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”.
A few Fridays ago, the Boston-based staff of culture was opening eight bottles of beer and cutting into some delicious cheese. All in the name of an article, obviously. Heading up the endeavor was Amy Scheuerman, our Associate Editor and Web Director. She concocted this idea after spending her holiday season pairing cheese to some of her favorite beers, and featuring it on her blog, PaulandAmyonBeer. The folks here at culture happen to enjoy beer as well, so she recreated the experiment on a larger scale: “I was happy to take it on myself, but boy did I not know what I was getting into.” But if anyone is going to wade through the hundreds of beer and cheese options, Amy is a pretty great choice.
Officially, Amy manages the special issue publications and the content on the website. Unofficially, she is our “list maker, bad dancer, beer drinker, and intern acquirer for the magazine. And I do a bit of HTML and editing too.” She is also the go-to person for the interns, answering our questions and establishing our projects. And an interviewer for any open positions. And a test cook for cheese recipes. Her days start by uploading content to the website, but only her Post-It notes know where the day will go from there.
Amy entered the food world when she started a food blog centered around cooking using ingredients from local farmers’ markets; “I was so impressed with the people I met while shopping at the market that I ended up quitting my job as a chemist and working on a farm for a spring and summer…it was one of the happiest summers I’ve ever had and it changed how I think about food.” From there, Amy got her MS in Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the Friedman School of Nutrition. She interned at Edible Boston and spent two years at America’s Test Kitchen. She came to culture in search of a focus on sustainable food and small farmers. And her dad was ecstatic; “Three years ago I innocently sent him a cheesemaking kit from Ricki Carroll, and he went off the deep end with delight. He started making cheese all the time, pounds and pounds of cheese. He bought a wine fridge and converted it into a cheese cave. His apartment is tiny and he probably has at least 8 pounds of cheese in there on any given day.”
Now that she has successfully paired her beers and cheeses, one might think that Amy has a lot more free time. One would be wrong in that assumption.The website and its content will always need updating, a new issue of the magazine is always on the horizon, and the interns will never, ever, run out of questions.
Kate Edeker
Kate is currently in the Publishing & Writing MA program at Emerson College. While in undergraduate, she spent time working in the kitchen of a Mediterranean restaurant, where she fell deeply and permanently in love with the culinary world. And if you're making a grilled cheese sandwich, she encourages goat cheese with raspberry jam on the top.
