What’s better than granola where you choose the ingredients? Do you want sweet, filled with chocolate-covered espresso beans or gummy bears, or healthy, filled with dried fruit and nuts? The people behind MixMyGranola what you to decide for yourself…choose your granola base, add whatever ingredients you want, and they ship it to your door.

We decided to give it a whirl and ordered two mixes. Luke’s mix consisted of low-fat granola (which includes almonds, cranberries and a hint of coconut), Goji berries, dried melon slices and pistachios. Carolyn’s mix consisted of French vanilla granola (which includes sliced almonds), dried raspberries, dried blueberries and dried papaya.

When we got our customized granola in the mail, we went straight out and bought our favorite Banilla yogurt. The granola consists of nice clusters of granola, not crumbly bits, and a good amount of mix-ins. Both of our concoctions were different and delicious…and perfect for eating by the handful or on top of yogurt.

In these tough economic times, I think everyone is looking to get the most bang for their buck. How does the price of MixMyGranola compare to the store-bought granola? Our mixes came out to an average of $.56 per ounce ($.71 per ounce with shipping factored in). Our local Safeway store had plain granola for $.30 or $.45 per ounce, depending on brand, and not factoring in any sale.

The granola comes in cool canisters, which would be good for kids to store Legos or whatever in. Mix My Granola says the packaging is 100 percent recyclable. Here’s an idea…what if they included a label/envelop to ship the canister back to the company (for free) and offered small amount off your next order for doing so? They could recycle it for future use, you’d have less canisters in your home and/or sent to your local recycling plant. Product stewardship, that’s all I’m sayin’.

Bottom line…this is perfect for the granola-obsessed. It may be a little expensive to buy all the time, but it’s a fun treat.

One of the best parts of making your own chicken stock is the layer of fat that settles to the top after it’s chilled. This yellow layer of fat is also known as Schmaltz and to quote Sienfeld, “Its gold, Jerry, Gold!” After the soup has chilled you can skim the fat and save it for later. You can use it for frying up potatoes or better yet, making the best matzo balls you have ever tasted.

I am not embarrassed to admit that I made my matzo balls from a Manachevitz mix. However, instead of using vegetable oil as the fat in the matzo balls, I subbed in the chicken fat. I am not 100% sure it made a huge difference, but I do think it added some flavor. Once the matzo balls were done cooking I simmered them with some carrots in the homemade chicken stock we made earlier.

Making homemade chicken stock can seem like more of a chore than it is actually is. There are tons of recipes and techniques out there, all trying to create a clear, strong stock. It is very easy to over think chicken soup making. The truth is that if you simply sauté some chicken parts and onions together until brown, add some water and simmer for a while, you while have a stock that will knock the pants off anything you can buy in the store. Cutting the chicken parts up and sauteing them will give the stock a rich flavor and cut down on the cooking time. Chicken stock serves as the backbone for so many dishes, and a good stock will give them new life.

If you buy anything other than boneless chicken breast, you will inevitably end up random chicken parts–chicken backs, ribs and carcasses. Throw all these parts into a large bag and stick it in your freezer. Next time you have a bit of free time, pull this bag of treats from the freezer and cook up a pot of stock.

Of course your chicken part supply doesn’t always match your schedule. If this happens, whole chicken legs can make for a good soup. The legs are a good mix of bone, meat and fat–everything needed for good flavor and body.

Cutting up the chicken parts into smaller pieces helps you extract more flavor. Start by breaking the chicken apart at the joints. Since you are going to be cutting through bone you will need a clever or hefty knife. Be careful! Split the breast in half. Hack the back section into 3 or 4 sections. Half each of the wing pieces. The legs and thighs are the toughest to cut since they have the largest bones. Hack each in half, if you can.

There is a good chance you are going to end up with more stock than you need. We ended up with 6 quarts of stock and were definitely sick of soup by the time we were down to the last quart. Luckily stock is easy to freeze and keeps well. Line a container with a quart or gallon zip-lock bag and ladle in chilled soup. Throw the bags in the freezer and they should be good for 6 months.

You may see the term stock and broth being used. While they tend to be used interchangeably, they do mean different things. Broth is made from boiling just meat while stock is made from simmering bones, meat and all of those weird bits like giblets. The addition of the bones gives the soup more body and is responsible for turning the stock to jello when it is cold. They can be used interchangeably, but real stock will have more flavor and body.

During the winter months our local farmer’s market shuts down. Star Hollow Farm, however, still has CSA pickup and some basics like their farm fresh eggs. The eggs they have are amazing and so much better than anything you can get in the stores, including fancy Whole Foods eggs.

The eggs I get from them do not look like they came out of a factory, which I think is a good thing. They are a slightly different size, color and texture compared to regular eggs which are more like uniform obelisks. According to Randy at Star Hollow, they get their eggs from a farm just down the road from where the chickens run free and scavenge for food. The eggs tend to be fresher and the yolks have a brilliant orange color to them. It maybe physiological, but the yolks seem yolkier.

You can tell how fresh an egg is by the egg white. Fresher eggs have a slightly cloudy egg white that is thicker and “sits up” more. Older eggs have runny egg whites. As an egg ages water from the egg white cross the yolk membrane, enlarging and watering down the yolk. This makes the yolk more fragile…not good news for sunny side up eggs! You can test how old an egg is by placing it in a bowl of water. The older an egg is, the more the wide end will rise. This is because as an egg ages it loses moisture through its shell, which is replaced with air.

All of these egg facts are courtesy of Harold McGee’s great book, On Food and Cooking. One last egg fact; while eggs are high in cholesterol compared to a comparable piece of meat, they are much lower in saturated fat. The interesting thing is that saturated fat has a larger impact on raising blood cholesterol than dietary cholesterol. Other fatty substances in the yolk also appear to interfere with the absorption of the yolk’s cholesterol. So while you shouldn’t overdo eggs, there is no reason to avoid them!

Carolyn and I have a weekly egg breakfast tradition. Every Saturday or Sunday we make open face eggs sandwiches. To make one, split an English muffin, toast each half topped with cheese, add salsa and then top each half with fried egg. The resulting breakfast “sandwich” is probably best eaten with a knife and fork.

FoodBuzz is an online social community of sorts for people who like food. There are recipes and restaurant reviews on their Web page. If you are a member of FoodBuzz, add Cookography as a friend. Right now we have 47 friends, which might be more than real life.

FoodBuzz also pays us a small amount of money for the ad you see on the right hand side. It is not a ton, but it adds up! I was just able to get a new camera (a Canon 50D) thanks to this extra cash. I will post a review of the camera in a little from the point of view of a food blogger.

FoodBuzz has also sent us a lot of cool things, and I thought it would be fun/dorky to get them all into one photo. So far I have gotten an apron, a silicon spatula and a canvas shopping bag. We love free things!

They have also started a program that lets you try out new products before they go to market. The first thing they sent out are new granola bars from Quaker Oats. They are called True Delights and come in 3 flavors:

• Dark chocolate raspberry almond
• Honey roasted cashew mixed berry
• Toasted coconut banana macadamia nut

So how are they, you ask? Well, the flavor names are REALLY long, but luckily they taste good. They are sort of like granola bars for adults. The banana one tastes really banana-y, but I love the Banana Bread flavored instant oatmeal so I am not complaining. They are a little bigger than standard bars, and come in at 140 calories. For me, that is the perfect size to fill me up as an afternoon snack. I don’t usually buy granola bars, but if I did, I think I would pick these up over a standard pack. They are a little more grown-up. You can get a free sample here.

The other big question is if giving out free things to bloggers is a good marketing move. I love free things, so of course I like it. Since I am not a journalist, I am not really concerned with objectivity. At the same time I don’t really have to worry about ad-sales or catchy headlines. I am very lazy, so if I actually manage to post on something it is because I actually like or dislike the product. It will be interesting to see what happens with this trend.

I came across a great Japanese market on my walk home from work. Hana Japanese Market recently opened at 17th and U Street in Northwest Washington, DC. It is a great little market that carries almost any Japanese product you could need. They mostly have dry or frozen goods, but they also get local, fresh Japanese vegetables from a Virginia farm every Thursday. They have a wide selection of frozen, sushi grade fish and a wide variety of miso paste. Best of all they are very helpful and knowledgeable! The manager of Hana used to run the Japan Inn restaurant, which was a DC institution.

I stopped by the Safeway on 17th street first and picked up some thin steaks. The guy at Hana pointed me towards a great Japanese BBQ marinade for the steak. I also picked up some treats to make the lunches I’m going to pack a little more fun.

Expect more Japanese dishes tin the future!

Don’t just take my word for it, check out all the great reviews and photos:

Yelp

City Paper (That is where I got the photo from)

Chow

Prince of Petworth

One of the BigTree Farms products I picked up in Bali was a box of Muntok White Peppercorns. White and black peppercorns are the same thing. The black peppercorns are unripened berries that are cooked briefly and then allowed to dry. The white peppercorns come from fully ripe berries that are soaked in water for a week. The soaking allows the fruit surrounding the seed to fall off.

White pepper has a different flavor than the black variety. Of course describing that difference is tough. Luckily Harold McGee has a great overview on what contributes to the white peppercorn’s flavor.

Muntok is a region in Indonesia famous for peppercorns. Here is an overview of the process of harvesting and processing from the BigTree website:

In the hills behind the village of Muntok, on the Indonesian island of Bangka, pepper farmers climb traditional bamboo tripods and hand-pick fruit spikes of red ripe pepper berries. The fruit spikes are packed into rice sacks and soaked in slow running streams of water that come down off the mountains above. Seven days later the outermost skin of the pepper has disintegrated and the peppercorns are piled together for a traditional trampling called “nari mereca” or the Pepper Dance. The dancing separates the peppercorns from the fruit spike and after a final washing the berries are left to dry in the sun where they will bleach to a whitish-cream.

Can you guess what this is?
Give up?
Well, it is a grain of salt from Bali! The salt is shaped like a little hollow pyramid. I zoomed in 60x with a toy digital microscope I have to get a better look. Below is a picture of the salt grain, but only zoomed in 10x. You can see its shape a lot better and the hollow indentation. The shape gives each grain a nice crunch.

Sea salt is the first product that Big Tree Farms began exporting from Bali. The sea salt is produced using traditional methods that involve lots of labor-intensive steps. They do a great job explaining what goes into making the salt on their website. The process involves the creation of a salty brine which is then allowed to evaporate out in the sun.

The salt I brought back is made up of little pyramids. I am not quite sure how to describe the flavor, other than saying it is salty with a hint of smokiness. The thing that stands out the most for me is the salt’s texture. Each grain has a nice crunch to it, and bursts with saltiness. Sea salt offers a unique texture rather than flavor, so it is wasted on anything where the salt dissolves. I wish tomatoes were still in season because this salt would be perfect on top of a nice thick slab of tomato. I will have to give it a try on top of a steak instead. The Velvet Sea Salt is almost the exact opposite of the coarse salt. Instead of having large grains, the salt is ground to a powder using volcanic rocks. I haven’t tried it, but it sounds really interesting!

Big Tree Farms handcrafted Balinese Velvet Sea Salt – 8.5 ozs.

In Washington, DC there are a bunch of places to find products from Big Tree Farms. There is only one place in Bali, however, where you can get their products. A little challenge makes everything more fun though! I had a free afternoon so I got a car and headed 45 minutes north to the Bali Spirit Kafe in Ubud. Ubud takes pride in their arts scene and is sort of Earthy crunchy and funky…and so is the Kafe. The Kafe also seems to be a bit of an ex-pat hang out, catering to travelers looking for a little inner renewal and other zen improvements.

Bali is a very tropical place and the heat coupled with the humidity can be a little draining. Once I made it to Ubud, I got a seat outside on the porch at the Kafe and ordered a Vanilla Lime Soda, which is vanilla bean syrup & Bali lime with soda. The soda hit the spot and helped refresh.

After being on travel for a week, I was looking for a bit of comfort food; food which didn’t make you think. The Kafe has lots of healthy, whole grain salads and organic foods, but sometimes you just need a burger. Luckily the Kafe came through in a big way. Their burger is made from local free range beef and I got mine topped with sauteed mushrooms and onions. I don’t know if it was my craving for a burger, but this is one of the best burgers I have had.

Of course I needed to order some desert, so I got a banana spice smoothie which is a banana smoothie topped with nutmeg and hazelnut. In order to make sure I left totally full, I also ordered Bubur Injin, a traditional Balinese dish of black rice topped with sweet coconut milk.

The truth is that I wasn’t there for eating food, no matter how good it was, I was there to buy some Big Tree Farm products and some Jam which they served at my hotel. The Kafe has a small shop which sells local products and donates the profits to local charities. Luckily they had everything I was looking for and more. I had a great meal and left with some great souvenirs!

The Kafe’s website has directions, in case you are in the neighborhood, and menus.

When we travel we always try to find interesting food items. Our Vermont cheese tour is an extreme example of that and my recent trip to Bali was no exception. My best “find” was Big Tree Farms–and the funny thing is that I had already discovered their products at my local Whole Foods.

Big Tree Farms was founded by an American couple and started out as a tiny organic farm on borrowed land. The founders were interested in encouraging organic farming and sustainable practices in Bali. The farm became very successful, but in order to keep up with demand they would have had to turn it into a much larger operation. Instead, they decided to look at how they could help sustain traditionally produced Balinese food items. The traditional methods for producing salt and palm sugar are in danger because of competition from mass produced commodities.

You can find many different Big Tree Farm products in stores across the U.S. and online. I am going to do a write up on the different products I brought back. Ironically, there is only one place to buy Big Tree Farm products in Bali and I will do a little write-up on the cafe where they are available.

There is a short Food & Wine article on Big Tree Farms, which does a much better job describing them than I did.

They also have a great website that not only has there products for sale, but also describes the process used to make them:

Sugar plums are a kind of confection and a delicious variety of plums. I have never tried the confection, but this weekend we picked up a couple handfuls of the plums. They were so ripe, the felt like they were about to burst. Sugar plums are a lot smaller than normal plums and look like a large grape. They were very sweet with a hint of tartness. A++++ Would buy again.

Grafton Village Cheese Shop
33 Townshend Road
Grafton, VT 05146
800-472-3866

Daniel’s House Café
92 Main St
Grafton, VT 05146
800-843-1801

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

Our visit a couple of years ago to Grafton Village Cheese Company is what really planted the seed in our minds for our ’08 Cheese Tour. Grafton Cheddar defines what good cheddar should taste like. One of the best parts of visiting is that you can try all of the different flavors and ages of cheese that they make. One of the other benefits of visiting is that they sell blocks of cheese that they have miss cut at a discount. These blocks are either a little over or under weight. We picked up about a pound of 4 year old cheddar for $5!

There is a window where you can look in on the cheese making area…unfortunately we showed up when nothing was going on. Maybe next time!

Just as we were leaving, I came across this quite little newt wandering through the parking lot. I thought the right thing to do would be to move it closer to the neighboring stream. I left it on a tree stump, but the newt promptly walked off the edge and free fell down the bank. Newts are real. I looked them up on the Internet later and it looks like the newt may have been slightly poisonous. It is only really dangerous if you touch the newt and then lick your fingers…like you might do while eating a sample of delicious cheese you just purchased. Luckily there were no fatalities on this tour.

There is also a nice little cafe in Grafton that we always visit called Daniel’s House Cafe. They have great sandwiches, some featuring Grafton Cheddar. Grafton is also a beautiful place to visit, so make sure you poke around.

I also have to share one recipe from their website. I haven’t tried it yet, but combining two bottles of beer and a lot of cheese can only result in something pretty damn tasty.

Long Trail Brewery

Junction of Route 100a and 4
Bridgewater Corners, VT 05035

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

You know there is something special about a place when the employees stick around after hours. It does help if that place is a brewery…but it is still a good sign. We stopped by Long Trail right at the end of the day, just when everyone who works there was getting off work and heading to the restaurant/beer garden out back.

In order to be bold and adventurous, we ordered the sampler. This let us try the 6 different beers they have on tap. All of the beers were good, not amazing, blow your mind great, but definitely tasty. My favorite was the Double Bag, which is a Double Bock style beer that is real smooth but will give you a kick in the pants. They definitely make good, solid beer. Nothing too flashy or showy, but more chill and laid back. One of the best parts of the visit was the outdoor beer garden (back deck) they have that over looks a neighboring stream.

I would sum up Long Trail by saying it is a beer you can respect and a company you can love. The unfortunate thing is that they do not distribute down here in DC.

We had a little bit of trouble finding them. There address is listed at the juncture of 100a and Route 4. The thing is that there are two different junctures for these roads. They are located at the juncture that is further east.

Just to be clear, those are small glasses in the sampler, not pint glasses. Hi Mom and Dad!

Frog City Cheese
106 Messer Hill Road
Plymouth Notch, VT 05056
802-672-3650

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

The are too many good cheese places to visit in Vermont. We tried to make it to as many as possible and unfortunately some of the ones we made it to closed before we got there. OK, so really there was only one we got to after it had closed and the only reason we swung by was because it was on the way.

Frog City Cheese is located in the Plymouth Cheese Factory which in the President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. This is where Calvin Coolidge grew up and the Plymouth Cheese Factory is where Coolidge made cheese. I grew up Northampton, MA, where Coolidge spent some time after going to Amherst College, so I have a special affinity for this place.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to try any cheese since we got there after they closed. Nevertheless, it sounds like they make a unique and tasty bit of cheese. The style they make is called a granular curd cheese. Here is how they describe it:

“ Granular curd cheese, or stirred curd as it is also known, is made from raw cow’s milk. This cheese was typically hand-made in New England farmhouses during the colonial period and is rarely made today. This cheese has been described as tangy, rich, open bodied, old fashioned and uncomplicated.

The present day process still includes many of the precise hand processing techniques, which make the cheese what it is. After cultures and rennet are added the milk is precisely heated before the curds are cut and then stirred mechanically in the cheese vat. After the mixture “cooks,” the whey is drained and the curds are moved to a draining table with buckets. The curds are stirred by hand and salt is hand mixed into the recipe. Finally, the curds are hand packed into dressed molds and place into a mechanical press where the rest of the whey will be squeezed out.

The next day the cheeses are removed from the molds and placed on racks in the drying room. They remain there for 5-7 days and are placed in coolers for aging. At 2 months the cheese is considered ‘Young’ and ready to eat. It will become tangier as it ages and labeled ‘Mature’ between 8 – 12 months.

Dear Frog City Cheese,

I am sorry we didn’t get to taste your yummy, yummy cheese. Next time we are up there, we will stop by.

Sincerely,

Luke & Carolyn

King Arthur Flour Store

135 Route 5 South
Norwich, Vermont 05055
phone: 802.649.3361

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

Once you get into baking you come across King Arthur Flour and give it a try. Depending on where you buy it, it is only a little bit more expensive than regular flour and always delivers great results. King Arthur tries to foster a baking culture; they have a baking tour that travels the country teaching people about baking. They also have an amazing blog that not only has great recipes, but is also a great read. They are also not new to this–they have been making flour since 1790 and is America’s oldest flour company. All of this makes the King Arthur HQ and Store a bit like nirvana for a baker.

Their store has a ridiculous number of cooking implements and ingredients. Also, for those with more time and/or money, they also offer classes and full blown professional courses. All and all, a very impressive place that is well worth the visit. I walked away without doing too much damage to our finances. We only got a silicon mat for rolling out dough and baking mixes for our parents. I did pick up a catalog though so their could be some future damage.

Of course, being the goof that I am, I had to take a photo on the King Arthur throne.

Also, I made a mistake when I originally wrote down the address. I typed it into the GPS and this is where we ended up. Don’t worry, the correct address is posted above.

Update!!
————————————————–

PJ’s comment just reminded me that I forgot to include one of the best things about King Arthur, and probably one of the most import things for everyone not making it up to Vermont anytime soon… They have a baking blog and tons of recipes online! The name of their blog is Bakers’ Banter and they try out recipes and report back on the results… all with a healthy dose of character and wit. I have subscribed to it for a bit and found tons of recipes I keep meaning to try. Here are the top 3 that I starred in Google Reader, and really will get around to trying.

• (Garlic) KNOT for the faint of heart…
• Yeast bread in a hurry: it doesn’t HAVE to take forever. Honest.
• Sandwich Central: Rustic Olive Rolls

A bonus read is a baking tests with the easy bake oven. Check out their blog. Seriously, you will leave hungry, but energized to try making something.

Bufala di Vermont

2749 Church Hill Road
S. Woodstock, VT 05071
802-457-4540

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

Mozzarella is a soft cheese that is best fresh. I got water buffalo mozzarella before from Vace that was flown in from Italy. It was very tasty and creamy but it lacked the “freshness” of really fresh mozzarella. When it is fresh, mozzarella should also be a little squeaky like cheese curds. With this in mind, we made it a mission to try and get some fresh water buffalo mozzarella from one of the few places you can in U.S. This stuff should be the schiznit, did it live up to expectations?…read on!

Water buffalo are not something you expect to see grazing the Vermont countryside. They are hairy, horned animals that would look more at home in a rice paddy in Asia.

Water buffalo milk is much thicker than normal cow milk. It contains much less water and more protein and fat. This all makes for very yummy cheese. The best mozzarella is made using water buffalo milk, and it is prized by Italians. The higher percentage of solids in the milk means you can get more cheese from a gallon of milk. The bummer is that water buffalo produce less milk than cows. A dairy cow will produce between 50 and 70 pounds of milk a day, while a water buffalo will produce 10-12 pounds a day.

Bufala di Vermont is one of two places in the U.S. were water buffalo are raised for their milk and the only place making water buffalo mozzarella. Up until recently Bufala di Vermont was known as the Woodstock Water Buffalo Company, which unfortunately closed. Luckily, an Italian born Canadian named Frank Abballe took up the reins and tried to make a go of it. Abballe plans to diversify offerings and improve distribution. I am hopful we can start getting their products down in DC.

They are not quite set up to for tourists yet. Right now you drive up dirt road and park and then go up to a building opposite their barn. This building houses the cheese making facilities and their office, which is upstairs. Luckily someone was in! He invited us to look around the barn and also say hi to the new baby calves in their pen. They are curious and beyond cute. He said they just took one of the calves down to a Boston Whole Foods for a little publicity tour. I am sure he won over more than a few hearts.

After saying hi to the water buffalo, we went back to the offices and bought a ball of mozzarella. The guy went and got it right from the cheese making plant. It doesn’t get much fresher than that! He also threw in a container of their Water Buffalo Yogurt, which was a real bonus.

The mozzarella was amazing! The texture was airy and soft, yet creamy, and had a real structure instead of just being a blob. There was also so much more mozzarella flavor than ordinary fresh mozzarella. To me, fresh mozzarella is usually pretty bland; this cheese tasted like cheese, not a piece of styrofoam. It is possible to get the same flavor with imported mozzarella or the same texture with fresh, artisan mozzarella, but this brought both aspects together perfectly. We ate half of it straight from the container. It was that good. When we got home we tossed the rest with some tomatoes, olive oil and salt.

The yogurt they gave us was equally amazing. It was almost as thick as a custard and creamier than you could believe. That is because there was lots of fat in it. Whatever, it was better than ice cream. If you ever see their mozzarella or yogurt, you MUST buy and try.

Crowley Cheese
14 Crowley Lane
Healdville, VT 05758
Phone: (802)259-2340

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

I met one of the most amazing cheese makers on our tour…and I totally forgot to ask his name. This is what separates us bloggers from real reporters. Every now and then we miss some details. Luckily he was wearing a shirt with his name on it…or a name on it. Anyhow I will go with that and call him Hutch.

This is not the point; the point is that Crowley Cheese is an American original. They make damn good cheese and have been doing it the same way since 1824. They are the oldest cheese makers in America, and they still make their cheese the same way they did back then, by hand.

Hutch walked us through how they make their cheese. It was by far the best tour we got on our trip. Crowley makes Colby cheese, but as Hutch was quick to point out, Crowley was making cheese before anyone in Colby, Wisconsin. The only reason that the style they make is referred to as Colby is because in the 1880s a survey of American cheeses started out West and worked East. They got to Colby, Wisconsin before they got to Healdville, Vermont. Such is life.

The tour we got was great. The cheese “factory” has more in common with a barn than modern factories which look more like operating rooms. This is not say it wasn’t clean, everything gets bleached down between batches and all of the pipes hold a bleach solution when they are not pumping milk. Instead of looking sterile and inhuman, this building reflected the history and character that this cheese has and the amount of personal effort that goes into making each block.

The whole process starts in the milk holding tanks. They get their milk from a variety of farms, so there may be a difference from batch to batch. Before a shipment gets accepted, it gets tasted and a bacterial count is performed. The first step in making the cheese is pumping milk up from this holding tank in the basement to the a very large tub on the ground floor. This tub is heated by steam from a small boiler in the basement. Once the milk is heated, rennet is added causing the milk to curdle. Rennet comes from the stomachs of calves and it binds together the proteins in milk. These days it comes in convenient 5 gallon plastic jugs, but the old school way of doing it was to hang the stomach over the tub of milk. Thank God for progress.

Once the milk curdles, a sheet of solid curd will form on the top. The cheesemakers then cut this sheet by hand using a comb-like raking tool. The curds are brought up to temperature and then most of the whey (the watery part, curd is the solid part) is drained. The cheesemakers then have to scoop the curds from the tub to a very large sink on the other side of the room. In the sink they wash the cheese with spring water. The curds are mixed with salt and then placed in molds, both rounds and blocks. The metal molds are lined with cheese cloth, and are used to shape the cheese and remove any remaining whey. They are placed in a large hydraulic press, where they have the dickens squeezed out of them. This is one of the few places where anything mechanized is used.

After the cheese has been pressed and has sat over night, it is removed from the molds. It is either cut into smaller blocks using a wire grid or left whole. The next step is to wax the cheese. The smaller blocks are dipped into a slow cooker full of wax, while the larger blocks go into a large cauldron of wax that is heated by steam and dates back to the 1800s. The wax is mostly bees wax and has shot up in price because of all the trouble bees have been having. Some of the cheese will be aged. Crowley has 4 different ages: mild, medium, sharp and extra sharp. Their aging room is in the attic, so all of the cheese has to be carried upstairs…by hand.

Yep. That is how cheese is made. Or at least that is my understanding of how cheese is made. Take it for what it is worth. What I do know, is that the fine folks at Crowley know how cheese is made and do a damn good job of making it. Their extra sharp Colby is amazing. It has full flavor and tang of a English cheddar but it is not as dry and crumbly. It is a great cheese, made by hand in the traditional way, full of history, heritage and character…really what more could you look for. If you find a block, buy it. If you are anywhere near Healdville, Vermont, stop by, they are great people.

So remember way back, about a 1000 words ago when I was comparing bloggers with real writers? Well, I did some Googling and it looks like a real writer, wrote about Crowley. Her story has everything you would want, actual names, quotes, and fact that have a better chance of being correct. I recommend giving it a read.

Here is my last parting tid bit; Crowely is owned by a group of 5 shareholders who bought the company from the Smiths, who bought the company from the Crowleys. The group has owned Crowley since the 1970s and operates it more like a hobby than the treasure it really is. They need to get their butts in gear and work on consistent funding for production, better branding that reflects the heritage of the cheese and how it is produced, and improved distribution. If I can get Grafton Cheddar down in DC, I should be able to get Crowley. These days everyone is looking for food that is “real”; Crowley is it, and it shouldn’t be so obscure. Shareholders, if by chance you read this, come talk to me I have ideas.

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

Helmut’s Strudel Shop in Rockport, MA has amazing coffee cake muffins, among other things, including coffee and cheese strudel. Every time we go to Rockport we make a trip to Bearskin Neck for some “penny” candy, salt water taffy and coffee cake muffins. Sometime we even call ahead and ask them to save some for us. They are that good. And when we get home they don’t last long!

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

I like old people candy. There, I’ve said it. Don’t give me any sour flavored, blue colored, gummy candy treats. Instead give me black licorice or better yet some NECCO wafers.

What better to do, when in Boston, than go to the New England Confectionary Company – Home of the NECCO Wafer. NECCO Wafers are the longest produced candy (or confections as fancy people say) in the United States. This is all well and good, but they register pretty low on the excitement scale. The wafers are pretty simple, made out of sugar, starch, a little flavor and a little color. This is all compressed into a dry, hard, disc. None of this should be exciting to anyone under the age of 60. There are no bright colors, outrageous flavors or crazy gimmicks. Still, for some reason I like the dang things.

This brings us full circle to my visit to the NECCO HQ, located in beautiful Revere, MA. Unfortunately you can’t tour the factory floor, but they do have a Candy Shoppe (which is Shop in olden time speak) where they sell every type of candy NECCO makes and then some. We picked up a roll of regular NECCO Wafer, a roll of Smoothie Wafers, a SkyBar and a NECCO t-shirt. Since NECCO also makes/invented Conversation Hearts, this might be a good place to visit before Valentines day. Definitely worth the trip for any “NECCO Head” or someone simply looking for something to do in Revere who doesn’t like delicious Roast Beef sandwiches.