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Regan deVictoria and Cheese!
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When I suggested
Gordon Edgar's book “
Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge” as a summer reading selection at the
Butte-Silver Bow Public Library, I never imagined it would lead to a small scale artisan cheese festival.
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An Overflow Crowd Attended
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Regan deVictoria, the library’s programming manager, ran with the suggestion.
So on August 16th, Butte hosted the largest celebration of handmade cheese ever
held in Montana. More than eighty people (double the expected number) enjoyed
nearly four hours of curd related talk, tasting and making in the main lobby of
the public library.
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Matt Moore ~ Cheesemaking
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The event opened with a local home cheesemaker, Matt Moore, demonstrating a
mozzarella make. Matt started by saying he became a cheesemaker after reading a
book he got at the library, Ricki Carroll’s
Home Cheese Making. Matt has been up to his elbows in curd ever since. Some type of cheese
sandwich accompanies his toddler son’s every meal.
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Close Up of a Tasting Tray
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Next the crowd indulged in tasting twenty-two cheeses that I brought from the
American Cheese Society Conference
sale in Madison, WI.
For many people in the audience, it was the
first time they had tasted goat or sheep milk cheeses. Regan herself is now a
goat cheese evangelist. With cheese taste and talk still swirling on their
tongues, the audience then become absorbed in an hour long conversation,
storytelling and QA session with
Gordon Edgar.
We
connected with Gordon through Skype as he sat in his San Francisco apartment and
felt entirely at home with him, as though we were all in the same room.
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Live Skype Session with Gordon
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Thanks to the effort of many good people, the entire event worked like magic. On
a Friday night in an historic hard rock mining town, an admiration for handmade
food was reborn.
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Twenty-two Handmade Cheeses
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Cheese and tech geeks together in the open ferment of ideas in a public library...the perfect recipe for enchantment.
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Samples Included a First Place Blue
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