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Even though my friends were mocking me last night because my eyes were so droopy and I was falling asleep in a loud pub, 5:45 AM seems to be my predetermined wake up time this days. Good Morning Seattle!

I do love Seattle. I’ve often said that if I –-theoretically –couldn’t live in the Bay Area this is where I’d go. It’s got some of my favorite old friends. I like the weather. Seattle has always been good to me.

The Cheese Fest is really no place to sell books. Cypress Grove sold out of cheese on the first day (while I was driving up I-5) so they gave me their whole table. I sold a few books but 1. I hate pushing my book on people like that. I know I can’t stand trying to decide if I like a book enough to buy it when the author is standing right in front of me. It’s not the same without Laurie talking me up while I stand on the side and look sheepish. And 2. People weren’t there to read. More than 50% of the people who picked up the book were looking for recipes and/or pictures. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just not my book, ya know?

Elliott Bay on the other hand, was great. Their new location still has some paint fumes, but the downstairs reading area is awesome and it was packed on a Sunday afternoon. Old friends, cheese friends, LJ friends and strangers were there and I even got asked to do an encore of a specific passage of the book. It was a good suggestion that I’m going to incorporate into future readings.

Checking out a new cheese store this morning, ( The Calf and the Kid) then driving to Bellingham. Day one: so far, so good.

* Confidential to Laurie: I haven’t been gone long enough to write a tour song for you so just pretend I’m Mike Ness. I think this really captures the anxiety. loneliness, and violence of any cheese road trip.

** Apologies in advance for any typos. My fat hands don’t type well on this tiny keyboard and I won’t have time to go back and edit this later.

Black Butte Reserve: Made by the pasture-based Pedrozo Dairy and Cheese Company in Orland, CA, this cheese is made only from the tasty spring milk. This is basically an aged Boerenkaas Gouda. Made with raw cow milk. Farmstead.

Brick: From Master-cheesemaker Joe Widmer in Teresa, WI. This is a semi-soft, stinky cow’s milk cheese very popular with ethnic German communities and my father.

Cameo: This is a bigger version of the Camellia, a soft-ripened, goat cheese from Redwood Hill Farm in Sebastopol, CA. The first person who can sing a good version of “Word Up” by Cameo (the band) gets a free wheel. (This offer only valid in Olympia and Portland because the cheese won’t arrive until then)

Cocoa Cardona: Made by Carr Valley Cheese in Wisconsin, this is a semi-soft goat cheese covered in cocoa. This would make a good drag name.

Gran Canaria: Some cheese snobs look down on (third generation cheesemaker) Sid Cook’s Carr Valley cheeses because he makes so damn many of them. Sid Cook meanwhile, has probably developed a new cheese in the time it is taking you to read this paragraph. Carr Valley makes well over fifty different varieties using cow, sheep and/or goat milk. The Gran Canaria won the best of show at that 2004 American Cheese Society Conference in Milwaukee and it is a blend of cow, sheep, and goat milk, aged for two years and cured in olive oil.

Green Hill: From Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasville, Georgia, this is one of the best brie-style cheeses made in the US. Pasture-based and, while not farmstead, they buy their milk from their father/father-in-law who lives next door. This is from cow milk, but they make great goat cheese too.

Mobay: Another cheese from Carr Valley, this has goat cheese and sheep cheese separated by a layer of ash. Cute, eh?

Mona: From the Wisconsin Sheep Dairy Co-op, this is actually a blend of cow and sheep milk. Nutty, sweet, and milky. You gotta support the co-ops in this business.

Prairie Breeze: Great sweet, aged cheddar from Milton, Iowa. Made with milk purchased from the local Amish communities, this cheese won a best in category at the American Cheese Society competition the first year it was entered.

Teleme: Franklin Peluso is the third generation cheesemaker of this California classic. I worked an event for Franklin once and was amazed. Every Italian-American coming up to the booth and a few years older than I am said almost the exact same thing, “Teleme! I grew up on this stuff!” Wanna-be cheese snobs will not be impressed by this because it is not strong in any way. But what it does have is integrity and presence. I always have a quarter wheel in my fridge.

Verdant Blue: Pasture-based blue cheese. The milk comes from the Wisconsin Grazier Co-op, a small group of pasture-based farmers and is made in Minnesota at Fairbault Dairy. Fairbault brags about being the only cheesemakers in the US who age their cheese in natural sandstone caves.

Different cheese, different nights, of course. See why you should come to a reading?

http://www.gordonzola.net / gordon.zola.edgar@gmail.com / Facebook: “cheesemonger: a life on the wedge”

I’ll always have love for Santa Rosa and the North Bay. My buddy Spring set up a reading for me last week at the Micro Gallery. Spring is a big part of the Hand Cart Regatta up there so I knew it would be fun.

It was a great crowd. They ate cheese. They laughed at the right times. They gathered my notes when they flew out of my book. They discussed things amongst themselves during the Q and A. It was great.

Normally I wouldn’t this boring looking picture, but it’s important:

Part of my regular reading schtick is talking about the importance of punk rock in the ‘80s to people like me, and how it ended up making me a cheesemonger. Specifically, I read the section in my book about the Reagan cultural revolution and how I saw it as a teen. So, after talking shit about Reagan for 10-15 minutes, and finishing the Q and A, one of the gallery folks came up and said, “You know, Ronald Reagan ate dinner at that table you were sitting on.”

Evidently the table had been his father’s and someone had invited Reagan over after one of those Bohemian Grove/Illuminati meetings in the North Bay. For the record, the gallery person’s dad was super mad about the whole thing.

Anyways, it was a nice feeling, even if chronologically reversed. “My ass, your face, Ronnie!”

(Thanks to Meridith, my school mate since 5th grade for showing up and taking the picture!)

My Pacific Northwest tour starts on Sunday! Spread the word! Tell your friends!

May 16, 2010, 4:00 pm — SEATTLE, WA
Gordon Edgar at Elliott Bay Book Co.
1521 10th Ave, Seattle WA Gordon Edgar will discuss and sign copies of his book, Cheesemonger, at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, WA on Sunday evening, May 16th at 4 pm. Call 1-800-962-5311 to learn more. (Don’t forget, Elliott Bay just moved into a beautiful new store! Capitol Hill, not Downtown!)

May 17, 2010, 7:00 pm — BELLINGHAM, WA
Gordon Edgar at Village Books
1200 11th St., Bellingham WA 98225
Gordon Edgar will discuss and sign copies of his book, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge, at Village Books in Bellingham, WA on Monday, May 17th at 7 pm. Call 360-733-1599 to learn more.

May 18, 2010, 5-6 pm — OLYMPIA, WA
Gordon Edgar at Olympia Food Co-op, 3111 Pacific Avenue SE, Olympia WA 98501 Gordon Edgar will sign copies of his book, Cheesemonger, at the Olympia Food Co-op’s Eastside location on May 18th in Olympia, WA. Call 360-956-3870 to learn more.

May 18, 2010, 7 pm — OLYMPIA, WA
Gordon Edgar at Orca Books 509 E. 4th Ave., Olympia WA
Gordon Edgar will discuss and sign copies of his book, Cheesemonger, at Orca Books in Olympia, WA on May 18th at 7:00 pm. Call (360) 352-1456 to learn more.

May 19, 2010, 6:30 — PORTLAND, OR (With Tami Parr)
Gordon Edgar will read and sign copies of his book at Square Deal Wine and Cheese 2321 NW Thurman Street, Portland, OR. 503.226.9463

Handy-dandy Facebook invite here:

See you there!

I somehow went from doing nothing at this year’s American Cheese Society conference to judging and being on a panel (that will be done twice). I’m not sure how this happened. I still want to do a book event (or two) as well. It’s going to be a busy week in August.

In honor of this, I figured, why not post this again:

“They used to make good cheese” is my favorite line.

I was loving all my co-workers last night. We had our every-6-weeks membership meeting and I thought it might be a contentious meeting. Most of the agenda was filled with proposals about changing our store-closed paid holidays and people tend to have strong feelings about such things. But we actually never got there.

Instead, we spent the whole two hour meeting discussing a potential bylaw change that I hadn’t realized was controversial at all until I got to the meeting. Basically (simplifying a little because otherwise this will become unreadable) the proposed change allows workers who have cashed in shares to buy more shares from the co-op, up to the amount of shares they have earned at their time at the co-op. * This proposal was brought up for a couple of reasons: more flexibility to raise cash if needed, and a desire by some workers to be able to invest more in our workplace.

There were concerns, confusion, and impassioned pleas, but it was one of the most productive financial discussions we’ve ever had covering internal class issues, IRS confusion about co-ops, the intrusive nature of bank loans, future dividends vs. high cash payments of our profit sharing, and the relation of a financial buy-in to an emotional one. Even the people I almost never agree with — on both sides of the issue – were making smart and interesting points. Spontaneous applause broke out when someone mentioned offhandedly that we will pay off our mortgage this year and we all realized it was true. Seems like just yesterday (15 years ago) we voted to buy the building.

Since it’s a bylaw change we vote by ballot so I won’t know what the result will be for another couple of weeks. I was just so proud to be in that room with everyone there. I love working at a co-op.

*for the record, no matter how many shares you own, it is one worker/one vote.
**Oh hey, don’t forget that we are closed on Saturday, May 1, in honor of International Workers Day.