October 2, 2009 by Lenore.

Welcome to the first installment of “Cheese Chicks!”  The actual “cheese chicks” would be Debra (who already writes wonderful blogs here on how to cook all your fabulous, locally produced food) and myself, Lenore.  We are both home cheesemakers and want to share our experiences, experiments, and recipes with others who love cheese just as much as we do.  You don’t have to want to make cheese to enjoy our installments, but you do have to like eating cheese!  We will also be writing about local, fabulous cheese finds as we eat our way through the region.  Someone has to do it, so let us save you the calories!

Debra and I met several years ago during one of Northwest Earth Institute’s sustainability workshops, called “Menu For the Future.”  During the last session, the group comes together to celebrate the experience, and I decided my contribution would be a homemade mozzarella cheese braid.  Now, I knew that Debra was a professional chef, so I was pretty nervous about bringing food in, but it turns out that she, and the entire class, loved it!  I learned that she had tried cheesemaking as well, and so our friendship began.  We have since shared many cheese successes, failures, and discoveries and we even began teaching cheesemaking together through the Kittery and Exeter Adult Education programs.  The classes sell out, they’re a blast to teach, and we’ve loved watching our students see the “magic” of turning milk into cheese.  We hope our students, and you the public, enjoy the upcoming installments of “Cheese Chicks!” as we continue to learn and discover all that is cheese.

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October 2, 2009 by Jeff.

It’s easier than having to grow it all yourself.

Beth Poitier has nice post up at UNH’s Discover(ing) Sustainability blog.  She’s thankful that the Seacoast’s farmers have had more success with their farms than she has had with her garden.  And she’s right.  The growers that we get our food from have a lot more training and experience than your average backyard gardener.  They’re also growing food for a living so they have a bit more invested in ensuring that things go well and that their crops make it to market.  So the next time you look in your backyard and the pickings look a little slim remember that they are plenty of farmers’ markets and farm stands nearby to bail you out and the growing season isn’t over yet.

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