cheese

During the lazy, hazy days of summer, it’s easy to find relief from the scorching sun and stifling humidity in air-conditioned shopping malls, movie theaters and restaurants. But after having coped with the real chill of winter just a few months ago, why go into an artificial deep freeze? Instead, embrace the season and enjoy a sunny picnic with a little help from the Mill City Farmers’ Market.

There is a steady wet drizzle and a thick coat of fog covering the road as I drive southwest from Minneapolis to Cedar Summit Creamery just outside of New Prague. It is, in other words, the perfect, sloppy, late-winter day to visit a farm.

The benefits of eating local cannot be understated: fresher and more flavorful products, economic support for local small-scale farmers and producers, less harmful environmental impacts and better appreciation for the delicious bounty to be found closer to home. But for many food lovers, embracing this philosophy comes with a trade-off.

Call it the Locavore’s Dilemma – how can one reconcile an earnest desire to eat local with the enjoyment of certain foods whose best examples are imported from great distances? Must we resign ourselves to giving up authentic Italian prosciutto or France’s renowned fromages, in effect abstaining from some of Europe’s finest culinary traditions, in the name of conscientious consumption?

The cheese available in the United States has changed dramatically in the past decade. From coast to coast, the quantity and quality of locally made cheese has increased, and so has our interest in sampling new and different types. From Brebis (sheep’s milk cheese) to Chêvre (goat’s milk cheese), and from a triple cream to a Tomme, we are wide open to new tastes and textures; but we may not be up to speed when it comes to taking care of this fragile food.

To be able to fully enjoy the flavors of a cheese it needs be stored properly and served at the right temperature. Those delicate wheels, wedges, blocks and logs that have been carefully coaxed to ripened perfection and are teeming with beneficial microorganisms that deserve better treatment than in your fridge and on your counter.

Photo Credit: Kate NG SommersPerhaps you shop at the local coops and look for that label on all of your purchases. But with a limited budget, maybe you’ve wondered what makes the most sense to buy organic. As a nutritionist working with people to improve the quality of their diet, I get asked this question a lot. So here are six suggestions for prioritizing your spending to maximize your dollars and your health.

Last Sunday, my family and I (and a few friends) took the opportunity to visit the Kingfield Farmers Market in South Minneapolis. It's been ages since I've been there, but pretty much everyone I know raves about it. It's easy to see why.

This is a big local, sustainable, and organic food weekend in the Twin Cities, so I thought I'd dedicate this post to a few of the events I'm most likely to try and make it to this Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26:

Traditional Foods Minnesota, a self proclaimed "real food warehouse" and "buying club," offers some of the Twin Cities best foods at the lowest prices. Traditional Foods focuses on providing a wide variety of meats, cheeses, milk, eggs, poultry, fish and dry goods of the following kinds:

About a month ago, I went to the Minneapolis Whole Foods Market looking for local meat. I’ve been a Minnesotan long enough to know that our produce choices are severely limited in the winter months, but I figured there’d be plenty of local pork and beef to bring home. Turns out I was wrong - there was almost none. I left Whole Foods confused and surprised, and I left them a note. The next day, Renee Howard sent me an email.

After finishing Michael Pollan's amazing new(est) book, In Defense of Food (which will be reviewed in a later post), my wife Laura and I decided that Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, was right for us. Our neighbors, who read Barbara Kingsover's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food (also to be reviewed later) instead, were way ahead of us. We'd been enjoying locally grown foods (kale, turnips, cheeses - we live in Minneapolis!) at their home for months, so we knew they would have already researched the options. After some consideration, we joined Harmony Valley Farm, a CSA based closer to Madison, WI, but doing a good deal of business in the Twin Cities.