Cheese ~ Storytelling ~ Authenticity ~ Creativity

Something Tasty: A cheese pairing to try

Murray’s Cave Aged Reserve “Treeline”

Extra! Extra! This is a BRAND NEW cheese…kind of. And I’m pretty excited about it. Here are Treeline’s stats:

Pasteurized cow’s milk ~ washed rind ~ aged 4 months ~ U.S. (WI - NY)

Washed rinds can be considered the stinky cheese family, but this might be the most snackable washed rind- even to your friends that purposely request “nothing too smelly”.

This cheese was saved by Josh Windsor and the caves team at Murray’s Cheese after Crown Finish Caves closed.

Now, a joint venture between Roelli Cheese Haus (the cheesemaker) and Murray’s (the affineur), the new version of this cheese is washed in Makku’s makgeolli (the oldest Korean alcoholic beverage, kind of like a rice beer).

Josh is an affineur (caretaker and ager of cheeses) and the Senior Caves Manager at Murray’s. It takes a village to create a cheese, but consider Josh the mayor (a good one, who is invested in the community and constantly coming up with and implementing new ideas to push and/or preserve the traditions of affinage).

It makes me excited there are people out there that don’t want to see certain cheeses die. And though we as consumers need to be better about embracing change, variance, and seasonality in our cheeses, we are in good hands.

Something True: A truth about myself

Treelines, Cattle, and Mountains

Here’s the truth.

I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy and impermanence lately.

Two things that might be opposites- one is about enduring through time, and the other is the very concept that nothing lasts forever.

But both are all I can think about whenever I go home to visit the dairy in California.

Every time I go back there are less dairies and more amazon warehouses. Less grass, more concrete. The cows are gone and with them go any knowledge or interest in agriculture from the people that replace them.

Luckily, my life in cheese makes me optimistic.

I get to see so many young people taking an interest in farming and food systems, and people that devote their entire life to making sure certain gastronomic traditions don’t get lost.

But it is really difficult to remember that when I’m staring at maybe the only place in the world you can see Scottish Highlanders at sunset grazing on grass with mountains in the background through a line of palm trees, and knowing it will be gone in a few years.

One of the beautiful things about artisanal cheese is that, in essence, it is the combination of legacy and impermanence.

There is so much history and tradition in each cheese, and yet no two wheels will ever taste exactly the same. The change and variety are an inherent part of it.

Change will always be at least a little scary, but variety is said to be the spice of life… so maybe I’ll start reframing change as “periods of variety”. We’ll see if it works!

Farm to Fable: How food shows up in storytelling 

Big Yellow Taxi- Joni Mitchell

I leave you with song lyrics that mention food. Big Yellow Taxi was released in 1970, and is still just as relevant today.

Hey farmer, farmer, put away the DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees, please

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

Until next time,

Anne-Marie

P.S. - Sunday Scaries

A terrifying AI image to help us all rest knowing AI bots could never replace a real human artist:

This week the prompt was “A piece of cheese walking down a treelined path.”

WHY IS HE SO SCARED? Maybe he’s thinking about impermanence.

www.annemariepietersma.com