Something Tasty: A cheese pairing to try

Batch 45

Last weekend, I tried Batch 45 from The Farm at Doe Run. This Pennsylvania cheese had such a gorgeous smooth texture with a thin-but-firm and approachably-funky washed rind.

This cheese tastes like the ground beef and cheese my mom would keep in the kitchen as a stove snack. It’s the meaty bite I always want from a washed rind. Pair with something briney (olives, pickles, etc) to compliment the rind and cut through that luscious paste!

I bet if you pair some bread and butter or dill pickles with it, it’ll taste like a cheeseburger, I haven’t tried it but I’d bet money on it.

Something True: A truth about myself

Stove Snacks

Here’s the truth.

Ground beef and cheese on the stove is an immediate touchstone of home for me. The taste, of course, but especially the smell. Anyone else have stove snacks growing up, or now?

Something that just kinda sits in the kitchen and stays in the pan so you can heat it up periodically if you need to?

It wasn’t until I went to college I realized other people didn’t necessarily nosh on ground beef and cheddar throughout an afternoon or ask for olive bread and goat cheese as an after school treat.

We never really had packaged snacks in the house. My mother did not allow sugary cereals or potato chips or pop tarts, but we had granola and potatoes and tart fruits.

I love food because of my mother. 

Saturday morning pancakes were made with Greek yogurt and oatmeal cookies were made with a smidge of very specific cinnamon (and a fraction of the sugar without anyone knowing).

I was nowhere near aware of the level of love and care and work that went into cooking almost everything from scratch. I completely took for granted that when I wanted Jamba Juice in high school for lunch, she made me a smoothie at home instead. I was almost upset it wasn’t “the real thing”. Teenagers 🙄 

I’ll tell you what- my mom is the real thing.

The duality of my mother is how I aspire to be. She listens to her body and stops eating when she’s full, but she does not waste food. She constantly reminds me that sugar is inflammatory, and her sticky buns are legendary in our family. She has protein in the morning to stabilize her blood sugar and greens as often as possible and will always say yes to a croissant from our favorite bakery when I’m home. She has the biggest cookbook collection of anyone I know and has changed probably every recipe she’s ever used. She’s healthier than anyone I know and her favorite food is sour cream. She has her go-to recipes and she is always curious about new flavors. 

She is the heart of everything Trust Your Taste is about. Staying curious and leaning into everything that makes you unique.

And when I’m too burnt out to remember my own principles, she reminds me to be true to myself and kind to myself. She is half the reason I embrace my own version of weird and cool, and a huge source of strength so I can encourage you to do the same. 

Farm to Fable: How food shows up in storytelling 

Moussaka in My Big Fat Greek Wedding

I am not Greek, and yet I identify so deeply with the lunch scene where we see Tula as a child eating moussaka while the popular girls ate their wonder bread sandwiches and call it “Moose Caca”. This scene comes back in a great way later in the movie to see if the dynamic changes once Tula goes back to school. 

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 wedding cake made of ground beef and cheese.”

Does anyone want to interpret these unsettling inkblot tests on the side of this cake? Sorry for whatever your imagination makes of this.

www.annemariepietersma.com