The Turducken of Cheese

If you only serve one cheese at Thanksgiving, let me make a suggestion: try Gorwydd Caerphilly (pronounced GOR-with CARE-fully).

Not only is it spectacular, it’s essentially three cheeses in one. If you want to have a little fun, treat your friends to a three-part tasting by giving everyone a thickish slice and instructing them to identify the three parts: (1) the rind, (2) the gooey layer below the rind, (3) the cakey white center. 

To read the rest of this post, please visit the Di Bruno Blog.

Disclosure: This post is part of a weekly series I write for Di Bruno Bros., one of my fave cheese haunts in Philly. I choose the topics, but I get paid to guest-blog on the store's site.

Hidden Hills Old Gold

Gouda is one of those cheeses that can be frightfully dull or wickedly good. I never buy a wedge without road-testing the wheel at the cheese counter. When it’s young, Gouda is mellow and buttery. Aged, it turns nutty and sweet. Cave-age it, and you’ve got musty madness. Too often though, it’s a khaki-pants cheese. Meh. Goes with everything, but doesn’t really jazz ya.

Here in Pennsylvania, Lori Sollenberger makes wonderful Gouda from the raw milk of her Jersey cows. Her herd is small -- only eight head. And Lori only makes Gouda during the summer months, when her girls are grazing on pasture. The Beta-carotene in the grasses imbues her cheese with a golden glow – check out that amazing color (no photoshop tricks, I swear). Her aged variety, which Lori nurses for a year, is called Old Gold. It’s sharp and bright with a twitch of caramel sweetness. Oh honey, no khaki Gouda here.

If you want to try some of Lori’s cheese and you live in Philly, put on your hot pants and trot down to Di Bruno Bros. Lori just sent the store a shipment. She also sent me a sample in the mail a couple weeks back, and I have been gnawing on this bright goodness for ohhh the last five nights. When I come home, I crave its sharpness -- it’s like caffeine.

To read more about Lori Sollenberger’s cheeses, check out my column in the October issue of Grid Magazine (p. 24). Her feta is another star.

Lori's cheese is available under the Hidden Hills Dairy label. Her dairy is licensed for raw milk, and she makes half a dozen cheeses, including Ivory Lace (a Havarti-style cheese) and Allegheny (made from wintertime whole milk). For anyone interested in seasonal cheeses, Hidden Hills is a great example of a small dairy that adapts its cheese recipes to the seasonal variations of its milk.

Cappucetto Rosso: Pair with Fangs

Take one look at this cheese and tell me it doesn't make you think of the Twilight series. It's a little bit virgin, a little bit vampire -- the white paste, the fir bark wrapped around the rind. It's also mild, sweetly so. I want to call up Stephenie Meyer. I do. I think this cheese would look awesome on a book cover.

Cappucetto Rosso is a creamy raw-milk cheese from Lombardy. The name actually means "Little Red Riding Hood," which is only part of the reason I bought this bloomy dream. The other reason is, of course, the rind. The writer in me loves a pretty cover, and this cheese just might just have the hottest surface mold I've ever seen. Fir bark aside, check out the lines running across this little wheel. Looks like fine print, right?

Okay, textural metaphors aside, this cheese tastes and smells like a walk in the forest. It has a milky front end and a woodsy finish. It's mild, even near the bark, although it gets a wee bit sprucey. Think white truffles, pine sap.

I like cheeses with Personality, but so often that makes for blazin' strength. Happily, this character-driven cheese is flavorful without being too bitey. Tell your children it's fairy brie, and serve it with bread cut into the shape of toadstools. Or slide it into the lunchbox of your tween, along with a bookmark. She'll get the picture.

Note: I bought this cheese at Di Bruno Bros. on Philadelphia's Chestnut Street. I don't see it for sale online, but I bet you could beg a cheesemonger to mail you some, if you ask verrry nicely.

Lush'n Wild

This one goes out to my friends, the drag queens. I know, I know, cheese and lipstick don’t mix, but I couldn’t help myself. When cheesemonger Paul Lawler told me that Keswick Creamery’s latest release was named “Lush’n Wild,” I time-traveled back to fourth grade when I wore Maybelline Lipsmacker on a rope and lip-synched Pat Benatar. Yeah, the ‘80s loved me.

Lush’n Wild is, awesomely, just that. Its sharp, feral notes made me caterwaul the other night when I put out a selection of Keswick cheeses to taste with my neighbor Emily. Emily is a fashion designer who always travels with a miniature dachshund in tow, and usually they are both wearing rhinestones. Even the dachshund caterwauled when we bit into Lush’n Wild. It was a primal experience.

Here’s why Lush’n Wild is my favorite Keswick cheese (and I’ve tried many since my visit last week): it’s sneaky. It smells mellow and faintly citrusy, but it tastes tack-sharp and salty-sweet. Sneaky, yeah. It’s also a Tomme, an Alpine style of cheese, but it tastes vaguely like an English cheddar. For instance, there are bitter notes that I associate with cheddar, and the consistency bears similarities, too: dry to the touch, creamy on the tongue. I swear, it’s a cheddar cross-dresser.

Lush’n Wild also has awesome rind. After being pressed, the wheels are rubbed with Cabernet Sauvignon grape must from Adams County Winery, a vineyard near Gettysburg, Pa. The must infuses the rind with a dark cattail-like hue, and yes, I ate the rind. It was delicious. With some crusty bread and a bottle of IPA, this lush went wild.

Keswick Creamery is known for its ricotta, but I’m excited about its curious Tommes. Several, like Tommenator, are washed with beer from Troegs Brewing Co. The creamery also makes Happy Jack, which is a Tomme bathed in hard cider. Seeing beautiful cheeses bathed in local spirits – well, it’s hard not to get light-headed. I’ll have to reign myself in for future photo shoots with these cheeses, or this blog will turn into Raw-Milk Runway.

But reallly...would that be so terrible?

A Visit to Keswick Creamery

Cheesemongers are some of the nicest people in the world. In fact, I’m tempted to say that as a profession they do more to promote small farmers and artisans than just about anyone else in the food industry, except maybe chefs. Take Paul Lawler, a local cheesemonger I’ve gotten to know primarily through this blog. Last week, he invited me out to a dairy farm in Cumberland County, where he was “babysitting the cheese room” for a pair of cheesemakers. How many people do you know who will babysit a cheese room?

Paul, who works at the Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market, has advocated for Keswick Creamery over the last several months as this family farm struggles to stay afloat. Recently, the owners hatched a plan to raise some much-needed capital by offering shares of a dairy CSA. Paul, who interned at the creamery last year, wanted me to check out the operation so I could see, first hand, what goes into making quality raw-milk cheese. And he had a hunch I just might want to write about it.

Keswick has made a name for itself locally but also in D.C., where the creamery has a stand at the DuPont Circle Farmers’ Market. The creamery’s ricotta and quark (a dense, creamy wonder that spreads beautifully on bread) have gained favor with chefs and made headlines in the Washington Post. The Fair Food Farmstand and Greensgrow in Philly also carry these products. These small-batch cheeses are especially flavorful because Keswick cows graze on pesticide-free pastures in the Cumberland Valley. Happy cows make for excellent cheese. That’s a fact.

I got to meet some of these happy cows on Tuesday, when I rode out to the creamery for a tour of the cheese room with Paul. I’ll be honest, I’d never petted a cow before, and I was bowled over by how friendly these Jerseys were – Cappucino and I hit it off when she came over to lick my toes (painted blue, so can you blame her?), and soon Chai was nudging my arm, eager to be petted.

“Our cows love to be around people,” said Susan Dietrich, the farm’s matriarch and head milker. Her attention to these animals was more than a little touching; she knew all 48 cows by name. “That’s Freya,” she said at one point, “But her nickname is French Fry.”

I hung out with Paul and fed alfalfa to the calves. Then we set off to explore the cheese cave, which was really an old veal shipping container. It was lined with wheels of raw-milk beauties, from glowing rounds of cheddar-like Lesher to dark circles of something mysterious rubbed in grape must.

When we started tasting, it was easy to understand why Paul has stood by Keswick’s line. The Blue Suede Moo packed a spiky wallop that reminded me of Cabrales, and the Tomme Sweet Tomme had the addictive quality of a gorgeous Alpine melter. Best of all, though, was the ricotta that Paul made that day – pillowy and light, ethereal as cloudcover.

I left Keswick Creamery with a new appreciation for the farmstead cheesemaker. It takes work to milk 48 cows twice a day and a lot of extra care to turn that milk into cheese on site. At Keswick, that’s handled by just three people – Susan Dietrich and her daughter Melanie and son-in-law Mark. There’s no distribution manager or marketing guru like you’d find at a commercial cheese plant, which is why it takes a dedicated cheesemonger like Paul to make sure you hear about Keswick’s ricotta and ale-washed Mad Tomme (it’s washed in Mad Elf beer).

If you’re interested in supporting one of Pennsylvania’s farmstead cheesemakers, check out Keswick Creamery’s CSA program – for a small investment, you’ll receive baskets of cheese by mail over the next several seasons. The cheeses are unusually rich and tasty, rustic in a way that only raw-milk cheese tends to be. They’re also a taste of the lush life that 48 cows enjoy…and will, hopefully, continue to enjoy for years to come.

Mount Sterling Raw Goat Cheddar

In this latest heat wave, goat cheese has become my cold compress. No, I don’t apply blocks of it to my forehead, but I do find it cooling – one glance at this icy white goat’s milk cheddar from Mount Sterling and my core temperature drops. I begin to hallucinate snow in the air, mountain goats bleating in the distance.

Really, I’m just happy to discover a new raw-milk cheese, one that’s made from goat’s milk no less. Raw-milk goat cheese is hard to come by. That’s because most goat cheese on the market is fresh – think of those crumbly, spreadable logs. Fresh goat cheese is always pasteurized because it’s only a few days old and American law requires that raw-milk cheese be aged sixty days or more. Mount Sterling, a producer-owned cooperative based in Wisconsin, is one of just a few creameries that make a variety of aged raw-milk goat cheeses.

I’m partial to this mild goat cheddar because it’s versatile and mellow – grate it into scrambled eggs, serve it alongside berries or peaches. It makes for a good hot-weather appetizer, especially in the company of a wheat beer. Citrusy notes often pair well with goat cheese. That’s because goat cheese has more acidity than cow’s milk cheese. Some people find this acidity off-putting, but Mount Sterling’s cheddar is exceptionally balanced -- it’s not the least bit goaty or sour, just smooth with gentle nutty notes. A good choice for children and the goat-cheese averse.

Mount Sterling Cooperative has produced goat cheese for 30 years, but it’s only gained national recognition in recent years. In 2009, the company’s cave-aged cheddar (Sterling Reserve) won gold at the Los Angeles International Dairy Competition. Their Country Jack and whey-cream goat butter have also gained attention.

Even if you’re not a goat-cheese lover, you just might have a conversion experience. Blame it on the hot weather.

Sally Jackson Goat Cheese

Splendor has a new name: Sally Jackson. This small-batch producer from Oroville, WA makes one of the most glorious goat cheeses I’ve tasted to date. Talk about nuance, talk about flavor notes, talk about a cheese that pairs so beautifully with ripe apricots I nearly crumpled to the kitchen floor, weeping. Oh heaven, it comes in grape leaves. If you are reading this, log off. Get into your car. Drive to Oroville now.

Like her cheese, Sally Jackson’s web site is rustic. You won’t find a lot of detail, but you will see her rather small herd of animals, all lovingly pictured – in fact, there are many more photos of goats than cheese. Don’t let the low-fi design fool you though. Sally and her partner Roger are credited with being among the first artisans to bring back craft cheesemaking in America. Twenty years ago, Sally sold cheeses out of the back of her car to chefs in Seattle. Now, chefs stalk her.

I picked up my wedge at Di Bruno Bros. (Italian Market location) here in Philadelphia, where cheesemonger Zeke Ferguson told me the story of how he approached Sally Jackson five years ago about carrying her cheese. She just now got back to him. Needless to say, it’s not inexpensive, but at $39.99 a pound, it’s still cheaper than blue jeans, so, come on.

Here’s why Sally's cheese is worth tracking down: You know how ripe tomatoes smell on the vine -- pungent, like heat itself? Well, this goat cheese has a similarly captivating smell, like warm earth. Then you put it on your tongue, and it tastes completely different – not musty or goaty, but sweet, floral, almost grapey with a lovely citrus hook that just goes on and on until you’re starry-eyed.

Alongside apricots, it’s sublime. I think some of those little champagne grapes that burst in your mouth would be awesome, too. And I’d serve it with rustic bread – although it doesn’t need any – and a glass of Riesling. Honestly, I stood in the kitchen last night and ate half this wedge without meaning to, and now I think I am going to go eat some more.

If you’ve wondered why people freak for raw-milk cheese, this is why.

Wholesome Dairy Gouda

Until yesterday, I'd never eaten a raw-milk gouda. Then, I picked up my work phone and heard a breathless voice, "Madame Fromage, I went crazy at the Kimberton Whole Foods. I'm on campus with a ton of local cheese." The voice belonged to a colleague of mine I know only via email. Amy Lipton, who works in the business school, heard about my cheese blog via an inter-office memo several months ago, and we've been shooting cheese notes back and forth ever since.

Yesterday, she appeared in the flesh, Mary Poppins-style, with a little insulated suitcase containing...oh, about 10 local cheeses she'd picked up in Berks County near her home. This gouda, made from the raw milk of Ayrshire cows, came from a farm she passed on her way into the city, Wholesome Dairy Farms in Yellow House, Pa. (Doesn't that sound like a pretty place?) Amy Poppins saw the farm's roadside sign for "Raw Milk," and she descended upon its farm store to do a little sleuthing.

"They've got raw milk yogurt, grass-fed beef, and gouda," Amy said, unloading her cheese pack onto my desk. There was a pepper-flecked hunk of Dragon's Breath from Keswick Creamery, a brick of mild cheddar from Amish cheesemaker Benuel Stoltzfus, and an assortment of yogurt cheese and port-infused cheese from a farm in Winfield, Pa.

The gouda from Wholesome Farms intrigued me. It didn't have a label, and it looked rustic. We rummaged for knives and napkins, then dug in. Young gouda is mild, smooth-textured, and salty. This one had a firm, crumbly texture (like an aged Provolone) with a fresh milky taste that turned tangy and yogurty at the finish. A slice of apple gave it balance. With some dark bread and a nutty ale, this would make a fine table cheese.

Someday, I'd like to visit Wholesome Dairy, where farmer and veterinarian Mark Lopez practices some interesting sustainable techniques, including a methane-reducing dairy feeding strategy. Curious. If you don't have a Mary Poppins-esque colleague to brighten your desk with cheeses, you could always check out this video of Lopez demonstrating his milking technique on his very companionable cow, Princess.

Hooligan

Hooligan, oh Hooligan, you make me feel born again. I love your rural notes – exhaust of pick-up trick, eau de boarded up barn. You have a boot-like rind that looks like salty leather, that smells like spruce bark. When I crack open a nutty brown ale with you on the porch, I am transported to a backwater bar with peanut shells on the floor, Johnny Cash on the jukebox, and plenty of dusty taxidermy. You are wild. You are utterly, utterly a dream cheese for the girl with ratted hair and Daisy Dukes.  

Note: some cheeses make you pen notes on napkins, others make you twitter your friends. Truly awesome cheeses make you write love poems. This cheese, by Connecticut’s Cato Corner Farm, yeah, it made me want to go Byron on it. Maybe that’s because farmstead cheesemaker Mark Gillman used to be a 7th grade English teacher before he dropped his grade book and picked up a bucket of raw milk. I think I can still taste some Norton Anthology, and maybe some Leo Kottke.

If you are a friend to the stink-meisters, this award winner (Slow Food, Saveur) is worth begging your cheesemonger to order; it’s also available online, if you want to contact the maker. I can’t remember the last time I ate a cheese with so much personality. Maybe it’s because Gillman rubs his cheeses with unusual ingredients – buttermilk and salt, in this case. Gillman also makes Drunken Hooligan, which is washed with grape must, and Despearado, which is bathed in Pear William eau de vie and fermented pear mash.

Yawwwwp.

Try Hooligan with a nutty ale, a Trappist charmer.  Then put on your cut-offs and eat it in the wild. Don’t be surprised if feral cats begin winding themselves around your legs.

Grayson

I know, I know, you’re wondering about the perfect Halloween cheese. Okay, that pushes us into orange territory…but I feel strongly that a Hallow’s Eve cheese should be stinky. I mean, if it doesn’t smell foul it won’t fit in with the bloody stump you’ve got sitting on the hay bale by your stoop. Who wants to linger in a witch costume eating something as mousy as a Colby?

I, for one, will be reaching in amid the dry ice for a wedge of Grayson, an oozy washed-rind cheese with a surface that is crossing-guard orange. This is a pungent, dearly gooey cheese that comes from Virgina (kind of a scary place). Think of an Italian Taleggio, then add a muscle shirt.

Grayson is produced by Meadow Creek Dairy, a family farm that practices seasonal grazing – the color of the cheese is actually from the high levels of bete ceratene in the milk. This year, Grayson won 2nd place for Washed Rinds in the American Cheese Society Awards. It has also garnered media kisses from Marty Stewart.

For stinky-cheese novices, here are some suggestions: serve this oozy wedge alongside honey and dried fruit, and know that once this cheese sits out a bit the dirty-sock odor will subside. The smell is most concentrated when you first unwrap it.

The folks at Meadow Creek recommend serving this raw milk cheese with a full-bodied white, a light red, or a dessert wine. Personally, I like the idea of a strapping Belgian ale -- something to match the complex beefiness -- and a dish of salted almonds.

I plan to serve it toasted, on baguette rounds, come Halloween. This year I might just serve all the little neighborhood ghouls a hot cheese appetizer instead of candy. Why the hell not?

Pennsylvania Noble

The moldy month of October has really opened my eyes to the pleasure of a good rind. I had a quick tutorial a few weeks back with Bloomin’ Idiot, a smoldering, moldering cheese from Wisconsin, and I’ve been hooked on spores ever since. Consider the note on the label of Pennsylvania Noble, a cheddar-style cheese with a hardy outer jacket: “Toasted rind side up is delicious!”

Hell, I couldn’t wait to fire up the toaster oven tonight when I got home from a rainy day at work. I took the crust, sliced it right onto a baguette round, and, oh, what a melty treat I had. Even the dog was licking her lips.

Truth be told: I took this cheese to a little soiree last night hosted by our very persnickety Euro cheese friend, The Blue Cheese Brit -- a regular character in these posts. Being British, the BCB likes to stick his rosy nose up at domestic cheddars. So, I was pretty excited to watch his reaction when I slid my wedge of PA Noble – made of organic, raw milk from grass-fed cows – onto his cutting board.

Would the Brit bite?

Well, guess who exclaimed as he cut into it, “Ohhh, God, look how she breaks!”

PA Noble comes out of Green Valley Dairy in Lancaster County, where it was developed by a pair of Amish brothers keen to switch from hormone-amped cows to pasture-raised heifers. Now their cave-aged cheddar-style Noble (as they market it) is a hot ticket item. It’s won several national and local awards, and you’ll find it at ritzy bistros, like Django. I heard about it at the Fair Food Farm Stand in Reading Terminal Market, my fave source for local cheese.

PA Noble is marvelously sharp. It has the tangy claws of a cheddar, but it’s earthier…pasturey. The mouthfeel is smooth, though Noble is crumbly, and the sharp tweak at the end actually leaves your tongue a bit numb.

The label (which pictures a goofy cow in an Amish hat) should be obeyed: toast those rinds. It makes for a crisp-gooey, grandfather-ish snack. And if you’re ever invited by a British snob to a cheddar smack-down, this is just the eyebrow-raiser you’ll want to slide out of your back pocket.

Bleu Mont Bandaged Cheddar

If there was a cheese-of-the-woods mushroom, this would be it. Bleu Mont Dairy’s Bandaged Cheddar Reserve tastes like walking through a damp forest in October. It’s gorgeous – a cheddar so woodsy you have to wear a wool sweater to eat it and, if possible, a cap with ear flaps.

Bleu Mont Dairy has an interesting story. I used to buy this cheese from Willi Lehner at the farmer’s market in Madison, Wisconsin, and I never knew his cheese-making operation was solar and wind-powered. Or that he had a straw-bale aging cave. Uhm, I want to live there. It sounds like one big Michael Pollan fantastique.

I took this cheese to a writers’ group last weekend, and my friend Ellie said, “Whoa, this is adult cheese. I don’t think I’ve eaten a cheese like this before.”

Bleu Mont’s Bandaged Cheddar is…how shall I put this...for mature audiences, much like Lars von Trier’s latest -- which is worth seeing if you like talking taxidermy. I do. If you want to host a cheese-cap after the movie, this would be an ideal centerpiece. I mean, it is bandaged.

Break out the hard cider – Strongbow pairs nicely – then put on some theremin records. This curiously gamey and strikingly elegant raw-milk cheese will have you dreaming of dark branches, wet wind, and talking foxes.

Friendly Farm Smoked Cheddar

I’ve been on a cheddar kick lately, which is why I did a little polka yesterday when I received a block of this pungent raw-milk cheese in my CSA box from Greensgrow Farm. Greensgrow, a mostly organic urban farm up here in Fishtown, is probably my favorite discovery since moving to Philadelphia. Located on the site of a former galvanized steel plant, this wee bit of acreage out here amid the asphalt jungle makes me feel like I’ve got one foot back in the Midwest. With a city block full of raised beds and a nursery that stocks heirloom plants, Greensgrow has become my personal and spiritual pantry. Now that I’ve joined their CSA – Community Supported Agriculture – it’s become the center of my universe. I stop by the farm every Saturday and pick up my weekly ration of local produce and dairy, then I kiss the ground.

I smooch the earth, I really do.

Are you scratching your head? Are you working the toothpick over your teeth and wondering what in heaven I’m talking about? I know, cheese dreamers, you never thought you’d see the words “urban” and “farm” linked together. But believe me, the people at Greensgrow have given me faith that good things can come from concrete. They are even teaching rowhouse-dwellers like me how to compost in Dixie Cups (well, not quite) and how to keep bees in the city. It won’t be long before I am making cheese from itty-bitty city goats on my rooftop.

Until then, I’ll just enjoy local cheeses that come to me through the refrigerator case at Greensgrow – there’s a whole cooler stocked with local meats and dairy treasure. This week’s Friendly Smoked Cheddar is just that: frrriendly. It tastes good with everything. On Saturday, I served it alongside beans on toast for a traditional (but vegetarian) British breakfast – it was a perfect substitute for sausage links.

I couldn't find out much about this smoked cheese, except that it's produced by a farm cooperative in Gap, Pa. It's available locally at Weaver's Way Co-op, Pumpkin Market, and Greensgrow Farm. If you stop by Greensgrow, be sure to raid the cooler for a few other worthwhile dairy specialties, including Pequea Valley Yogurt (vanilla is my favorite) and the goatmilk gelato made by Gelati di Capri (try the Mandarin Cremesicle).

Pssst...Greensgrow offers a winter CSA that's incredible -- the highlight of last winter, for me. There are a limited number of shares, and sign-up just started this week.

Patches of Star Havarti and Queso Blanco

Here’s my deepest fear: discovering I’m lactose intolerant. Gulp. Every few weeks, I hear from someone I know who has been given this diagnosis, and I shiver. At least I could still eat goat cheese, right? According to Elly Hushour, humans can digest goat’s milk in 20 minutes, while cow’s milk takes an hour.

Hushour is the cheese mistress of Patches of Star Dairy, a goat farm in Nazareth, Pa. that is licensed to sell raw milk. I met her this morning at the Headhouse Square Farmers’ Market in Center City Philadelphia; her arm-length loaf of goat havarti – a new product –stopped me in my tracks.

Hushour started making goat cheese back in the mid-80s when she was a new mother. She read about the nutritional value and easy digestability of goat’s milk and began experimenting with recipes. Today she produces a variety of raw milk-certified yogurt, ice cream (woo hoo!), and cheeses, including Queso Blanco and the only domestic Halloumi I’ve ever seen.

I love Patches of Star Havarti. More and more, I see how raw-milk cheese carries a complexity I just don’t taste in pasteurized cheeses, and this one is no exception. Havarti is usually a weed of a cheese in my book – a cold-case snoozer – but Patches of Star Havarti is superbly creamy, gently grassy, with a barnyard hook. It almost tastes like Provolone.

I also tried the Garlic Parsley Queso Blanco, which Hushour recommended as a topping for pasta (crumbled on top of noodles with black olives, she said). I liked the herbiness of the cheese, and, okay, I have a weakness for any cheese that’s shaped like a wigwam. But I’ll go back to the havarti again. It’s outstanding.

If you want to try Patches of Star cheese, you’ll have to haul butt to Headhouse Square, because Hushour only sells directly to her customers. Or you could drive out to Nazareth and check out her rotational grazing and her goats, who are fed on sunflowers.