Meeting the Staff: Stephanie Skinner
February 21, 2013 - 4:00pm | by kate e.When Stephanie Skinner, the publisher and co-founder of culture, first envisioned the magazine, it was “a nice little magazine nestled in the woods of the Berkshires. We’d dabble a bit in digital, but we’d never stress ourselves out.” And the world of cheese is thankful that she was wrong. culture has grown beyond its humble origins, bringing the word on cheese to thousands. And all of this has happened with Stephanie in the background, finding ever-new and innovative directions for the magazine. “I always try to foresee what trends are coming and prepare us on capitalize on them...
Week Three of Our Cheese Plate Party Winners: Cheese Pairings to Please a Crowd
February 20, 2013 - 12:14pm | by lauren
Welcome to the third installment of our Winter Cheese Plate Winners! Here’s where you’ll find five weeks of our winning foodie bloggers, sharing their personal spins on our Winter 2012 Cheese Plate! This next post in our series comes from Leah McFadden, the ACS-Certified Cheese Professional and blogger behind Shootin’ The Bries, where she recounts her many adventures in cheese tasting! Be sure to check back next Wednesday for the fourth post in this series, from Caitlin Harvey, of Milk’s Leap!
Distant Cheeses, Local Farmers: Bringing Raclette Home
February 19, 2013 - 10:35am | by mollyIn this blog series our intrepid intern Molly will find and interview American cheesemakers attempting to re-create traditional European cheeses. Learn about the difficulties as well as the benefits of this type of cheese making, as well as how terroir and the idea of a cheese tied to a location so distant changes when that cheese is made in a new location. Also, each week you'll have a chance to win an issue of culture: the word on cheese. The winner of last week's prize was Patrick Farrington!
Starting a Dairy, aka Spending All My Life's Savings
February 15, 2013 - 2:08am | by seana and marissaWhile Seana and Dave’s main focus right now is the creamery, my main focus is growing my dairy flock and buying milking equipment. Ultimately I want to have a couple hundred ewes, so I’m going to buy 50 more ewe lambs this May. I also need to buy stanchions, milk buckets and maybe an industrial refrigerator…but more on that later. It’s hard to find quality dairy ewes and I’ve found it especially difficult since I’m trying to keep my flock CL-free. While not life threatening, CL causes large, bulging abscesses that show up continuously throughout the animals’ life. It’s impossible to get rid of once the bacteria are introduced to your farm. Dairy sheep aren’t common in our country and come from a small pool of genetics, which means CL runs pretty rampant in the U.S.
Tuesday Tasting: Sartori Cheeses
February 14, 2013 - 2:21pm | by AmyEach week we taste a sampling of cheeses in our Cambridge office and discuss their flavors, textures, and our general impressions of them. Yum!
Aged Goat
Goat's Milk - Wisconsin
Meeting the Staff: Lassa Skinner
February 13, 2013 - 4:04pm | by kate e.In this blog series intern Kate E. interviews the staff here at culture: the word on cheese to give you an inside look at a day in the life of this goofy group of cheese-lovers and their work on the magazine you've come to love. Have specific questions for or about our staff? Be sure to send them to staff@culturecheesemag with the subject line, "Meet the Staff".
Valentine's Day Poetry Winners 2013
February 13, 2013 - 11:15am | by wfertman
Once again, true love found a whey in our 2013 cheese-love poetry contest.
As usual, entries spanned from the impish to the outright racy, but in the end, three were chosen:
wendyleek was the soul of brevity with her three line pun-fest, while Coffee Lover charmed some of our judges with her innocent simplicity. Finally, monger Gordon Edgar's elegant sestina took the prize for its deeply felt examination of a life working in cheese.
Week Two of Our Cheese Plate Party Winners: A Cheese Plate Built For Two
February 12, 2013 - 2:16pm | by lauren
Welcome to the second installment of our Winter Cheese Plate Winners! Here’s where you’ll find five weeks of our winning foodie bloggers, sharing their personal spins on our Winter 2012 Cheese Plate! Our next guest post comes from Katherine Hysmith, a displaced Texan and grad student at Boston University’s Gastronomy program, recording her New England kitchen adventures at The Young Austinian. Check back next Wednesday for the third post in this series, from Leah McFadden, of Shootin The Bries!
Distant Cheeses, Local Farmers: Authentic Dutch Gouda in Wisconsin
February 11, 2013 - 11:12am | by mollyIn this blog series our intrepid intern Molly will find and interview American cheesemakers attempting to re-create traditional European cheeses. Learn about the difficulties as well as the benefits of this type of cheese making, as well as how terroir and the idea of a cheese tied to a location so distant changes when that cheese is made in a new location. Also, each week you'll have a chance to win an issue of culture: the word on cheese. The winner of last week's prize was Noel!
For the past several weeks, I've been writing about American cheesemakers who have been inspired by European traditions. Some have gone to Europe to learn about cheesemaking, while others have loosely adapted European recipes to their liking.
No Citric Acid? No Problem!
February 11, 2013 - 11:09am | by amanda
The previous recipe, my first DIY cheese-making blog, was pretty straightforward. But there was just one problem: citric acid was really difficult to find.
A cheese-making friend of mine ran into this problem a few weeks back—and she hasn’t made cheese since. The grocery store attendants didn’t know what citric acid was and figured she was using it for a nefarious plot. Perhaps she should have referred to citric acid as “sour salt” to avert suspicion.
You can order citric acid/sour salt online, but who wants to pay extra for shipping and handling? Rennet tablets were another “controversial” ingredient. My friend surprisingly never heard of rennet tablets even though she makes cheese all the time.
