the summer -- public restrooms, garbage cans, sidewalk pee. Odorous cheese nubs wreaking of wet earth or dirty sock don't strike a chord when hunger strikes.

Temperature, however, will never beat up on my allegiance to dairy. Until the day that I die, I'll eat ice cream when it's 10-degrees outside and cheese when it's 100. Yet, even I have to modify slightly when it gets too hot. If you listen to your biological need for cheese...and to me...you'll find there is a way for all cheese lovers and friends to enjoy cheese on a hot day.

In the warmer months, I tend to gravitate towards light cheeses. Fresh cheeses like chevre or burrata are a popular option for the summer. But cheeses with a little age on them can be refreshing as well. St. Maure, for instance, can have a little flavorful bloomy-mold-funk that is partnered with a mild citric tartness reminiscent of summer flavors. Even though the heat can easily turn soft cheese into a puddle, either young bloomy cheeses or un-aged fresh cheeses with higher moisture levels will leave less of an astringent saltiness on the palate. Because who wants the sensation of licking a salty armpit when it feels like you put your face into one as soon as you walk out the door? 

One of my favorite refreshing cheese treats for the summer is mixing fresh berries with fresh cheese. A bowl-full of whole-milk ricotta with honey and berries is a standard favorite. But I can do you one better with Barilotto + berries and honey. Barilotto is a young, pressed, buffalo milk ricotta made from the re-heating of the whey remaining after a buffalo mozzarella make. It's brought to us dairy nerds of America by Casa Madaio in Italy, who give us some of the best Italian cheeses you will find stateside. You should seek out their cheese whenever possible. 

Barilotto is light, smooth, moist, slightly sweet and spongy. It's whey-based so it doesn't bring the same heavy creaminess as whole-milk ricotta; and it's buffalo's milk which is naturally lactose-free and sweeter. When you douse it in raw honey and strawberries, you've basically got a deconstructed (somewhat healthier) cheesecake having a party on your tongue. And, trust me, there ain't no party like a cheesecake party...

Novelists:Cheese::Children:Scissors

Six months ago I made a cheese-related purchase that has haunted me. Finding myself alone in New York at Christmas, I treated myself to a fancy dinner and a new book. The book, part of a trilogy, was so hilariously titled and so amusingly blurbed on Amazon (you read it here first; blurb can become a verb) that I was ready to flaunt its sarcastic, nonsensical, tongue-in-cheek humor like a 2005 hipster wearing a Gettin Lucky in Kentucky t-shirt.

Sitting before the first course of my holiday prix fixe, I proudly opened page one of....ahem...The Long Quiche Goodbye, the first book in The Cheese Shop Mystery series (Lost and Fondue and Clobbered by Camembert being the other two). I was promised a modern-day Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery set in a small-town cheese shop, with the odd bonus of recipes in the back. What I got was an embarrassment that I forced myself to read a few pages at a time on the subway, doing my best to completely shield the front cover from onlookers with my hand and GIANT bookmark. 

I wasn't expecting Dickens but I had high hopes for a bit of sarcastic cheese humor peppering a moderately captivating mystery story. Six months later, I would sooner eat waxed Gouda rinds than read the next two books in the series. 

By the book's third sentence, the main character/first-person narrator was name-dropping a Humboldt Fog-Chardonnay pairing like it was a revelation. What the hell kind of lead is that? Would Agatha Christie use the first page to tell me what biscuits and finger sandwiches she likes best with her tea?! As a sidenote, if you work in cheese, that writer has just lost all credibility by trying to pull you in with that lame as hell nugget of information. But even the average Joe pleasure reader demands a little more literary skill in subtly finessing a quirky theme.  

It's set in a cheese shop. That's cute. The main character is in love with a local cheesemaker. That's believable. Really, that's pretty much all you need. But the book just ....goes....on.... with stilted, awkward (and sometimes obscure) cheese references, pairing suggestions, and flavor descriptions. If cheese must become a bigger player in literature, there must be some way of using the craft or vocation as a silent backdrop character like what authors do with a city or home. With this book, however, I'm bombarded with already awkward flirtations between the love interests interrupted with talk of Tomme Crayeuse paninis.

In the ultimate "heated" confrontation with the killer we get these gems of internal conflict in the protagonist's head: 

"Hurling something was out of the question. I stunk at softball, hence the concussion I suffered in high school.  I would miss my mark. Besides, getting whacked by china teacups probably wouldn't make [killer's name] drop the knife." 

"I didn't say what I was thinking out loud. As Tyanne would say, I hadn't fallen off a turnip truck." 

I wish you hadn't said the last 290 pages of what you were thinking out loud on all of this wasted paper! The only thing dumber than any of this is me for continuing to read. But when I spend money on something, I'm like Homer Simpson with a sandwich. I refuse to waste it, even if it's so bad that it gives me nightmares and makes me throw up and hallucinate. 

By the end, I was at least hoping for one of those surprising (but not really surprising anymore because it happens all the time now) second-ending twists utilized in scary movies.  But why, WHY, would I not just have expected the last sentence to be "...flashing on something Rebecca had said. Perhaps danger was not only becoming her middle name but mine, as well." 

I think I might have used a similar ending in a 5th grade essay about tornadoes. It was a pretty good essay, for a 5th grader.

In Search of Cheese in a Can: An Allegory

Not since the first time I had to tackle cutting from a 60-pound wheel of gouda during a customer rush had I experienced such an out-of-body feeling as I did last week. There was only one other customer in the store. A second walks in the door and immediately makes eye-contact with me. She eagerly begins to ask her question in an unidentifiable European accent before she even reaches the counter. "My friend. My friend, she is from Germany. She wants me to find a cheese for her. I don't know. It is in a can? A tall metal can."

Wait? What? Is this really happening? Is this a joke? You don't look like a punk ass Williamsburg kid trying to mess with me.

After expressing my initial and perhaps awkwardly loud disbelief at the question, she sheepishly responds with, "You go shshwwooosh with it. On a cracker." Shoulder shrug as she ends her query, straight-faced and completely earnest, making the very familiar aerosol sound effect and pantomiming the shshwoooshhh can-squirt gesture.

You're being serious? You are so adorably intrigued and unaware that you came into a high-end big-city cheese shop to ask for Easy Cheese to send back to your German friend? Can I get the security camera footage of this?

I'm not ashamed to say I sent her to the grocery store around the corner and directly to the "aisle with the crackers...usually on the top shelf...you can ask someone; they'll know there."

I didn't laugh her out of the store or make fun of her food quest after she left. Rather, I made fun of myself for my intimate knowledge of the exact aisle where one can find said shshwooosh cheese in a can. There are a lot of retail pet peeves I have after a year behind the counter, some arbitrary some rational. That story, though, just makes me happy.

In fact, my biggest annoyance follows from customers with the exact opposite attitude. The ones who come in, usually from out of town, and put on airs about their love of cheese and how horrible it is where they live. Why can't they just live in a magical place like this with access to the finer things in life, they bemoan dramatically.

Before any of you from Peoria, Albuquerque, Rapid City, Jackson, San Antonio, Pensacola or any other non-descript mini metropolis decide to come into a store and trash talk your city, think about how that reflects upon you and all of your friends back home. That is if you have any friends after the way you just dumped on their motherland.

For one, you've made at least a handful of eavesdropping urbanites more firmly convinced of the hillbilly nature of anything outside of the northern I-95 corridor; and that affects how they treat you no matter how hard you try to act like you're the refined one in your circle. Secondly, that affects how they view your home -- where you come from. Even if you've only lived in Peoria for 5 months, it's your hood now. And that's no way to rep your hood, fool.

Also, you don't look any more cosmopolitan or more like one of the hipster big city kids by talking about how it's impossible to educate yourself about good food where you're from. That's a damn dirty lie, in fact. You just sound like a lazy idiot. You can educate yourself no matter where you are. The first big step is called a book, or the internet. Mail-order either direct from producers or from food-of-the-month clubs can fill your belly and education tank right in your own home. You can cook for yourself and grow your own ingredients. And yes, occasionally travel, is needed to gain knowledge about the food you love. But often even traveling short distances to explore neighboring towns works too. If you go far, be a good sport about it and graciously accept the opportunity as a learning experience that you can take back to your community and neighbors.

And lastly, if it sucks so hard where you're from, who's fault is that? Why don't you do something about it instead of complaining to a cheesemonger 1000 miles away from home? Start a farmers market. Work with artisans, farmers and producers in your community. (Surprise, there probably are some if you took the time to find them.). Raise awareness and build a market for such products. Start a food discussion group. Network with others in nearby small towns. It will likely never be as glutted of a food market as New York, but that doesn't mean it has to stay a wasteland. You can explore new things with friends, neighbors, or on your own if you make the effort.

I respect out-of-town customers who come in with wonderment, curiosity, and excitement for something new that, indeed, is often hard to find outside of this city. They bring a love of their hood with them and take back a love of something new to the place they proudly call home. Even if that something is Easy Cheese.

The Best Part of Spring

Ahhhhhhh dfa;lkdfjasl;kdfjklj!!!

I have a love-hate relationship with Spring. I love breezy patio weather, but I hate cold wet drizzle. I love the return of foliage, but I hate my allergies. I love the smell of the air when the seasons change, but at least for the two years I lived in DC and NYC, I hated the returning stench of public urination in the subway and metro stations. After having worked with cheese and on farms, there's only one thing about Spring I love unconditionally: baby animals.

On small farms, dairy or otherwise, kidding and lambing season is either starting or already in full swing, depending on the particular climate. In addition to birthing the cutest creatures on earth, those new mamas will be producing milk aplenty for their youngsters, the excess of which turns into delicious spring-time cheese. It's true that some breeds of goats and sheep can breed year-round. Additionally, some larger farms engineer ways to trigger a year-round breeding cycle for their animals (opinions differ on the merit of this practice). Some farms may even freeze excess milk to carry them through winter cheese making. The majority of fresh goat cheese, however, is coming into season right now.

To celebrate the season I partook of a gooey, young goat's milk robiola wrapped in fig leaves. Hello Spring! I was instantly drawn to this cheese in the store because 1) The pretty colors of orange twine against the dark green fig leaves caught my eye (I also shop for wine purely by the level of whimsy in the labels); and 2) When I sniffed it, I could taste the figs, which immediately intoxicated the pleasure synapses in my brain. It was a fig-tastic high.

Robiolas are from Northern Italy and can generally be made with varying combinations of goat, cow, or sheep's milk. This one in particular is made purely from goat's milk when it comes into season in the region (February-ish). The rich buttery texture is infused with a sweet fruity and vegetal taste from the leaves. Often when I take a gamble on a cheese I've never at least sampled, I'm mildly disappointed. This cheese, though, exceeded my expectations as soon as it hit the lips. I purchased a bottle of sparkling wine and a mild red wine with a fig on the label (it seemed appropriate, though not as whimsical as I'd like) to pair with the cheese. Both went well, but the crisp, dry sparkling wine was ideal. I also enjoyed taking a bite of cheese and shoving a couple figs in my mouth, chubby-bunny style. Two hours later, my roommate and I had finished all several hundred calories of butterfatty goodness and both bottles of wine. Okay Spring, you're pretty swell.