Have you gotten your ticket yet??

July 28th at 3:00PT/6:00ET is the next virtual Trust Your Taste Workshop. Let’s eat cheese, write, reflect, and explore how connected we are to ourselves and each other through sensory memory.

Learn what it takes to Trust Your Taste!

Something Tasty: A cheese pairing to try

Vermont Cheddar

This week I hung out at The Barnyard Collective for a wine and cheese tasting with a bunch of awesome people talking about Vermont terroir and all the things that go into a “taste of place”.

Here is a takeaway I now pass on to you: Not all block cheddars are created equal.

When I say “block cheddar” I mean a cheddar that is, yes, shaped like a block, has gone through the cheddaring process, and has no rind.

There are block cheddars that you are used to seeing in a grocery store, probably made mostly by machines using pasteurized milk, and then there are clothbound and cave-aged cheddars that have been more associated with “artisanal cheese”.

However! A block cheddar does not automatically mean it’s a commodity cheese/mass produced/lacking in depth of flavor. Check out some Vermont cheddars from Grafton Village Cheese, Shelburne Farms, and Plymouth Artisan Cheese to see just how different a block cheddar can be.

Try any of these with some Vermont wines from Ellison Estate Vineyard for some wild terroir pairings.

Side note: they didn’t pay me to promote these, I just had a great tasty time.

Something True: A truth about myself

What We’re Made Of

Here’s the truth.

It’s been quite the week. Right?

A lot is going on in the world, in the country.

Talking about terroir this week made me reflect on one of the principles of Trust Your Taste: people are like cheese.

All cheeses are made of the same four ingredients:

• Milk

• Salt

• Rennet

• Cultures

Buttttt…

Depending on where it’s from, and how it’s cared for, the cheeses could turn out wildly different.

Sound familiar?

If you have the exact same two cheeses, but treat them differently (wash one, put one in a different aging cave, etc), you’ll have two very different cheeses, even though the ingredients are identical.

If you treat two cheeses the exact same, but one is made with raw milk and one is pasteurized, you’ll have two very different cheeses.

The animal, milk type, country of origin, and culture selection can differ…but when you break it down, it’s still only those four ingredients (unless you put peppers or rosemary or something in it, but that’s not the point).

Where and how we live and grow informs so much of who we are. But we’re all made of the same stuff.

Cheesemaking gives those four ingredients an endless potential for expression. It’s one of the most beautiful (and almost mystical) things about it.

Cheese is a living thing, and the fact that you will never taste the exact same artisanal cheese twice reflects the ephemeral nature of life: both delightfully surprising, and, at times, painfully disappointing.

Cheese has no choice but to work with what’s already inside it, and adapt to the given surroundings and circumstances.

We can learn a lot from cheese.

Farm to Fable: How food shows up in storytelling 

Gourmet Apple Sauce/Baby Food in Baby Boom

Baby Boom is a classic Nancy Meyers romcom. Diane Keaton leaves her busy workaholic business-lady life, job, and marriage for the Vermont countryside after she is entrusted with an unexpected baby from a newly dead relative. She ends up making her own baby food from her apple orchard and— voila!

A business-lady again. But this time, on her terms.

Please read this fantastic article on how Baby Boom somehow predicted and depicted the rise of the artisanal food boom in the early 2000’s.

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 cheddar going apple picking in Vermont”

Excuse me. Do not bring off-brand Winnie the Pooh into this, AI.

Like…cute? But also..unsettling? Don’t look too closely at the “people” picking apples…off the ground…

www.annemariepietersma.com