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Limerick Winners

Last week, I kicked off a Cheese Limerick contest, with the invitation that the only thing more fun than eating cheese is writing about it. Well, 33 of you agreed and submitted entries. After much deliberation over sake, chocolate and cheese with friends at my dining room table Thursday night, I am finally sober enough to announce the winner of the Cheese Underground Cheese Limerick contest.

Drum roll, please.

The winner of an autographed copy (by all 12 cheesemakers) of the 2011 Portrait of a Wisconsin Artisan Cheesemaker is Melissa Routzahn of Crystal Lake, Illinois, who penned this little treasure:
In my dreams the whole world’s made of cheese.
Tommes and Chevres grow like fruit on the trees.
The moon’s made of bleu,
Rivers flow with fondue,
And the Limburger wafts in the breeze.
Ahh … it makes me feel happy and warm inside. Good job, Melissa, your autographed calendar is on its way in the mail!
With so many amazing entries, it was hard to pick just one winner. That’s why the official sake-drinking and cheese-eating committee also named six runners-up, all of whom will get a regular 2011 Portrait of a Cheesemaker Calendar (still in the plastic – alas, no autographs, but super cool nonetheless). Here are the runners-up:
Bob Wills, Cheesemaker at Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, Wis. (cheesemakers are multi-talented) wrote this one:

A young man who pulled mozzarella
was really a muscular fella.
With his strong hand and wrist
no girls could resist
his backrubs, and things they won’t tell ya.
Spaulding Gray, the cat from Vancouver, Washington, who writes Cheesemonger’s Weblog, won a runner-up prize with this entry:
I have a cheese in my fridge;
It’s named Upland’s Pleasant Ridge.
It’s won best of show,
Thrice but not in a row.
To savor, daily I eat but a smidge.

Amy Wallace of Madison, Wisconsin penned a whole page of limericks, but this one was the judges’ favorite:
My favorite cheese comes from Sartori,
One bite and you’ll taste all the glory…
It’s called Bellavitano
It’s truly divine, Oh!
Now I’m hooked, that’s the end of the story!
Kent Roper from Sacramento, California penned this one:

I met a man who wouldn’t eat Cheddar
At least not in real stormy weather
He’d cry and he’d weep
He wanted cheese from a sheep
He said that Manchego was better
Deb Dunstan from an undisclosed location (Deb, send me your mailing address) scored brownie points with this “Ode to Chz Geek”:
We Hooked a sweet, constantine gal,
From Saxony green fields that swell,
Of valleys driven by Carr,
River bend sheep seen afar,
As she promotes our state’s cheese so well.

And last, but certainly not least was Doug Harris, from Stockton-on-Tees in England with this one (watch for a package from the U.S. coming your way, Doug):
Take a cheese, then neglect, let it stew.
Watch it rot and unpleasantly hue.
Just ignore your material
While it gets all bacterial.
Then you’ll end with success from the blue.

Thanks to everyone for your creativity and all the entries! You made a cold Wisconsin night much warmer and happier.
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Big Plans for Babcock Hall

A Wisconsin institution that’s helped create some of the most famous, best-loved and award-winning artisan and specialty cheeses in the nation may be in line for an extreme makeover.

In a press release issued today, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, one of the state’s longest-lived industry associations, pledged a gift of $500,000 – yes, that’s half a million dollars – to the University of Wisconsin to “ignite dairy industry and public interest in renovating and expanding venerable Babcock Hall.”

Babcock Hall, built in 1950, is home to the UW Food Science Department and the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On campus, it may be best known for its famous Babcock Hall Ice Cream (made in the campus dairy plant), but off campus, around the state and nation, Babcock Hall is renowned as a vital teaching and research hub. It boasts a collection of world-class researchers whose work, training, trouble-shooting and product development skills have helped revitalize Wisconsin’s dairy industry.
In giving the $500,000 gift, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association says it’s striving to bring attention to the need for reconstruction and expansion of the Babcock Hall dairy plant, now more than 60 years old. Such construction would include an all new dairy plant, research and education space.
John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, says the time is now to reinvest in the university’s research center, as the state’s dairy farms and cheesemakers have reinvested more than $1 billion in their operations since 2005.
“During a difficult national recession, Wisconsin dairy farms have added cows and produced more milk and cheese manufacturers have added new full-time jobs and built new facilities,” Umhoefer said. “Our Association’s commitment to a modern teaching, research and dairy production plant at Babcock Hall underscores our long-term optimism toward dairy in Wisconsin.”
To accept the gift, the UW Foundation has established a CDR/Dairy Plant Building Fund, which will be open to any and all who wish to contribute to the reconstruction of Babcock Hall’s dairy production facility.
The reconstruction of Babcock Hall would be the icing on the cake to Wisconsin’s dairy industry – which generates $26 billion in economic activity in the state, supporting more than 100,000 jobs. Since 2005, the state’s dairy farmers have grown milk production 10 percent. Likewise, cheese production has risen to a record 2.62 billion pounds and Wisconsin retains its position as the nation’s No. 1 cheese-producing state.
Today, nearly half of all specialty cheese available in the nation is produced in Wisconsin. Groups including the Dairy Business Innovation Center, the Center for Dairy Research, Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association and others have contributed to that growth by supporting the state’s dairy processors and producers with technical and financial assistance in modernizing their facilities. Now it’s time to modernize the nation’s most venerable research center: Babcock Hall. Thanks to the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, we’re off to a grand start.
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Dairy Artisan Research Program

Many of you who tolerate my ramblings on this blog were also among the 1,000 visitors to the Second Annual Wisconsin Original Cheese Festival, held Nov. 5 – 7, in Madison, Wis. You witnessed first hand the state’s growing number of cheesemakers who debuted at least 10 new artisan cheeses, presented information during a half dozen tasting seminars, and led several tours of their facilities.

But did you know that many of these cheesemakers are alumni of the Dairy Artisan Research Program, a joint effort of the Babcock Institute, the Department of Food Science at UW-Madison, the Dairy Business Innovation Center, and the state Department of Agriculture?

The Dairy Artisan Research Program provides airfare for individuals who wish to travel abroad to conduct research on dairy production methods in other countries. In return, program participants present what they have learned to others, and write a paper about their findings, which is published and distributed to help the Wisconsin dairy industry.

Alumni cheesemakers who participated in the festival include:

George & Debbie Crave: The Craves traveled to Switzerland in 2004 to study affinage, and have since been recognized as one of Wisconsin’s leading farmstead dairies. They sampled their many cheeses at the festival’s Meet the Cheesemaker Gala.

Andy Hatch: Andy traveled to Europe in 2009 to study new cheesemaking methods. At the festival’s Meet the Cheesemaker Gala, he debuted his new, much-anticipated Rush Creek Reserve, modeled on France’s Vacherin Mont d’Or.

Larry & Clara Hedrich: In 2009, the Hedrichs traveled to the Netherlands and Germany to study goat cheesemaking. Their daughter, Katie Hedrich, sampled the family’s Evalon cheese at the festival, and also participated in the “Next Generation Cheesemakers” seminar.

Willi Lehner: Willi traveled to the British Isles to study affinage in 2005, and has since developed an award-winning line of bandaged, English-style Cheddar.

Jon Metzig: Jon traveled to Ireland, England and Switzerland in 2009. He debuted his new St. Jeanne cheese at the festival, a washed-rind beauty named for his grandmother.

Diana Murphy: Diana traveled to Vermont to attend a Mediterranean Cheesemaking session in 2007. She was a panelist at the festival’s “The Rise of the Woman Farmstead Cheesemaker in Wisconsin.”

Anne Topham: Anne has traveled to Italy and France through the Dairy Artisan Research Program. She sampled her new Chevre Provencal at the festival’s Meet the Cheesemaker Gala.

Bob Wills: Bob traveled to Honduras in 2009 to help emerging cheesemakers hone their craft. Bob debuted his new Water Buffalo Mozzarella at the festival’s Meet the Cheesemaker Gala.

Many thanks to the Babcock Institute, DBIC, DATCP and UW-Madison for making travel opportunities possible for Wisconsin cheesemakers. I’m looking forward to the innovation that continues to occur through the Dairy Artisan Research Program.

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Cheese Limericks

Writing about cheese is fun and I think more of you should try it.

That’s why I’m sponsoring a Cheese Limerick Contest. The winner gets an autographed copy (by all 12 cheesemakers) of the 2011 Portrait of a Wisconsin Artisan Cheesemaker. If that’s not enough to inspire you, then this cheese limerick by Christine Perfetti should:

There once was a woman from Oregon,
who really liked eating her parmesan.
She said with much glee,
“I’m in love with my cheese.”
And her friends thought,”oh what a moron.”
Here are the rules:
1. Write a cheese limerick.
2. Email it to me with your mailing address before 5 p.m. on Dec. 16.
3. A bunch of my friends will sit around my dining room table, eating cheese, drinking the leftover sake in my fridge from my cheese festival, and pick the winner.
4. I will then mail the winner the super cool autographed calendar, but probably wait until the next morning when I’m sober so I don’t send it to Siberia.
See, wasn’t that easy?
Oh yeah, the winning entry will also be published on this blog. So send me some good cheese limericks, people!
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Cheeses of the Season

Anyone can give cheese for Christmas. But only super cool people deserve cheese to match the colors of the season. Here are my suggestions for matching your artisan cheese plate to the shades of the upcoming holidays.

Red Errigal, Hook’s Cheese, Mineral Point, Wis.
This mixed milk (sheep and cow) creamy Cheddar-style cheese is crafted by the dynamic husband and wife cheesemaking duo of Tony & Julie Hook. Made with fresh milk from the same local, small, family farms from southwest Wisconsin that have been supplying the Hooks for 30 years, this reddish/orange cheese is a great addition to the holiday cheese plate. Call the Hooks to purchase via mail-order.

Green Crest DolceGreen Crest, Seymour Dairy, Seymour, Wis.
Cheesemaker Mike Brennenstuhl crafts this amazing Italian style Dolce Gorgonzola, which features a green mold imported directly from Italy. It boasts a creamy mouth feel and crisp flavor. Purchase online here.

Bohemian Blue, Hidden Springs Creamery, Westby, Wis.
This sheep’s milk blue cheese is an ode to the Bohemian grandparents of cheesemaker Brenda Jensen. She even penned the description on the label: “For people with artistic or literary interests who disregard conventional standards of behavior.” Made in partnership with the Hooks at their plant in Mineral Point. For sale online at Hidden Springs Creamery.

Snow White Goat Cheddar, Carr Valley Cheese, LaValley, Wis.
This creamy white Goat Cheddar is made in large, 38-pound wheels and cave aged for six months. In 2008, it was named the best cheese in the country, taking Best in Show at the American Cheese Society. For sale online at Carr Valley Cheese.

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Urban Cheese

Ahhh … the power of cheese. Evidenced by the growing development of farmstead cheeses on Wisconsin dairy farms, combined with the conversion of commodity to the more profitable (and tastier) specialty cheese produced at existing dairy plants, that glorious food we call cheese has been boosting the state’s rural economy for years.

Now, cities are getting in on the action. Last week, a developer in Milwaukee announced plans to create a $7.2 million, four-story building with a cheesemaking plant on the street level in the Walker’s Point area at 538 S. 2nd St.


The 30,000-square-foot building would be developed on a 6,400-square-foot vacant lot by Kaufmann LeSage LLC. The first floor would be leased to Clock Shadow Creamery, a cheese plant and retail shop operated by Master Cheesemaker Bob Wills, well-known in the state for operating his own cheese-incubator company at Cedar Grove Cheese near Plain.

The proposed Clock Shadow Creamery would include public viewing areas and a cheesemaker apprenticeship program. The cheese plant’s name is a reference to the nearby four-sided clock at Rockwell Automation Inc.’s headquarters (thanks to Milwaukee Daily Photo for the above image).

The Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel reported last week that occcupying the second and third floors of the proposed development would be three health care providers: Aurora Walker’s Point Community Clinic, which provides free primary and preventive care; The Healing Center, which offers support services for sexual abuse and assault survivors; and CORE/El Centro, which provides stress management, exercise classes and other health services. The top floor of the building remains available. Three non-profit organizations and two small for-profit companies have expressed interest in the space, according to Kaufmann LeSage.

The project got a boost last Thursday, as the city’s Redevelopment Authority unanimously approved a $900,000 EPA brownfield cleanup loan to help pay for environmental cleanup work at the site, which was once used as a scrap yard and is considered to be contaminated. At a hearing last week, four people emailed objections to the plan, while eight others sent in letters of support.

Tom Daykin of the Journal Sentinel writes this morning that the objecting emails mostly involved residents who didn’t want to see nightclubs removed from the neighborhood. But as one clever reader, named “EvilLiberal” wrote in a comment on a story published on the proposal last week, the development and its cheesemaking facility could be an answer to the neighborhood’s reputation:

“Horror!! Shock!! Terror!! We MUST unite to prevent this travesty of family values to infest our streets! Milk maids everywhere! Milking in public!! And Maiding!! It will be chaos! All those lewd cows doing what cows do, and no shovels! Where are the strip joint proprietors when you need them?”

Sounds to me that cheese is just what this neighborhood needs.
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Sheep Symposium

Sheep people from across the continent gathered this past weekend at the 16th annual Great Lakes Dairy Sheep Symposium, the major annual event of the dairy sheep industry in North America. Every year, the event is held in a different location, and this year, lucky for us Wisconsinites, it was hosted in Eau Claire.

The event attracts dairy sheep producers and cheesemakers from Canada, Mexico and more than 20 U.S. states, from California to Alabama to Vermont. In a sign that the American dairy sheep industry is rapidly growing, the conference hosted a record number of 130+ attendees.

Looking around the room during Friday seminars was like looking at a regular who’s who of American artisanal cheesemakers. Sitting to my left was Cindy Callahan, founder of Bellwether Farms in California. To my right were Tom & Nancy Clark, of Old Chatham Sheepherding Company in New York. Ahead of me was Pat Elliott, of Everona Dairy in Virginia, and leading a seminar on sheep milk for cheesemaking was Bob Wills, of Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, Wis.

After two days of seminars, which featured presentations by innovative producers and top scientists from all over the world, including Master Cheesemaker Ivan Larcher from France, Saturday was tour day – yay! Two school buses of sheep people (and me, with my camera & notebook) motored to Spooner Agricultural Research Station, the oldest continuing research facility in the University of Wisconsin system.

Our tour guides at Spooner were none other than the venerable Dave Thomas, professor of animal sciences at UW-Madison, Yves Berger, Sheep Researcher, Phil Holman, Superintendent, Scott Butterfield, Animal Research technician, and Ann Stellrecht, lead milker.

The Spooner station is one of the only dairy research stations in North America, and is home to about 300 ewes of various breeds. Current research is focused on dairy sheep, especially the genetic improvement of dairy sheep and production of sheep milk for processing into cheese. Other research examines the impact of grain supplementation level on milk production while summer grazing and the effect of ewe lamb feeding level on future milk production.

After a 90-minute tour of the facility, we loaded the buses again and were off to Shepherd’s Ridge Creamery, where Jeff & Vicky Simpkins milk 115 ewes and farm 160 acres. The farmstead creamery has been seven years in the making, and after three years of cheesemaking (Jeff says the first year’s cheese was terrible, the second year’s cheese was edible, and this year’s cheese is actually pretty good), 2010 marks the first year the creamery has offered cheese for sale (see this September blog post about their awesome Oliver’s Reserve).

Jeff provided us a tour of the sheep barn and the milking parlor, while Vicky showed us the creamery and cheese room. Her 100-gallon vat looks miniature compared to most standard cheesemaking vats, but it’s just the right size for Vicky. She stirs the curd by hand – there’s no agitator in sight – and crafts several different raw-milk, hard sheep’s milk cheeses, which are aged in one of the prettiest caves I’ve ever seen.

Located right on the farm, the underground caves feature three distinct aging rooms, with handcrafted wooden doors, arches, a stone-lined entrance, and beautiful wheels of sheep’s milk cheeses gracefully aging on wooden planks.

While I was entranced by the sheep, the caves, the cheeses and the four inches of snow falling to the ground, my daughter, meanwhile, was making friends with the Shepherd’s Ridge farm cats. This one – pictured to the right – would have easily gone home with us, but, alas, mom said no. Thanks to everyone at the Dairy Sheep Symposium for letting me attend your conference as a sheep tourist and learning more about American dairy sheep.

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Cheese Festival

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Here in Wisconsin, it takes a tight-knit cheese community to pull off a three-day artisan cheese festival, and boy, do we do it in style.

The Second Annual Wisconsin Original Cheese Festival started Friday and ended Sunday. It included two all-day dairy tours, eight evening cheesemaker dinners, three morning farmers’ market tours, eight different afternoon tasting seminars, an evening Meet the Cheesemaker Gala with 31 companies and 300 attendees, and a 50-vendor Artisan Marketplace that drew 400 people, all of whom went home sporting bright-red Wisconsin Cheese Originals grocery totes chock full of Wisconsin cheese and local gourmet foods.

Yes, more than 1,000 people from around the country spent the weekend in Madison, all in the name of cheese.

And I was afraid I’d throw a party and no one would come.

Thanks to 31 Wisconsin cheesemakers, 22 seminar leaders, 8 chefs, 17 volunteers and a husband who deserves a gold medal for putting up with the festival organizer from hell, another Wisconsin Original Cheese Festival is in the bag. Yee-haw. Thank you to everyone who presented, attended, ate, talked and schlepped cheese. You gave up a weekend to help me promote Wisconsin artisan cheese and I thank you.

Next up: mark your calendar for the Third Annual Wisconsin Original Cheese Festival: Nov. 4, 5, 6, 2011. Same place, same shindig. Just bigger and better.

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Water Buffalo Mozzarella

When there’s only a thin electric wire between you and a one-ton bovine named Amando, who’s sporting a ring in his nose and massive curling horns the size of a rhinoceros, one begins to appreciate what it takes to make the only Mozzarella di Bufala in Wisconsin.

The story of how Bob Wills at Cedar Grove Cheese began making water buffalo mozzarella this summer starts with a man name Dubi Ayalon, who three years ago, moved with his family from Israel to rural Wisconsin and bought a small farm, sight unseen. Since then, he’s put all of his effort – which is considerable – into persuading a small herd of water buffalo purchased from various herds in Vermont, California and Florida, to let him milk them.
It hasn’t been easy.

“It took three years for the milk to come,” Dubi told me when I visited him at his farm near Plain, Wis., last week. When I arrived, he was chopping wood, wearing a back brace, sporting stylish, if beat-up Dolce & Gabana eyeglasses, and pretty much covered in dirt, dust, and what I would later come to appreciate because I’d have to hose it off my own boots, water buffalo manure.

“For three years, the water buffalo ate hay and Dubi ate shit,” he said (for those of you whom have met Dubi, you know his language is a bit, ahem, “colorful”). I believed him whole-heartedly after looking at the size of the massive water buffalo in the nearby pasture and comparing it to the size of Dubi, who as a former Israeli army officer and high school principal, could no doubt hold his own against an unruly citizen or student, but who doesn’t stand much of a chance compared to a one-ton animal who goes wherever the hell it wants to go because it weighs 2,000 pounds.
For the past three years, Dubi has been beat up by water buffalo. He gently sings to them in Hebrew, luring them with grain into the barn, where they sidle up into a custom-built stanchion and then proceed to kick the crap out of him as he milks them. He says it’s worth it. For every pound of milk he lures from his seven milking water buffalo, he gets paid $1 a pound. That’s $100 for a hundredweight. Compare that to cow’s milk, which goes from between $12-22 a hundredweight, depending on the market price.

But the high-paying milk comes at a high cost. For the past three years, Dubi has worked to gain the trust of his herd, of which, there are only seven that will concede to being milked. The rest are going to market this fall, as Dubi believes he will never be able to tame them enough for milking. But there’s hope around the corner: Dubi has a pen full of yearling heifers he’s kept from the calmer cows, and inside the barn is a small group of 2-month old calves who lick his hands when he nears them.

“It’s all about gaining their trust,” Dubi says. “Water buffalo are not like cows. You can’t push them into doing what you want them to do. They have to want to do it.”

And what Dubi wants them to do is give more milk. Currently, each cow is giving about 14 pounds of milk a day. Dubi wants to increase it to 15 pounds next year, and as his heifers and calves mature, eventually grow the herd to 20 milking animals. At that point, he believes he can make a pretty good living.
So does Cheesemaker Bob Wills, who’s been buying Dubi’s water buffalo milk and crafting it into mozzarella. At 8 percent butterfat, the milk is rich and luxurious. Cow’s milk generally makes a 10:1 ratio of milk to cheese (1,000 pounds of cow’s milk would make 100 pounds of cheese). Water buffalo milk is more like 4:1.

Last week Cedar Grove Cheesemaker Ryan Meixelsberger, who’s been making cheese for 18 years, said the water buffalo milk is unlike anything he’s ever encountered. “The yield is higher. The protein and fat are both higher. Our ability to make cheese from this milk has been on a steep learning curve. It’s finicky and unpredictable, but we’re getting there.”
On the day I visited, Both Meixelsberger and his assistant, Blair Johnson – who moved from Vermont three weeks ago to help make the water buffalo cheese – had just pumped the milk into the vat from the pasteurizer, where it would wait about three hours to acidify before they cut it, stir by hand, put in paddles, and then cook and stir for another 2-3 hours, all in an attempt to try and get the acidity level to about 5.8.

While that time-intensive process sounded incredibly enticing, I decided to pass on cheesemaking for the day, and instead talked Ryan and Blair into posing with some cheese they’d made last week – beautiful mozzarella balls and a wheel of mozz. The pair make water buffalo cheese just one day a week, on Mondays, stretching some of the curd into fresh mozz balls, and then pressing the rest into blocks or hoops, where it is either shredded or sold in wedges.

Cedar Grove Cheese milk truck driver and maintenance man Dale Fingerhut, a former dairy farmer who admires the way Dubi treats his animals, picks up about 525 pounds of water buffalo milk a week from Dubi. Dale lugs it in 80-pound stainless-steel milk cans, hauls it back to the plant, and then cools it into a bulk tank until Ryan and Blair are ready to make cheese.

The entire operation, from Dubi’s farm – to Dale’s hauling – to the cheesemaking at Cedar Grove by Ryan and Blair, is a grueling, time-intensive process. The result is a cheese that sells for $13-15 a pound, and as far as I can tell, is worth every penny.

You can find Cedar Grove Water Buffalo Mozzarella in Madison at Metcalfe’s Market and Fromagination. It’s also available at Cedar Grove’s retail store at the plant just outside Plain. Other than those outlets, Cedar Grove water buffalo mozz is hard to find, as production is limited and the fresh product needs to be consumed in a timely fashion. The way I look at it, Dubi’s Mozzarella di Bufala is just one more reason to move to Wisconsin.

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Holy Crap Moments

This week, I was blessed with not one, but a total of three “Holy Crap” moments. These are the times that after tasting something so amazing, I say those two words without even thinking, usually to the amusement of those around me.


Holy Crap Moment No. 1 — New Mixed Milk Cheese: Last week, I trapped Hidden Springs Creamery Cheesemaker Brenda Jensen in my backseat while driving to Marion Street Market in Chicago for a Wisconsin Cheesemaker Dinner and talked shop for a total of five hours of driving. Along the way, we tasted – and by we, I mean me – her new Meadow Melody, a mixed milk cheese made with cow’s milk and sheep’s milk.

Holy crap, is this cheese good. At only 3 months old, I think it’s ready to sell. Rich, creamy, complex and made in the same two-pound wheel forms as Brenda’s Ocooch Mountain, the new Meadow Melody is a future award contender. Let’s just say that this cheese is so good, I ate basically the entire wedge corn-on-the-cob style while motoring down the road. Yum.


By the way, the cheesemaker dinner at Marion Street Market was fabulous and included five courses featuring cheeses from Wisconsin’s Chris Roelli, Brenda Jensen and Andy Hatch. After dinner, Chris, Brenda and Andy were all in demand, as people bought the new 2011 Portrait of a Wisconsin Cheesemaker Calendar and had the cheesemakers sign their featured months. It’s official: Wisconsin cheesemakers have attained rock star status. For photos of the evening, as well as all the dishes, visit my Wisconsin Cheese Originals Facebook site.

Holy Crap Moment No. 2 — New Cedar Grove Cheese: Thursday night, I headed to Quivey’s Grove Restaurant and Stable Bar in Madison for an evening of tastings of Cedar Grove cheeses, Capital craft beers and select wines from Stone’s Throw Winery in Door County. The event drew a nice crowd and was co-sponsored by www.cheesepleese.com, a new cheese-of-the-month club featuring Wisconsin artisan cheeses delivered directly to your door.

The highlight of the evening was discovering a new cheese from Cedar Grove, which I am a little embarrassed to say I can’t remember how to spell. I’m pretty sure it’s called Heide, but after a few beer and cheese pairings, I can’t read my notes. In good news, I’m headed to Cedar Grove tomorrow to make buffalo mozzarella with Bob, so I will pick up some more then and report back. Let me just say this is an amazing aged cheddar, with nutty, Asiago notes and a perfectly, clean finish. It goes really well with Capital’s Wisconsin Amber.

Holy Pork Tenderloin: My last “holy crap” moment came yesterday, as I was judging the Dueling Chefs competition at the Madison Food and Wine Show. Of course, I never get lucky enough to judge the heat where the secret ingredient is cheese, but this year, I got to judge a heat where the secret ingredients were pork tenderloin and pork belly. Oh yeah, baby.


Chefs Dave Heide from Lilianna’s and Jesse Matz of Bunky’s squared off, each having only 30 minutes to prepare two unique dishes using the mystery ingredient. My favorite of the four different dishes was the last one by Liliana’s, where Chef Dave seared the pork tenderloin and then accompanied it with sauteed Peruvian purple potatoes, and brussels sprout salad. Awesome. Chef Jesse won the match by a closer-than-close score of 210-209, but both chefs did a fabulous job. Will be fun to see who wins the grand champion chef contest today at the show. You never know, might just be another “holy crap” moment.