I Heart Vermont

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I am back from a little family get-away in Vermont. Vermont makes me happy. It is a state full of cheese, amazing warm old farmhouses, rolling hills and hardwood forests dusty old yoga loving hippies and salt of the earth types, amazing farm markets and wonderful chocolate. Can that get old? I love it in summer and fall and even winter has a certain chilly, nostalgic charm.

I'm not a big winter person anywhere but winter in Vermont, includes warm maple milk, snapping log fires, frosted mountains and is the perfect seasonal experience...at least for a weekend away. This weekend it was -15 below zero on top of the ski mountain so it was a bit chillier than my tastes generally allow.

I skied. I am halfway through a pregnancy, learned as an adult, hate truly cold weather and am deeply intimidated by athletics but I did, I skied. I was absurdly proud of myself. I do think that going out on the slopes in -15 below while pregnant is an achievement, isn't it?

Carts of chocolates in the factory.

In other news, we had some lovely chocolates after our tour at Lake Champlain Chocolates (not nearly as cool as the Ben and Jerry's tour but still rather stocked with free tastings). I do recommend purchases of whatever seconds the factory has on hand at the moment. I also reccomend picking up anything you can that's made by The Vermont Butter and Cheese Factory who are another company I swoon over in The Green Mountain State. They make some of our very favorite cheeses, for instance the Cremont and the Bonne Bouche are right up at the top of our salivation list. How did I get on to cheese? Time to take another look at our Great Cheese List sometime soon I sense.

Ru is turning out to be a top notch skier already at the ripe old age of 5. I am by turns jealous, proud, wistful and inspired by watching him zipping down the slopes fearlessly. I wish I had half of his vim and deep belief in his own genius. He is intimidated by no one. Not a single impressive, cocky racer whipping past him on the hill can make him wobble and pout. He thinks everyone at the resort is wonderful and everyone who is more talented than he is is just a few inches ahead and completely exciting. I was sharing with A on our drive back home that I truly believe deep in my soul that I need to treat everyone else on the run with me as a potential enemy because they all might find it hilarious to knock over that ridiculous looking, clearly terrified inchworm of a grown woman, creeping her way down the hill in giant, baby-step zig-zags. I believe the absolute worst of every other person on the slope. Isn't that awful of me? I am generally not nearly so cynical and prefer to believe the best of everybody but somehow skiing brings out my inner conspiracy theorist.

On the way home A and I read Greek myths to each other. Such incredibly interesting stuff. We are loving all those romantic, hilariously bawdy, heartwarming and curious tales. Some of them are very familiar to me (Pandora, Odyssus and the Cyclops etc.) but some pretty completely new (Hera's escapades to punish Zeus, the goddess Io and the Greek account of creation and the great flood). I didn't realize how much I had missed reading together. We've taken a long break and not been working our way through anything for a while. We've made our vacation schedule for the year though and have planned quite a few happy little road-trippy type jaunts and I am determined to begin packing the books again. We're even going to read fiction like we used to before we accidentally picked up a Henry James that one time. Heh.

Related articles

• Vermont is a State I Love (vermontbrenda.wordpress.com)
• Welcome Friends to My Vermont Life, (smalltowntothemountains.wordpress.com)
• 2011 Award-Winning Cheeses We Reviewed Here on the Website (marcellathecheesemonger.com)
• Cremont From Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery (marcellathecheesemonger.com)
• Fireside Fashion (theprepcrew.wordpress.com)

The Cheese List Gets A Home

Cover of Cheese Primer

The Great Cheese List that I blogged about recently has become a living thing with soul and a will. I started out with a vague list in my mind which morphed into a real, concrete list and then became a thing I shared with friends, a kind of culinary Bucket List curiosity. Ah, but now...now The Great Cheese List is a thing that I think about every time I find myself in the grocery store. I have perused the list so many times that the names of certain cheeses have begun to ring in my mind like mysterious musical notes, niggling  foodie terms that make me salivate. I have always had a friendly relationship with cheese but, now I find it is getting quite serious.

A and I are reading through Steve Jenkin's, Cheese Primer aloud in the evenings and we find ourselves driven ever higher in pursuit of our quesophilic aspirations. He describes ways to eat cheese, how incorporate it into breakfast, lunch and tea and how to know a good one when you find it. We sit snugly, by the fire, nodding like small cheese loving hobbits over his descriptions and suggestions...our eyes whirling in little spirals. The love of cheese has turned us into very dairy-centric folks.

I think part of our mutual attraction to cheese is literally in that dairy connection. When we married we were both big milk drinkers and we would sit down and drink tall, cold glasses together with fresh cookies and feel very chummy for it. These days, A is such a constrained little man and he has become so entirely calorically vigilant that we no longer share our love for a tall frothy glass of milk, he tells me he can't afford the calories. And honestly, I only drink one glass a day myself. But, then...there is cheese.

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We have begun to eat cheese as a hobby. We both have copies of The Great Cheese List on our iPhones and we carry it around, bleeping back and forth through it as we lean over the brightly lit dairy cases as the cheese mongers watch us interestedly. We are the new breed of quesophile. We peruse our list while we pick out a cheese (or two or three!) and then we take it home and we're back on our phones, searching for information about the history and eating advise for the tender wheels and molten nuggets we've taken home. We are wired eaters.

And "the list" is no longer a slightly joke ridden, silly idea. It's a serious thing. We're going to eat all the cheese on that list or die trying. It's somehow important. And you can come along! In fact, you might even be able to make your own cheese journey faster, simpler and perhaps even more pleasant by following along as we lope through the list and continue our ever expanding tasting sessions. I've decided it's time for The List to have it's own tab here on the blog. From now on, if you look at the top of the site you will see it, sitting there, next to my poem collection and my about page and hopefully, it will continue to evolve...more and more fleshed out, more filled with descriptions and opinions and tips about eating everyone's favorite melty, oozy, salty, tangy treat. If you have a cheese I have to add....please do tell.

Related articles

• Why Cheese is Like "Dairy Crack": Because It's Got Morphine In It [Food] (kansasdad.blogspot.com)
• National Cheese Lovers Day (texacaliwinetrail.blogspot.com)
• EcoFarm Tour 2011: Organic Cheese and Sheep Udders (eatdrinkbetter.com)

The Great Cheese List

So yes. Cheese. I like cheese. You like cheese. So, today we talk about cheese.

This fall we went (as we often do) to Vermont to getaway into billboards-are-illegal, mountains-are-cool land and we decided to make it a tasting tour. Vermont has a fabulous world of small farmers, locally produced goods and excellent craftsmanship. Of course, Vermont is specifically known for its dairy energy.

There are few other states besides perhaps Wisconsin that can give it a run for its money in the world of bovine-centricness. I'm all about it. It means that Vermont, is a great place to eat cheese.

You've read before how I feel about food. Suffice it to say that I like it. A lot...and handily I'm married to a man who is similarly inclined. We love the pleasure that procuring, preparing and consuming food can give us and we love the adventure that can be involved. Sometimes its the crazy lengths we'll go to to get a cluster of oyster mushrooms down out of our neighbors trees but sometimes its the raw novelty of trying something reportedly fabulous that has never crossed our lips. Cheese, for us, is a great place to look for culinary adventure.

Heaven knows how many cheeses there are out there and we haven't tasted even a quarter of them yet! Hooray for unexplored worlds!

So, this fall when we went to Vermont, mid-stride through our food-tour I (iPhone in hand) started looking up cheese...and in particular looking for recommended cheeses that we ought to try...the kind of life-changing edibles that you have to seek out.

What I ended up with is what I now call affectionately, The Great Cheese List. I am keeping notes on what we've had and how we felt about the experience and slowly compiling my own private ultimate, favorites list.  I keep it in my email so that I pull it up quickly at a moments notice, should we find ourselves unexpectedly blinking into the cheese display at a wonderful grocery. Heh. Don't laugh. Its happened.

This weekend we plan to have the first of what we hope will be a series of cheese focused gatherings at our house...we've asked a couple friends to bring their favorite rindy, bloomy, creamy, slice-able cheeses and we're going to go pick some off our list and hopefully, we'll have a new round of excellt favorites to add to the mother list.

In case you're curious...here's the dish:

1. Auricchio Sharp Provolone
2. Baluchon
3. Banon
4. Beecher's Flagship
5. Beemster
6. Bergenost
7. Berkswell (from Neil's Yard)
8. Besace du Berger
9. Boerenkaas
10. Boursin's sweet cheese w/ guava, raisin and nuts
11. Brie de Meaux
12. Brin d'Amour
13. Cacicavallo
14. Cambozola
15. Camembert Chatelain
16. Campo de Montalban
17. Carpicho de Cabra (the goat version)
18. Chaource
19. Chaumes
20. Chevre Noir
21. Chevrot
22. Clisson (Tome d'Arquitaine)
23. Cotswold
24. Crottins de Chevre (let it get warm)
25. Cypress Grove Midnight Moon
26. Epoisses
27. Etorki
28. Ewephoria
29. Explorateur
30. Fontina Val d'Aosta
31. Fourme d'Ambert
32. French Sheeps Milk Feta (double creme)
33. Gratte Paille Double Creme (Lauren Bacall's favorite)
34. Haloumi
35. Hubbarston Blue Goat
36. Idiazabal
37. Jasper Hill Farm Constant Bliss
38. Le Papillon Roquefort (black foil, not green)
39. Livarot
40. Maytag Blue
41. McAdam Triple Cream cheddar
42. Mignergon de Charlevoix
43. Mimoulette
44. Montbriac
45. Mont Enebro
46. Morbier: We weren't terribly impressed with this one. Its quite mild and not unpleasant just not impressive. Admittedly, we tried it with some rather robust partners so we may give it another go in a different setting. We heard that if we liked Gruyere we had to try Morbier, but the tastes seem unrelated to me. Puzzling.
47. Neal's Yard Ardahan
48. Ossau Iraty
49. Parrano
50. Parrano Robusto (maybe the same as above?)
51. Pecorino Foglia Noce
52. Pepato
53. Perlagrigia
54. Petite Basque
55. Pierce Pt. (from Cowgirl Creamery)
56. Pierre Robert
57. Pleasant Ridge Reserve
58. Queso de la Serena
59. Reblochon
60. Red Cloud
61. Red Square
62. Roaring Forties: A blue I like! A wonderful, nutty cheese with lots of pleasant zing and a sweet background flavor. I can't say I roundly dislike blue cheese anymore.
63. Roccolo
64. Romano Aged Gouda (from Holland): Whew! This stuff is so strong! Its good but a little stronger than something we would like to eat all the time. Kind of a novelty to try...totally different from "gouda."
65. Roquefort Carles
66. Sally Jackson Sheep Milk Cheese
67. Selles sur Cher
68. Sir Wilfrid Laurier
69. Sottocenere
70. Spanish Cabrales
71. St. Andre
72. St. Marcellin: Amazing! Totally melty with a tender rind that is almost like a crust over the pourable insides. Full of high flavor...so wonderful! A favorite for sure. Am kicking myself because we missed it when we were in Lyon. Its the signature cheese of the region and ubiquitous there, apparently. It comes in a little earthenware crock because it is too melty to stand alone.
73. St. Nectaire
74. Taleggio
75. Tipo Cabrales
76. Tuma
77. Turma Persa
78. Vacherin du Mont d'Or
79. Valdeon: A liked it. Too strong for me. Kind of an electric, zappy blue, presented wrapped in chestnut leaves.
80. Vermont Coupole

My Current Favorites:
Appenzeller: (We like black label best, which is the strongest!) A firm, emminantly slicable cheese that is excellent with apple wedges. Perfectly sweet, sharp, fragrant, tangy, quite nutty. Like a Gruyere with its grown-up socks on! A flagship Swiss cheese we met when we finally strolled The Alps together, my childhood dream.

La Tur: A mixed milk cheese from sheep, cow and goat milk. A fabulously creamy smooth texture with a lovely complex flavor. Hints of tang, round flavors, wafts of mushroom, positively mind blowing. So good with honey and almonds. My cousin Drake introduced us to this cheese when we had dinner under his tutelage in Santa Barbara. You can read all about it in this post here!

Burrata: A cheese that I think I maybe heard about on NPR or else found in a book. I can't recall. We tracked it down in Zabar's in NYC. You can find anything in Zabar's. Burrata is creamy and smooth with a little smooth elasticity. It comes wrapped in a pouch of green leaves and is hard to obtain because it expires with such speed. It must be perfectly fresh. The live leaves its wrapped in are a marker of its freshness...if the leaves are still perky then the cheese is still good. I have found some versions sold in fake leaves but they are not nearly as good. The cheese itself is very like a soft fresh mozzarella, but has a hollow center that is essentially filled with a mixture of soft bits of the cheese and cream. I slice it in wedges and eat on thin bread, drizzled with honey.

Beltane Farms Chevre: I like to buy this cheese directly from the farmer because I like it young, young, young. Its a tender, moist cheese. Very tangy but with a round sweetness far in the background. I love it eat it spread on ciabatta and topped with basil leaves, olive oil and meaty, fresh tomato slices sprinkled with sea salt

St. Marcellin: So good...creamy, complex, a bit nutty but with a tiny kick, very liquid cheese, great for eating with a spoon. Has a tender rind and comes in a crock to protect it the mooshy little round. 

Bonne Bouche: Pronounced bon-boosh. This is a Vermont cheese which is made by the same company that keeps us Americans in quark. Good, good people. Bonne Bouche is wonderfully brightly flavored and creamy, comes from goat milk, has an ash-coated rind and comes in its own little wooden box, to support the tender disk en-route to your car...which is all the further it got when we bought it. Mmmm...

Weekend Re-cap

Great weekend....lots of good stuff in it:

Long awaited tacos and one torta at the taco truck in our new city where we'll live in just a couple weeks!

Mmmmmm.....

Some kissing....

Some simple....

....everyday beauty.

A "Dali Sky"

Some elfin cuteness.

Tinker flowers!

Cheese and honey....Thank you Drake! (La Tur with honeycomb for those who wonder)

And a little catapulting giraffes off of garbage cans.

Life is just chock full of great things!