A Different Green for St. Patty's Day

Wait! That's not a shamrock!

St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner - just about time to start thinking about the traditional corned beef and cabbage, green beer, and cupcakes with mysterious green frosting.

But what if you don't like corned beef?

Instead of traditional food, why not just serve the traditional color? I'm not talking about a bowl of lettuce, but how about a bowl of pasta? Instead of the traditional red sauce, serve your pasta with pesto instead.

Pesto is traditionally made with basil and pine nuts, but lately pesto had evolved into all sorts of variations, including arugula pesto and spinach pesto and pesto with almonds or pistachios instead of pine nuts. The thing about pesto is that it's easy to make, and once you know the basics you can adapt and modify and change things to your heart's desire.

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Alton Brown's 4-Minute Peanut Butter Fudge

I'm a huuuuuuge Alton Brown fan, so when I found out that he had a new cookbook out, I had to get my paws on it. Good Eats 2: The Middle Years now sits nicely on the shelf right next to Good Eats: The Early Years.

Just like the first book, The Middle Years is all about the recipes from the TV series, but unlike the downloadable recipes on the Food Network site, there are tidbits about the shows, and a good sprinkling of the science and the detailed explanations of how and why things work. And there's a good bit of humor, too. When you least expect it, he tosses in a quick little one-liner, then goes back to business. Just like the show.

With any new cookbook, the tough decision is what to make first. Should it be something complicated, or should it be something simple? Savory or sweet? Something I'm familiar with or something completely new?

In the end, I settled for something simple and sweet. After all, Valentine's Day is just around to corner, so sweets are very appropriate.

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Robin Chocolates (Yum!)

Robin Autorino has a lot to celebrate in February, but she’s not going to have the luxury of taking much time off to do that celebrating. Her business, Robin Chocolates, is bound to keep her busy supplying area sweethearts with chocolates for Valentine’s Day.

Aurorino took a circuitous route to becoming a chocolatier, including a stint in the navy and quite a few years in IT. Her first foray into chocolate was when her son, Nikolas, was young. She helped him make some chocolate-dipped pretzels, which they wrapped up and tied with ribbons and gave as little gifts.

About six years ago, she decided she wasn’t happy in the IT world and signed up for cooking classes that included training in France. Although she was sure she wanted to be a chef, that time in France changed her mind. “I decided I wanted to be on the dessert side of the world,” she said.

After she graduated and before starting her own business, she worked for several well-known local restaurants, but then she started making chocolates at home and bringing them in to work for people to taste.
One day, she decided the time was right and she left the restaurant and launched her chocolate business. Three years ago on February 3, she got an order from a local florist for 12 four-piece boxes of candy, and that was the day Robin Chocolates was born.

It was a risk, but Autorino said that she inherited some of her mom’s determination - mom holds the record for the Ironman Hawaii Triathalon for 70-74 year-olds, and at 81 she still bikes and swims regularly. “Mom is a chocoholic,” Autorino said. “When I started with chocolates, she was really supportive.”

Aurorino said that the first year she was in business, it was very slow, but the second year saw the business double. In the third year, it more than doubled again. She credits part of her success to the fact that she’s always learning about her craft. Although she knows she’s good at what she does, she always asks, “What can I do better?”

Several of her truffles have won awards at chocolate shows, and her business has gotten some impressive media attention. She was recently featured on a Channel 9 News segment and she will be on Fox’s Good Day Colorado at 6:45, 7:45, and 7:45 a.m. on Feb 2.

But Robin Chocolates isn’t a one-gal show.  Autorino’s son, Nik, “will help out in just about any capacity,” she said. Her husband, Chris, helps with design and with her website.

Besides family, she has a number of part-time employees. At the height of chocolate-making during the Christmas rush, she had as many as six people helping her at one time, including her right-hand gal, Gabrielle “Ellie” Strandqueist who is the assistant pastry chef at The Mediterranean in Boulder.

And now Autorino is gearing up for her anniversary celebration on February 3 from 1-4 p.m. when she’ll have “something special” and a gift basket give-away at “her store” inside Cayenne Kitchen in Longmont.

Autorino recently purchased a temperature-controlled display case which is installed inside Cayenne Kitchen, so now customers can choose their own single truffles or fill a box with even more favorites. She considers that case “her store” since it’s the one place where all of her truffle flavors are available.

The celebration continues on Feb. 12, when she will be toasting s’mores at Cayenne. The s’mores will be made with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows, and of course there will be top-quality chocolate. For Valentine’s shoppers, Autorino will have some special items to wow the chocolate-lover in your life.

For more information, see www.robinchocolates.com, email robin@robinchocolates.com or see her chocolates at Cayenne Kitchen, 372 Main St., Longmont.

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Bulking Up

This was published in the January issue of the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series.

If the words “bulk food store” make you envision a behemoth warehouse filled with giant bags of rice and restaurant-sized jars of pickles, you’ll be in for a surprise when you step into Simply Bulk in Longmont. The “bulk” in Simply Bulk means they buy in bulk so you can buy in any quantity you want, whether it’s five pounds of flour, or a couple ounces of a spice you don’t use often.

The business is owned and run by Phil Bratty and his wife, Georgia, and it  has been open in Longmont since March 1, 2010. Phil Bratty said that it may be the only business in the country that is entirely bulk products.

Bratty isn’t a newcomer to the food industry. For the eight years before opening the store, he worked for a natural food chain in the bulk foods end of the business, and he spent a total of about 30 years in the food business.

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Holiday Crescent Cookies

I was first introduced to these cookies as a child when we'd visit relatives on Christmas Eve every year. These powdery delights were my favorite, and when I got old enough to be interested, I asked my aunt for the recipe. I was crushed when I found out they were bakery cookies, but eventually I found a recipe that was similar.

Then I found a lot of recipes, with a lot of names. These could be Mexican Wedding Cookies or they could be Snowballs, but when the winter holidays roll around, these become Crescent Cookies at my house.

It's easier to make a round ball and be done with it, but the familiar crescent shape reminds me of those long-ago holidays when the most pressing question was whether Santa made it to our house while we were out, or if he was working the late shift and would be stopping by after we were all asleep.

One trick to these cookies is rolling them in the powdered sugar at just the right time. If you do it when the cookies are warm, the sugar will melt and it will be a mess. Wait until the cookies are stone cold, and the sugar won't stick nearly as well. And we all know that the powdered sugar clinging to them is a critical part of the fun as it sprinkles down when you eat them.

Walnuts or pecans are my favorites in these cookies, but you could use any nut you like. Chop them finely, but don't let them turn completely into dust - you want some small bits and pieces in these cookies.

Holiday Crescent Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup finely chopped Marcona almonds

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla and beat in. Add the flour and nuts and blend well.

Gather the dough and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Break off small balls of dough - about a tablespoon or so - and form them into crescent shapes.

Note: when the dough is right out of the refrigerator, it might be a bit too firm to form. It's fine to let it sit out for a short while to warm up.

Place them formed cookies on the baking sheet, leaving space between them. When you've used up all the dough (or the sheet is full) bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes. The cookies will be lightly browned on the bottom and the edges, but otherwise still very pale.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a minute or two to firm up (they're crumbly while warm) then transfer to a rack to cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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A Visit with The Bald Brewer

This was published in the July, 2010 issue of the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series.

I was pretty excited when I saw a new brewing store that opened up in Longmont. Not that I'm about to start brewing beer and wine at home, but I figured it there would be at least a few interesting things I could use for regular cooking.

The Bald Brewer didn't disappoint. Although it's a tiny building, there are plenty of interesting grains along with some specialty sugars and flavorings that could be very interesting to experiment with. But brewers will find even more, including specialty hops, yeasts, and hardware needed for brewing and bottling.

Miesel said that not only is beer brewing an inexpensive hobby, it can be economical. The cost of ingredients for making 5 gallons of beer is about $35-$45, "and after equipment, it's 30-40 percent cheaper than [buying beer] in the store," Miesel said.

Before opening the store, Miesel’s career had been in psychology, but he said, "I needed a break." So he looked at other businesses. "I looked at coffee before I decided to do brewing." Miesel said. "I brew, myself." Miesel hasn't left his previous career behind, though, since he teaches a master's course online.

Part of the decision to open a brewing store was that he wanted to "do his own thing" and meet interesting people."It's a very unique business," he said. "It generally draws scientifically-minded people."

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Back to My Roots

Once again, I went digging in the Left Hand Valley Courier archives to see what other food articles I've written. This one appeared in 2007, as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series that looks at interesting businesses outside the normal delivery zone of the newspaper.

I grew up in the Chicago area, where ethnic food was easy to find. Moving to Colorado was a bit of a culture shock. Not only were the regular grocery stores bereft of many items I considered normal fare, but there weren't ethnic neighborhoods or ethnic markets nearby.

It took me a while to venture far enough to find those sorts of places. Now, I know where to find more and more unusual ingredients. It's not a short jaunt as it was when I lived in Chicago, but it's a worthwhile trip when I'm craving the authentic ethnic foods that I haven't figured out how to make at home.

Vicinity And Beyond: Roots

When you think of ethnic food, what does it mean to you? Are you thinking of Indian or Chinese or Thai? Do you think about food that’s foreign to you? Or do you think about the food of your ancestors, whoever they may be?

Strictly defined, I suppose ethnic food would be anything eaten by people from a specific country or region. Sort of the opposite of the recent trend for “fusion” cuisine where you find chorizo-stuffed eggrolls and pizza topped with gyros meat and tzatziki sauce.

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The Chicago Connection

Neon green relish - a Chicago staple.

This was originally published in the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series.

The Chicago Connection

As a Chicago native, I’m a sucker for any business – and particularly any food business – that claims a Chicago connection. When I spotted a restaurant named “Chicago’s Best” in Longmont, I had to try it.

On the first visit to Chicago’s Best, my dining companion and I snarfled down Italian beef sandwiches with a side order of a Chicago-style hot dog and some fries.

For those who have never experienced an Italian beef sandwich in Chicago, let me explain that it is probably not first-date food, because there’s no polite way to eat it. You could ask for a fork and knife, but you’d just get laughed at.

The beef is sliced thin and piled high, the juice is abundant so the bread becomes quite soggy. Topped with sweet peppers, hot peppers, or both, it takes two hands to eat the sandwich, and possibly a shower afterward to hose off the juice that drips down your arms.

I’ve been to places that claim to serve a Chicago-style Italian beef, but they all have some fatal flaw – either the beef is sliced too thick, there’s not enough juice, it’s not properly seasoned (it’s not a French dip) or the offered peppers aren’t done right. And the bread has to be right. If it’s on a bun, it’s not Chicago-style.

Chicago’s Best scored high for having plentiful, thin-sliced beef, the right kind of bread and peppers, and plentiful juice. The only flaw was that the bread was grilled, or maybe toasted, so it was a bit crisper inside than a typical sandwich. It’s not a fatal flaw, since the fix is as simple as asking for the bread not to be toasted.

A Chicago-style hot dog has a few variations, but typically you’ll find Vienna hot dogs, a poppy seed bun, and a choice of toppings including mustard, onion, neon-green relish, tomato, pickle, and maybe celery salt.

Since neon-green relish doesn’t taste different than the regular variety, I can live with either. Toppings are a personal preference. But finding a Vienna hot dog nestled in a poppy seed bun in Colorado makes me smile.

Chicago’s Best scored high in the hot dog category, with added points for authentic neon-green relish.

Too stuffed to continue down the menu, we ogled the gyro rotisserie, and vowed to come back for a taste of that. And we did. A second visit scored a pizza and a gyros sandwich.

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Restaurant Review: Two Dog Diner

This article first appeared in the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity And Beyond series.

Woof! Woof!

At the corner of Tenacity and Ionosphere sits Two Dog Diner…

The sentence above could be equally at home in a sci-fi novel or in an article about a dining establishment in Prospect. Since this is a newspaper and not a pulp novel, I’ll put away the fiction-writer’s hat and tell you about the food.

If you think a diner is synonymous with a “greasy spoon” restaurant with a neon sign that simply says, “EAT,” think again. This is Prospect, where everything is exactly the way you expect it to be – in that alternate universe you keep hearing about.

Two Dog Diner has the expected long countertop and strong coffee, along with some retro-looking sugar dispensers and baked goods on display under glass.

You’ll find Formica and stainless steel and all the noisy bustling sounds you’d expect. The waitstaff is in jeans and black shirts, a uniform of sorts, but in a casual way. The menu features comfort foods.

It all seems so familiar at first, but then the alternate universe steps in and switches a few details. Yes, the sugar dispensers are old-fashioned but the sugar isn’t white. I’d guess it’s raw cane sugar.

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Great American Bake Sale: Coming Soon to Longmont

If you live in the Longmont area, please stop buy during the Neighborhood Bake Sale on May 8 at Cayenne Kitchen and pick up some tasty treats. There will be plenty of small items priced at just a dollar or two, so you won't feel like you have to walk out with a whole cake or pie. But if you need to feed a crowd, you can do that too. 

If you don't live nearby, you can get involved with a bake sale in your area, or by donate directly on the Share Our Strength website.

Every cent collected at the bake sale at Cayenne goes directly to Share Our Strength, so your $1 purchase means a lot. All of the bakers are donating their time and ingredients, and we're all hoping that our baked goods sell out before the end of the day. And yes, I will be baking my famous Danish Braids for the auction. I haven't decided on filling flavors yet, but they're all good.

As an added incentive to stop by, there will be yummy fortune cookies (I know they're yummy, because I'll be hand-making each and every one) for sale that are stuffed with secret numbers that correspond to a multitude of donated prizes including cookbooks, gadgets, massages, gift certificates from local businesses, and more.

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Wheat-Free Gourmet

This article first appeared in the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series. This was the very first time I wrote about Mary Capone, who later wrote the The Gluten-Free Italian Cookbook and just recently launched the Bella Gluten-Free line of mixes.

Obviously, she has moved far beyond what was written in this article, but I thought it would be interesting to republish it, just as a look back at where she started.

Wheat-Free Is Taste-Tee!

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a wheat-eater, maybe even a wheat-a-holic. So when I heard about the Wheat-Free Gourmet, of course I had to look into it. Who could be a more unbiased judge?

Wheat-Free Gourmet is Mary Capone’s brainchild, and what she calls a celebration of “life after wheat.” Like many people, Capone is intolerant of wheat and gluten, which limits her choices when it comes to many commercial goods.

Capone challenged that limitation, looking for alternatives for making baked goodies. What she came up with aren’t substitutes for “real” confections, but tasty treats that even wheat-eaters would enjoy. And rather than seeing her dietary restriction as a problem, she said that she preferred to “spin it and make it fun,” and thus began years of experimenting with desserts and doughs.

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Italian Braised Beef With Root Vegetables

When I saw that Michael Symon had a cookbook out, I was pretty excited. Although he’s an Iron Chef, to me he seemed like the kind of guy who would make homestyle dishes. When I saw the Italian braised beef recipe was his mother’s, I had to give it a try.

An ingredient in Symon’s beef recipe is his grandmother’s tomato sauce, but if you prefer, you can use your favorite tomato-based pasta sauce or even really good canned crushed tomatoes.

When I made this, though, I went all the way and used Symon’s sauce which simmers for 8 hours. It was definitely worth a try, and I ended up with enough sauce to freeze for later, after using what I needed for the beef.

When I made this recipe, I added more carrots and bought a large celery root. One carrot to three pounds of beef wasn’t quite enough vegetation for me.

Italian Braised Beef With Root Vegetables
Adapted from Michael Symon’s Live to Cook by Michael Symon

3-pound rump roast
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 carrot, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 small celery root, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup red wine
2 cups Yia Yia’s Sunday Sauce (or substitute)
2 bay leaves

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Season the meat liberally with salt and pepper. Season it as much as a day in advance, if you like. Take the meat out of the fridge 30 minutes before you cook.

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven, until it is nearly smoking. Sear the meat well on all sides then remove it to make room for the vegetables. Brown the vegetables, then add the garlic and cook a minute or two longer.

Add the wine, scrape up any brown bits on the bottom, then add the tomato sauce, 1 cup of water, and the bay leaves. Return the beef to the pot, bring the liquid to a simmer, and taste for seasoning, adding salt if necessary.

Cover the pot and place it in the oven. Cook for 3 hours (or up to 5 hours at local altitude), basting the meat once in a while during cooking.

Discard the bay leaves before serving. The meat can be cut or shredded. Or, as I did since it needed to cook so much longer than planned, let it cool then refrigerate overnight and cut it the next day before reheating it in the sauce. Serve over noodles or polenta.

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Eating on the Farm

This was originally published in the Left Hand Valley Courier in 2009 as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series.

It was fun to write, fun to photograph, and it was a really great meal. And it was the ultimate "locovore" experience, since we were on a farm eating food that was cooked on-site and grown on that farm or on neighboring farms,

Farm Food

Buying and eating locally-grown food is becoming more and more popular, as people try to support local businesses, including local farms and farmers. What better way to get a taste of the farm than to eat right on the farm?

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Grow Your Own!

This first appeared in the Left Hand Valley Courier in 2007 as part of my Vicinity And Beyond series.

Botanical Interests sells seeds nationwide through garden centers and similar businesses. Seeds varieties include edible and non-edible flowers, herbs and vegetables, and even sprouts and microgreens. If you want to grow some your own food, you don't have to look much further. And of you don't have garden space, or even room for some containers, you've can still grow sprouts.

The company recently started selling seeds online and just produced its first catalog. I had heard that things had changed at the company itself, so I recently went back for another visit.

The office area has been remodeled, including a new cafeteria for the employees, and there are now photos of all the employees gracing the walls. Another wall showcases photos that customers have sent of the plants and flowers growing in their own gardens.

Also new is an area where seeds are started for employees to take home for their own gardens. Coming soon are some redesigned seed packets. The watercolor designs will stay, but the packets are getting just a bit of an upgrade, including a better way of distinguishing which seeds are certified as organic.

But the old article is still timely. As we creep into planting season, it's interesting to take a look at one of the companies that handles the seeds that you might plant this spring that will bring food to your table later in the year.

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Babcia Bread - a rich, sweet Polish bread

“Babcia” means grandmother in Polish, and this is a bread that my husband’s grandmother would make for holidays and family gatherings. It was one that my husband particularly liked when he was growing up, but we thought the recipe had been lost forever.

Rewind a few years, and Grandma had been staying with her son (my husband's uncle) and while she was there, he translated and transcribed some of her recipes. Uncle belonged to a Polish social club that was putting together a club cookbook, and he submitted Grandma's recipes to the project.

When Uncle found out that I liked to cook, he sent us a copy of the cookbook. Much to my surprise, I found a recipe called "Polish Sweet Bread" with Grandma's name on it. I decided to give it a try, and immediately hit a few snags.

It's one thing to be able to cook something from memory when you've done it a million times. It's another thing to tell someone the recipe when you're not standing at the stove. Add to that the onset of Alzheimer's and the inevitable translation errors, and what I had in my hands was an incomplete and confusing recipe.

I forged on. First, I cut the recipe down to a managable size. Then I matched the ingredients with the instructions. Then I baked and tweaked and fiddled some more.

My husband recognized the bread immediately, and my mother-in-law said that it was one of the better versions of her mother's bread. Since it had never been written down before, the bread Grandma made always varied from batch to batch, but everyone agreed that this was undoubtedly one of the versions.

That updated recipe appeared in the November, 2008, edition of the Left Hand Valley Courier, in a special section of recipes submitted by the staff.

Since then, I've nailed down the ingredients and instructions a little bit better. For instance, Grandma's instructions say, "knead about 20 minutes," and she's not talking about using a stand mixer. I've adapted it to the stand mixer, with a few more clues about what it should look like when it's done. And I've given it a few of my own tweaks, as well. It's still Grandma's bread, but now it's also my recipe.

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Mead-Making

After digging around in the Left Hand Valley Courier archives for more of my food-related writing, I ran across this one from way back in 2003.

Since then, Medovina has grown quite a bit, and has won some notable national awards. Yet it remains a family operation, and still produces mead on a very small scale.

The lastest news from the meadery was the opening of a tasting room in 2009, where guests can sample meads and get a tour of the operation.

What’s the Buzz in Niwot?

The buzz could be the half-million or so bees tended by Mark Beren of Niwot. Over the winter, that number drops dramatically, but in the height of the season, each of Beren’s nine hives is home to anywhere from 50-80,000 little honey-producing striped “pets.” And according to Beren, bees are fun.

Despite the roughly 150-300 pounds of honey that Beren harvests annually from each hive, he’s not in the business of selling honey. And he certainly isn’t eating it all himself. Instead, he turns that sticky sweetness into alcohol in the form of mead, a honey-based wine.

In a 300 square foot room in Beren’s house sits the cooking and fermentation and bottling part of the business. A root cellar next to the house has been converted to a wine cellar. And a few plants here and there contribute flavorings. All of it together gives Beren his "perfect blend of art and engineering and science," as he described the business and the process.Because Beren’s winemaking business is “too big to use a home process and too small to use a commercial process,” he uses custom equipment. He currently has two 2 1/2 barrel fermentation tanks, with plans to increase to 6 tanks in the future. The nine hives may grow to as many as 20, with friends offering to become foster bee-parents. All that adds up to a yield of 3000-6000 bottles per year.

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Bee Colony Collapse

Bees have been in the news, and on food blogs, because not only do we eat the honey, but we need the bees to polinate our crops.Way back in 2007, I wrote this article for the Left Hand Valley Courier.

A Bitter Sweet Taste Of Honey

Bees have been in the news lately. Some reports say that whole colonies are dying in what has been dubbed “colony collapse,” while swarms are annoying residents by being in the wrong place.

Tom Theobald of Niwot Honey Farm said that colony collapse isn’t a new thing. “My take on this is that we’ve known about the problems for many years, but they haven’t been addressed.”

According to Theobald, “This has been a steep decline.” As many as 60 percent of the managed colonies in Colorado were lost between 1990 and 2000.

Mark Beren of Medovina in Niwot raises bees and uses the honey to make mead, a honey-based wine. “Nobody knows exactly what is causing colony collapse,” he said.

There are several theories, including the widespread use of cell phones, the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the use of pesticides.

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Your Butcher, Frank

When I first moved to this town, I was pleased to see that a real butcher shop existed. And I love the quirky name: Your Butcher, Frank. While I often lament the unavailability of many items that were availble to me in Chicago, places like Your Butcher, Frank help make up for those lost items.

When I started writing my "Vicinity and Beyond" column in the Left Hand Valley Courier, Your Butcher, Frank was the first place I visited. This is that first column, published in June, 2004. Today, Your Butcher, Frank is still going strong, and I still shop there. So even though the article is beyond old, the message is the same.

To Vicinity and Beyond

As much as you like your neighborhood, there are times when you must venture beyond to visit friends, buy things that aren't available locally, or just stretch your horizons. While you're out, why not take a look around with the Courier, and see what's in the vicinity.

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Cheese!

This article was originally published in 2006 in the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity And Beyond series.

This Is Pretty Cheesy

You’ve surely heard the cliché that you need to take someone’s words with a grain of salt? Clara White’s words may need to be taken with saltines. Or rye crisps. Or water crackers. And maybe sip of wine. You see, White and her brother Sam are the owners of the Cheese Importers Gourmet Warehouse in Longmont.

Contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, the Cheese Warehouse is most emphatically not leaving Longmont. “We love Longmont,” White said. “We love the community.”

Confusion may be because the Cheese Warehouse is opening a second retail location in Lafayette, and the wholesale warehouse has already moved there. But the retail store will stay in Longmont. Indeed, White is considering a move from the current industrial-ish location on Pratt Parkway to a more visible spot in or near downtown.

Location locomotion aside, it’s all about the cheese. When asked what her favorite was, White said, “It’s like picking your favorite child.” While she couldn’t narrow it down to just one cheese, she was very clear that the business focuses on small cheese suppliers and family farms that don’t use synthetic growth hormones on their livestock.

Like any doting parent who can’t choose a favorite, White had no trouble extolling the virtues of the individual cheeses. Halloumi was one of the first cheeses she mentioned. It’s a mild white cheese that bills itself as “the cheese that grills.” Indeed, you can even fry this cheese in a dry pan, and it won’t melt or get gooey, but it will soften and get a nice brown crust.

Another one she pointed out was the “Drunken Goat,” so named because it’s a goat cheese that “takes a bath” in wine, giving the exterior a distinctive color.

Another cheese with an interesting color is ColoRouge, a soft cheese with an orange exterior. This one is made in Fort Collins, but even closer to home, the warehouse carries cheeses from Haystack Mountain including another one of White’s favorites: Snowdrop.

White offered samples of a variety of cheeses, pairing some of them with mustard-like condiments, fruit preserves, and of course, crackers. Indeed, there’s a lot more than cheese to be found here, including “Chocolami,” a play on the words “chocolate salami” that is something like fudge.

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Cayenne (Kitchen) is Hot!

I was digging though my Left Hand Valley Courier articles to see if I'd missed reposting any food related ones, and I was surprised that I hadn't grabbed this one from my Vicinity and Beyond column in the November 2008 edition. It's not very relevant to people outside the local area, but Cayenne Kitchen is my favorite shop in town, so I have to include it here.

Besides being a great place for me to shop, I think it's also great for the town. And the owners are just plain nice people.

I was at the store on opening day to write this original piece, and I was there for the grand reopening and ribbon cutting on August 1, 2009, when the store moved out of the little house that was overflowing with great products and into a spacious new storefront on Main Street.

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