Pampers and Paklava

Say cheese

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Finger Lakes Farmstead Bier Meck cheeseOne of my fondest food memories growing up in upstate New York is the cheese. And my favorite cheeses, even as a child, were those with a good kick. Place a sliver of sharp, aged cheddar on top of a slice of crisp Empire apple, and I’m transported to snack heaven. I like my cheese assertive, sharp enough to make my lips tingle.

Whenever I go back to visit, I try to bring home a bite from my past: cheese. During our recent trip to visit family, Big Papa and I took a side excursion to the Ithaca and the Finger Lakes. The Finger Lakes, like much of upstate New York, is home to a lot of cows, cows who provide delicious milk that’s ideal for making delicious cheese.

Bier Meck was the cheese we carried back across the country with us. It’s a gouda-styled farmstead cheese soaked in brine made from Ithaca Beer Company’s Gorges Smoked Porter Ale and then aged for at least 60 days. Bier Meck is one the cheeses made by Finger Lakes Farmstead Cheese. They make raw milk cheese from their family-owned Holstein cows in tiny Mecklenburg, New York. In fact the ‘Meck’ in Beir Meck refers to Mecklenburg, which is a located about twelve miles west of Ithaca.

All Finger Lakes Farmstead cheeses are made from raw milk that is free of growth hormones or antibiotics. Their cows are always in pasture, in season and during the winter they dine on winter forage grown on the farm. The cheeses are called “farmstead” because they are made from the milk of one farm only.

Maggie and Bier Meck cheese, Finger Lakes Farmstead CheeseJust as Memorial Day weekend was getting started, our replacement bottle of Seneca Drums gin arrived. I mixed up a couple of gin and tonics for me and Big Papa before taking the cheese out of the fridge.

Maggie, our cat and cheese aficionada, was beside herself with ecstasy before I even got the package of cheese open. Her eyes opened wide, and her head bobbed and weaved as I sliced it up to put on crackers.

I can’t imagine a finer pairing. The creamy-in-the-mouth cheese had a touch of smoke and nut-like flavor which perfectly balanced the fresh juniper and herbal notes in the Seneca Drums gin. Let’s just say that the cheese didn’t last long.

And Miss Maggie? What a lucky kitten: a cat-sized piece of cheese was just the right accompaniment for a bite of catnip, snipped fresh off the plant on the back deck. She lay in the sunshine, purring. We sat on the bench next to her sipping and noshing, all three of us in an upstate New York state of mind, even though we were 3,000 miles away in Seattle.

Want more to put on your cracker? Check out Wanderfood Wednesday!

Hillsides covered in color

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Growing up in central New York State, I got to experience fall at its finest. Come late September, first one tree and then another would start a spectacular transformation and put aside its summer dress for a fall cloak of color. Hues of yellow and gold, red and burgundy slowly appeared on trees up and down the streets.

By early to mid-October, the countryside was ablaze. Hills looked like an oil painting where the artist lost his paint from the blue and green side of the palette. All that was left were the warm tones of autumn. It was a magical time of the year when Mother Nature took out her special wand and slowly drew it over the hillsides and trees morphed from a field of green to a tapestry of red and gold.

In 1982, I moved to the west coast, first the San Francisco bay area for three years and then Seattle, the city I’ve called home for the past 25 years. Living in California during the fall was like being inside a vacation brochure. Palm trees lined the street that went into campus. While it wasn’t quite L.A.-Santa-in-swim-trunks, it sure didn’t feel like the beginning of the sweater season I knew and loved growing up near Syracuse, New York.

One of the reasons I moved north to Washington State in 1985 was that on cloudy days (and there are plenty of them) when you couldn’t really see the mountains, the roll of the hillsides and the mix of deciduous trees almost felt like the towns of my youth. Still, in my mind, the northwest didn’t hold a candle to the northeast when it came to fall color. I would point to a maple tree on the side of the road and say wistfully: “See that tree over there. Well, imagine hillsides covered in color.” It became my mantra and Seattle friends who knew me well would recite the second line moments after I launched into the first.

The past few years though, I’ve begun to change my tune. Sure there are days when it seems like the scenery is a soggy mess of muted brown, but there are also days when the skies are clear and blue and the rainbow of colors in the trees is so electric your eyes almost hurt from looking directly at them. And while the hillsides and mountains have a preponderance of evergreens, as I drive up and down the streets there is crimson as far as the eye can see.

All hail fall. Though I’m sad to see the summer pass, autumn brings the world in a little closer: a hour spent tucked in a cozy chair reading a good book, coming inside to sip hot cider after an chilly afternoon’s walk, or snuggling close with Big Papa as we watch the trees weave a many-colored quilt to drop on the garden below.

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came –
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

~George Cooper, “October’s Party”