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Hey if you live in Seattle or are going to ACS, I’ll be doing an event right before the conference starts!

August 24 · 7:00pm – 10:30pm
The Calf and Kid
1531 Melrose Ave Ste C2

The day before the annual American Cheese Society conference and just up the hill at The Calf and Kid 1531 Melrose Ave, Seattle WA 98122. Gordon Edgar will read from his book Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge and Sheana Davis, The Epicurean Connection, will serve some hecka good Northern California cheeses including Delice de la Vallee, Pt. Reyes Farmstead, Bleating Heart, Valley Ford, and Nicasio Valley cheese companies. The event is free and open to everyone, not just conference attendees.

Then at the conference, August 26 — 9:30-10 AM
I will be signing copies of Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge at the ACS bookstore during the morning “networking break”. Come say hi! Book signings can be quite humbling.

New record for the ACS cheese competition: 1438 entries! I’ll be eating salad for a week after that.

This last weekend was the annual US Federation of Worker Co-ops conference and this year it was in the Bay Area. I actually prefer when conferences I want to attend are in other cities. Ones in my own backyard always sneak up on me and I never end up attending as many panels as I want or getting that conference experience of meeting new people or having those on a break/at the bar/ downtime discussions with people that are often the most valuable part.

No, instead I ended up doing odd tasks. I enjoyed my tasks, don’t get me wrong, but between not getting my shift covered on Saturday and sleeping in on Sunday I missed pretty much the whole event.

My best task – being one of the few Bay Area co-op folks with a car — was getting to pick up and drop off our keynote speaker, Jim Hightower. Oddly enough, Hightower was actually the keynote speaker at the Cheese conference in Austin last year. Except for my own workplace and hanging out with Cheeseboard folks, those two parts of my life do not often collide!

If you have never heard Jim Hightower speak, he is one of the best: energizing, funny, populist, and smart. Laurie used to listen to his Ag reports when he was the Agricultural Commissioner of Texas and she was growing up, so I borrowed some of her Texan credibility by mentioning her a lot. I am pleased to say that Commissioner Hightower was great one-on-one as well. Good thing, since we hit traffic and had about an hour in the car together on the way to his hotel.

The other thing I got to do was set up cheese for the conference’s opening reception. I got one of those last Wednesday saying that the food donation for Friday hadn’t come through and did I have any old cheese lying around… I put out the word and we ended up having quite a spread! Check it out:

(Big, big thanks to Maxx at Marin French Cheese, Bob at Cypress Grove Chevre, and Jesse S.)

This got devoured! The co-op people were hungry after a long day of cooperating. I replenished this table a couple of times and still there was little left but scraps after the hour and a half reception. (Don’t tell anyone but Laurie and I ducked out for chile rellano burritos midway through)

For more coverage of actual conference content, check out The Workers’ Paradise blog written by John McNamera of Union Cab in Madison, WI.

Sorry for the ugly cut and paste. Must walk the dog!

encuentro café and wine bar is excited to host Gordon Edgar – the uber-cheesemonger of Rainbow Grocery Cooperative reading from his book “Cheesemonger – A Life on the Wedge”, a witty, entertaining and insightful book about his life with cheese, worker collectives and the punk scene. Cheese tasting will be thoughtfully included. Shauna Rosenbloom of Rock Wall Winery will also join us with some delicious pairings to taste along with the cheese.

Seating is limited. Regular dinner service will begin at 7pm.

RSVP – 510.832.9463 if you would like to let us know you are coming.

Encuentro Cafe and Wine Bar
202 2nd St. (2nd and Jackson)
Oakland, CA

Hey everyone, my event at Encuentro in Oakland has been postponed until Monday 8/2. It’ll be great, but don’t show up this Monday!

Had a really nice event at 18 Reasons last night. 18 Reasons is the events offshoot of Bi Rite, a store that I will always have a fondness for. Way back in the late ‘80s I lived at 18th and Dolores and that was my corner store. It wasn’t fancy like it is now – mostly stale Hostess pastries, old canned food, and booze – but they were friendly and it was the closest place. After the ’89 earthquake they forever earned my loyalty because they just gave away all their candles and batteries to the locals.

Bi Rite back then was owned by the father and uncle of Sam, the current owner. I should also mention that Anthea, their cheese buyer just represented San Francisco – and was the only woman competing! – last month at the 1st Cheesemonger Invitational in New York . If you can’t go to Rainbow, or if you need meat or good deli stuff, go there for sure.

Anyways, the event could have been weird. Originally conceived of as a panel of cheese writers, it became me reading from my book and cheese author Laura Werlin conducting a cheese class. Kind of funny that she’s written five books and she’s conducting the class whereas I talk to customers about cheese every day and I’m reading from my one book, but hey…

None of us were sure if the format – me reading a section that vaguely related to the cheese on the plate, Laura leading a tasting and talking about wine pairings – would work, but it seemed to. People generally laughed in the right places, ate all their cheese, and drank all their wine. Laura was professional and informed as always. I told little anecdotes about the cheese makers as always.

And the cheese was excellent.

(from the toothpick, going clockwise: Gioia Burrata, Sea Stack, Vermont Creamery Coupole, Pt Reyes Toma, Cobb Hill Ascutney Mountain, Parmigiano Reggiano, Taleggio, Rogue Caveman Blue)

I won’t get into all of them, just want to mention that the Ascutney Mountain from Cobb Hill is a cheese that I like more every time I try it. We’ve only carried it sporadically, but I think I’ll order some this week. If only so I can buy a big hunk myself.

Around 9 PM, when all the cheese was consumed and Laura and I had sold a few books, Laurie texted me from home with cute pictures of Schnitzel so I knew it was time for me to go. I stepped out onto the street lugging a box of books and saw Sam handtrucking a load of dirty dishes a block back to the main store.

“There’s no glory in this, is there?” I said.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way, ” Sam replied.

My publisher made a video interview of me but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to embed it here.

So, check it out anyway:

or see it on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cheesemonger-A-Life-on-the-Wedge/237739816764

I visited my parents yesterday and my mother chided me for not making any blog entries in a couple of weeks. The world has indeed changed when one’s mother complains about one not blogging enough, eh? Anyways, the reason I have been pre-occupied is that Laurie and I got a new puppy. That’s right, the imaginary white, miniature Schnauzer from my professional bio is now a real dog!

I haven’t had a puppy since I was about 3 years old. They take a lot of work! I hope to be back on a regular posting schedule soon, but how can I resist this face?

I had to rush from Olympia to get to Portland for a radio show on the great community radio station KBOO.* I was actually listening to the other cheese guests as I neared Portland. I almost crashed the car when I heard Chrissie Zaerpoor gave the best description of how rennet works that I’ve ever heard. (I paraphrase) “All mammals have rennet enzymes in the lining of their stomachs. When a baby spits up, look at the consistency… they’re making cheese.”

I don’t know how scientific that is, but more of that, less preciousness in the cheese world please.

My old Rainbow pal Kelly The P took me around Portland during the day and showed me her cheese department at New Seasons Sellwood. Oh how I miss her little retail touches back home!

My reading that night was at the new cheese shop inside Square Deal Wine and Cheese. They have an awesome little back room for events and even though I had never been in that part of Portland before I liked that there was a little walkable neighborhood there. Sasha Davies, one of the main organizers for this years ACS conference in Seattle, runs a nice little, local-based cheese shop there.

I convinced Tami Parr to do the event with me since she is the expert on Pacific Northwest cheese, and it was a really great combo of her knowledge of cheeses in the area and my usual bullshit. What I really liked was that, much like a co-op, we got to do the event in a circle. I felt like we were all really sharing.

I do apologize for saying that Briar Rose Creamery had sheep instead of goats. I blame the seven events in four cities in four nights, Sarah.

It’s probably more for another post, but I did find that Portlanders are especially locavore in their cheese orientation. I felt judged that I didn’t read anything about Oregon cheese! That was probably just in my head though. It did make me even happier that Tami was there though since we can’t even get most of the Oregon cheese that Square Deal had and I’m not super familiar with it. I keep telling people, there is just as much, if not more, interesting things happening in cheese in the Pacific Northwest than anywhere in the country.

Special thanks to the Portland folks who came to support me again (Joel, Alice…) and for Sara and Steve for their hospitality and letting me park my car in their garage so I didn’t have to unload and load one last time.

Then I drove home (yes, this is taken while driving)

*This Wednesday it’s Cheese Maven Day on the KBOO Food Show. Guests include Tami Parr of the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, Chrissie Zaerpoor of Kookoolan Farms in Yamhill and Sarah Marcus, a start-up goat cheesemaker with the Briar Rose Creamery in Dundee. And Gordon Edgar takes us inside his edgy new Cheesemonger memoir. You can totally hear me laughing when they played that Social Distrotion song I was making fun of on my blog as my intro track.