Something Tasty: A cheese pairing to try

Oma

This cheese is going through a change…it’s coming home. Here are the stats:

Pasteurized Cow’s Milk, Aged ~4 months, Washed in Brine, Made in Vermont, USA

This washed rind cheese is made by the von Trapp family…yes that von Trapp family. Their organic family farmstead makes this savory delight in tribute to their grandmother Erika.

Since 2009, the cheese has been aged at the Cellars at Jasper Hill Farms, and now it’s returning home to von Trapp’s new ripening facilities, starting a new chapter in the continuing history and development of this cheese. When I talk about cheese as an edible story, this is a great example of the human touch that makes up big parts of that story.

This week I got to eat an incredible amount of Oma at Jasper Hill Farms Cheese Camp (more on this next week). Sometimes it reminds me of cooked root vegetables with crushed roasted peanuts, and the springy-yet-soft texture is addicting. It’s a bit pungent with a great meaty pay off.

Pair with honey, fresh figs (tis the season), anything briny, or almost any beer. Other members of the von Trapp family have a brewing company not too far away in Stowe, Vermont so it’s a natural pairing for sure.

Something True: A truth about myself

Seasons of Change

Here’s the truth.

Fall is here, and the weather is starting to cool off on the East Coast. This week Adam and I drove to Vermont and the further we drove, the more color started to be sprinkled into the trees. On our way back after four days, reds, oranges, and yellows had become a more prominent presence in the tree canopy. Change is definitely in the air.

A lot of life has been happening lately. Mostly good things, new things, and tiring things. It’s one of those periods in time where some parts of my life seem to be accelerating at a rapid rate, and others kind of fall off completely? It’s wild to look back to a few years ago and see projects and people that took up so much of my life, that are so much smaller or no longer there. 

I haven’t been great with big change in the past, but right now I’m not resisting it…or inviting it? I’m just kind of letting it all unfold around me. It’s real uncomfy. 

It’s a really interesting feeling to come up against old patterns and new life shifts, see how you used to deal with that, and then choose to interact with them in a different way.

It feels very adult, but also in an equal and opposite way, requires a childlike curiosity free from judgement of the situation or yourself.

Kind of like a cheese tasting, which we think of as something very adult and fancy, but really does require tapping into our inner sense of adventure, wonder, and play.

It’s my favorite part about teaching cheese classes.

Holding space for people to explore and learn about themselves (and cheese obviously, but often the cheese is the vehicle to discovering something deeper).

I get to see people come up against old beliefs about what they are “supposed” to like, and what that “means” about who they are. Yesterday I sorta tricked a blue cheese hater into eating and loving a soft goat cheese where the rind was smeared with penicilium Roqueforti (blue mold).

It was thrilling—not the trickery, though we are getting into that season.

The thrill was witnessing a change in someone in real time.

How have you changed recently?

Farm to Fable: How food shows up in storytelling 

The Sound of Music

When I think of the symbols of summer and fall, to me, there are few more iconic than tomatoes and apples.

In the market scene of Sound of Music, they go to pick out some of their…favorite things, apples and tomatoes, which are then juggled and dropped.

I hope you find time to juggle some late-summer tomatoes while they’re still good and embrace the bounty of apples soon to flood your local farmers market. And maybe pair them with some Oma.

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 “The original cast of The Sound of Music making cheese”.

WOW. WHAT THE HECK. Nobody tell Mary Martin or Julie Andrews this is what AI thinks of them.

Enjoy your nightmares.

www.annemariepietersma.com