Culture Magazine Debut + Birchrun Dinner

Alas, it’s here: the winter issue of Culture Magazine. It features my first story for the magazine, and I’m so pleased that it brings attention to a stellar blue-cheese maker from Pennsylvania, Sue Miller of Birchrun Hills Farm.

I interviewed Sue this fall and spent a day watching her make Birchrun Blue. Her attention to detail and her deep love of all things Holstein showed me something important that goes into cheesemaking besides milk and rennet: devotion. Deep, deep devotion to animals, land, and the people Sue calls her "eaters".

This issue of Culture feels like an album of greatest hits for me. The centerfold cheese is Rush Creek, from Uplands Cheese in my home state of Wisconsin. And the spread right after my story on Sue showcases Mike Geno’s cheese portraits (yup, that's one on the wall in the photo below). Mike’s been featured on this site many times. In fact, he often accompanies me on fromage junkets around the city.

Birchrun Hills Farm Dinner: Coincidentally, Philadelphia’s own Southwark restaurant has planned to honor Sue Miller with a Birchrun Hills Farm tasting dinner on Wednesday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m. ($45). Chef Nick Macri has four incredible courses planned to feature Birchrun's cheese, whey-fed pork, and veal. Please join Mike Geno, Sue Miller, and me. Raw milk and cookies for dessert!

To reserve a spot at Southwark’s Birchrun Hills Dinner, call the restaurant at 215-238-1888.  

A Hurricane Cheese Party

When you face blowing away, you want to be among friends. And so, last night, we invited the neighbors over for cheese in the face of Hurricane Irene. 

Just the day before, we’d driven out to Chester County, Monsieur Fromage and I, and we’d picked up some extraordinary wedges, so our larder was stocked with Sue Miller’s entire line of Birchrun Hills Farm cheeses. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing them all if the power went out and the fridge went dark.

Luckily, my neighbors dig the funk. Here’s how the storm of cheese and Irene went down.

6:30 p.m. The rain hits.

7:00 p.m. Madame Fromage sets the table.

7:30 p.m. Cheese lovers dash across the street for nourishment.

8:00 p.m. There is windswept salad, plenty of beer.

9:00 p.m. Our very own “storm catcher” receives texts on her Bad News Blackberry 

10:00 p.m. Loved ones ring. There are phonecalls in the foyer.

Midnight: I'm still thinking about Little Chardy, Sue's great Brie. 

4:00 a.m. The chimney falls in. The ceiling snaps.

10 a.m. I’m blogging, feeling lucky to have a roof and good friends, but I'm also wondering about the cows I met at Sue's farm two days ago, like Little Chardy (below), the namesake cow who inspired the great Brie we all consumed at the height of the storm. Little Chardy, you still there?