The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses continues

 This week we will give a presentation based on the research from our book for the Newcomers Club at Temple Shir Shalom. It will be our third cheese talk since we taught the Amazing American Cheese class at Santa Fe College in January and February. We did two presentations in Cedar Key. "What Ever Happened to the Cedar Key Cheese Factory" was really about how people adapt their businesses to the resources of their locales, and how such adaptations have created the phenomenal recent growth of artisan cheese in America. "What Makes Blue Cheese Blue and Stinky Cheese Mild?" was a huge cheese tasting, with 14 artisanal American cheeses...three local to our Florida region.

The owner of a local restaurant, Edie from Kona Joe's, was there and invited us over to make mozzarella with her. Such a thing being news in Cedar Key, we had a full page story in the Cedar Key Beacon. Nice!

The Amazing Cheese Story, Preparing for Day 4

Tuesday, February 8 is the final night of our mini-course, The Amazing Cheese Story. Follow the link for photos and thoughts about preparing for the big finale!

Star Lake in Retrospect, Fixing the Mustang, The New Plan for Getting to Seattle and the Cheese Conference

I cannot resist posting a final couple of Star Lake photos from the Reunion and one taken on Patsy's deck looking over the lake on one of our last evenings. The wine was good. The sky was clear. The air was warm. The loons were calling.

We had a grueling trip home, with road work stoppages that lasted as long as an hour, and heavy awful rains off and on for two days. Luckily, we had a great evening and another great sushi meal with Meg and Steve in Lexington. But on the second day of the trip we got sideswiped by a hit and run driver in SC. The new little Mustang got the worst of it. We pulled off and examined ourselves and the car. Finding no blood nor any damage that interfered with driving, we drove on and called our USAA insurance agent from the road.

We were glad to get home and to get the car inspected the next day. We had only three days home before our scheduled departure for the big road trip to Seattle for the American cheese Society Conference and three weeks of hiking in the Pacific Northwest. 

I took the Mustang in to the dealer service folks to change oil before the long drive. The air bag light came on in Star Lake & stayed on...so asked them to check it. SIX DAYS later we got the car back! That was 3 days after we needed to leave...so I bought plane tix. Seems the module that tells the 2 passenger air bags to deploy in a crash had an "open circuit" in it. Had to take out seat & carpeting to fix + they didn't have the part! 

As we flew over all the beauty of the Bad Lands, Custer Canyon, & mountains today I felt cheated by Ford & the Santa Fe Ford service folks. But it would have been a very long drive...that's the other side. Fate wins. 


So here we are in beautiful, warm, sunny Seattle. We visited Beechers Cheese and saw their cheddaring operations.

We just had a super delightful meal on the waterfront on an outdoor terrace at The Pink Door. They had a great picture on the wall of a dog like Pam's Mardi, except he was being angelic.




Great food. Great service. Now we're relaxing in our room on 29th floor. Nice view of Seattle. No travel glitches today. Happy campers. Conference starts tomorrow. I expect to volunteer in the judging of the 1000+ cheeses that have been entered into the competition this year. Russ will take the Cheeses of the Olympic Peninsula Field Trip.

Off to see the country from south to north

The dog has had his pre-getting-in-the-car-with-humans bath, the house sitter is all set, and we are off tomorrow for Star Lake in the Adirondack Sate Park in NY. Jake is particularly eager to get his Golden Retriever body to a cooler place...with a lake to wade in and a camp where he is allowed to sit on the sofa. We are already thinking about cheese curd treats. 

We did two telephone interviews yesterday with media from up in the North Country. North Country Public Radio will air their interview with us about The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses and the talks will will be giving about cheese on August 5. When we get the link, we'll post it. The Watertown Daily Times is going to write something about the book and the talks too. Yipee!

North Florida Dairy Goat Association

We spent the afternoon with 35 members of the North Florida Dairy Goat Association. Some have had goats as long as Laura Chenel...since the 1970s. Others just gotten started recently through a 4-H project, or as one teacher shared, because her fiance gave her 5 goats. We met a couple who, in May, had hiked part of El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, have had various breeds of goats and now are focusing on Nigerian Dwarfs, and have turkeys to sell...Anybody need turkeys? The discussions were both conceptual and very pragmatic...ranging from the value of good food to the regulations for selling raw milk, cheese, eggs, and produce. The meeting was at Mary and Rusty Ludlams' farm. Mary made an amazing blueberry cobbler for dessert, which vied with such delights as home-made angel food cake, lemon bars, and apple pecan bars for best-in-class. No winner could be selected. There was fresh roasted turkey, beef stew, pasta salads, and fresh green and tomato salads. Summer abundance! Food Heaven!

Russ and I got to talk a bit about our adventures in the world of American artisanal cheeses. What a lovely way to spend a Florida June Sunday!

Book Trip Fun

My trip was great fun. I had 8 book events and a wonderful 45th Reunion with my Nazareth College friends.

First stop was Erick's Cheese and Wine in Banner Elk NC. The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses and I visited Grandfather Mountain while there, too.

Next I went to Mansfield where I spent a wonderful evening eating and chatting with friends Larry and Donna, a nice morning hiking with Donna, and a super evening at the chef-owned, excellent Wren's Nest Restaurant.

In Rochester, I did book talks at the Sisters of Saint Joseph Motherhouse and at my Reunion.

Coming back to Florida, I stopped at Cheese To You in Lexington and the chef-owned restaurant Staunton Grocery and specialty food store George Bowers Grocery both in Staunton Virginia and at Flat Creek Lodge in Georgia.

A Presentation about Lighthall Books

We are just back from visiting our friends Jean and Stan who live in Solivita near Kissimmee, Florida. While we were there, Russ did a presentation about writing and publishing for a community book club. The members had read his most recent novel, Oswegatchie Green, in which Fish and Wildlife Service scientists get caught up in a murder investigation and a wind farm proposal while trying to forestall environmental devastation. Russ's presentation led to discussions of four main topics:

• The book's plots and subplots---community tensions in an economically hard hit town where people are torn by simultaneous desires for good jobs and wilderness tranquility, viability of a wind power business in a region such as New York's Adirondack Mountains where the story takes place, the roles of science and scientists in public policy, and whether the scientist-protagonists will ever sort out their relationship with each other. 
• Being an author---story genesis, genres, plot and character development, writing and rewriting, voice and tone
• Getting published---fiscal and logistical issues related to commercial publishing and self publishing.
• The next offering from Lighthall Books---The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses a non-fiction book coming this month about exploring the phenomenal changes in the world of cheese starting with the cheddars of our childhoods and leading to our the summer we discovered a thousand types of American-made, artisanal and farmstead cheeses.

Farm to Factory to Farm

Yesterday evening we did a presentation for Slow Food Gainesville about our cheese research. Great fun! About 40 people attended, a nice mix of ages and interests. We selected six cheeses for tasting. People brought wine to share.

Melissa, another Slow Food member, hosted it at her business, The Yoga Sanctuary, close to downtown. It was a wonderful venue. Usually no shoes or chairs are allowed on the yoga floor. Everyone was okay with the shoes part, but several people thought sitting on the floor, even on cushy blankets and pillows, just wasn’t viable. So, the chairs came out of the closet to many smiles.

We talked about cheese history, cheese making, cheese types, and about our interviews with cheesemakers, cheese shop owners, and cheese enthusiasts. We had a bag prepared for each person with each cheese in a little cup with a lid, so people could lift the lid and smell it before tasting for the differences. There was a fresh goat cheese, a bloomy-rind goat cheese, a washed-rind cow cheese, a blue-veined cow cheese, an aged cheddar cow cheese, and an aged sheep cheese. Based on how little was left at the end, they liked them all.

We were happy it was so well received.