Mandi Foods

It's been brought to our attention that Mandi Foods have an online store where you can purchase Westminster Cheese and various other Somerdale products.

If you've got a moment why not wonder over to their site and browse their selection!

www.mandifoods.com/shop

Where in the World is Marian? Hillsboro, Oregon

Tour Update: On the second day of their Whole Foods Oregon tour Marian and Gerry have gone to the Tanasbourne Store in Hillsboro, this time promoting Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar.

Gabriel and Marian

Ernie On Skype!!!

STOP THE PRESS!!!

Resident 'hi-tech hijacker' Ernie Waldron used Skype (with a headset) for the first time. Thankfully the moment was recorded for posterity and we are all the more grateful to be sharing this vision of achievement for all you PC Luddite's out there with your anti-technology movement.

Ernie on Skype! - now all he's got to do is find the "Power On" button.

Where in the World is Marian? Bridgeport, Oregon

Britain's best export - Marian and Gerry are on the move and this time in the Northwest working with Whole Foods Market throughout Oregon and featuring Barber's 1833 and Cotswold. We will keep you up-to-date with their activities and the list of stores where you can find our cheese.

Westie at Dumont Dunes and Baker, CA

Our favourite cheesy mascot has just been on yet another outing! This time he's touring around California in a 1965 vintage buggy...

Westie and Bob's Big Boy

Westie and the worlds largest thermometer

Westie on a vintage 1965 Sand Buggy

Westie on top of competition hill

Where in the World is Marian? Montgomery, Alabama

Marian attended Earth Fare Store's Grand Opening which featured Barber’s 1833 Cheddar, Cotswold and Red Dragon…..but they had a great selection of Somerdale Cheese varieties, as you can see from their Cheese Department displays.

Marian and Robert (Department Manager)

Gary - Sporting his 'The Who' Union Jack tattoo.

Where in the World is Marian? Coral Springs, Florida

Continuing on with our activities with Whole Foods Market in south Florida we worked at their Coral Springs location, featuring Cotswold, Wensleydale with Cranberries and Barber’s 1833 Cheddar. All three products went down a treat with the customers!

Marian

Rebecca and John (Team Leader)

Arlene (Demo Specialist) and Marian

Marian, John and Gerry

Where in the World is Marian? Boca Raton, Florida

Another note came in from Marian who is once again on the road promoting cheese with Gerry:

We continued our activities with Whole Foods Market in South Florida, at Boca Raton.

Here we were sampling Cotswold, Wensleydale with Cranberries and Barber’s 1833 Cheddar, which as you can see, was hand selected and signed by Giles Barber.

Marian

Kate & Jerry

Westie with Mandi Foods

Westie met up with Mandi Foods recently, just for a cheesy photo-shoot! See the results... oh and he also had an off balance snap shot taken of him and Steelers Running Back Franco Harris.

Debbie Ritson

Gianfranco Dicarlo

Jeff Shearer

A rather wooden Franco Harris

A shout out to Willapa Hills

We were fortunate enough to be situated right next to a lovely couple from Washington state on the Cheeseworks stand at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Stephen J. Hueffed and Amy Turnbull gave up their previous occupation to take on the immense challenge of running a dairy farm.

Their hard work has paid off as Willapa Hills blue cheese has arrived in the markets! Be sure to have a look at their site and keep an eye out for their products at Farmers Markets around Oregon and Washington.

www.willapahills.com

Westie in Trinidad!

Some bears have it rough, and some bears go to Trinidad - on a "work" trip...

"Trinidad man ! On a high pressure sales trip 

with Ernie and Jonesy, wow these guys work hard" 

- said West as he takes a short break by the pool.

MARY’S DAIRY DIARY - FEBRUARY 2011

Everything has the battered look that comes from sitting in a deep freeze of a winter with several inches of snow sitting on its back.  Since then, there’s been weather enough to get growth started - grass, snowdrops, catkins. Then we have frosts to remind us that winter has something else in store.  Wild things get bolder as they get hungrier, in the hundred hungry days between Christmas and Easter.  Owls fly on fine nights, a barn owl swoops low overhead on a starlit night.  We collect the owl pellets for children to discover the delicate tracery of the skeletons of the little creatures the owls eat - death and excrement, enormously interesting to children.  Although we are culling wild boar, they are still bold, facing you out if you come across them in the track, sniffing and snorting, eventually lumbering away, oddly nimble despite being so solid.

CROPS  -  start moving in warmer weather, they’ve enjoyed the soil shattered at depth by the frost.  There’s the magical feel of soil and plants and animals uncurling slowly and fitfully from the iron grip of winter.  The annual miracle of the earth turning in space, bringing us back to warmth and ease, gives a shared joy felt by all living things.  We carefully eke out our stores of silage and straw harvested last year to feed the animals until the grass growth takes off faster than cows eat it at the end of March.

Now, we’ve had cows eat off the frost-damaged grass leaves before their ruins stunted the growth to follow.  The grass starts growing as soon as it’s nibbled off - ask the people who work the lawnmowers.  Even as early as the first week in February, as long as we haven’t got frost or flood, we’ll have the fresh calved cows graze, some grass stored from the autumn, but some grass grown in the milder weather this year - the best nourishment there is. 

COWS  -  The cows are starting to calve, half the cows calving in a torrent of calves in the first three weeks of February.  The calving pens are a feat of organization, getting the cows in the right place at the right time - pre-calving, they chew the cud sociably.  Coming up to calving they find a private corner to concentrate, away from the auntie cows who in their own precalving state can claim another’s calf as her own to everyone’s confusion.  Then the calving, water bag first, then little black or white front feet, then legs, then a nose, squeeze the shoulders out and a great whoosh of calf and water out, often a slurp of air in.  She turns round to see who’s there, gives a lick and a nudge, and the heartstopping moment of the calf’s first indrawn breath.  The afterbirth comes, rich colours, and then the cow will often solemnly chew it, membranes hanging from her mouth, giving her valuable nourishment to start off her milking.  We leave cow and calf together long enough for the calf to get the colostrum, the first milk, but not so long that they bond, more than eight hours but less than a day. 

CALVES  -  We make the straw pens up in a barn and put ten calves at a time in and teach them to drink milk from a teat on a milk bar for the penfull.  Like the cows, they have a day of looking bereft then start playing with their pen-mates and looking forward to the person coming to feed them with noisy blarts.

HEIFERS  -  Their sisters two years older are do everything for the first time  -  calving, coming into the milking parlour, just lost sight of their calves  -  always a time to be patient and gentle.  We wipe their teats clean with cloths, hand milk each teat to get the milk flowing, then put on the milking cluster, which after the first surprise, gives them the relief they want.  Understandably, some find this challenging, and respond with a sharp kick - your arm, face and chest are in the firing line.  We’ve reared them knowing we’ll have this moment, and gentle handling through their lives gives most of them the trust that we mean no harm, and soon, one or two milkings in, the young heifers bustle in, knowing they are to be milked and wanting it.

We can’t make cheese out of the first milk, it doesn’t set, but that goes to feed the calves.  After 3 days the milk goes to the cheese dairy to be made into cheese - the fresh calved cows milk a different milk than that of cows calved in the autumn.  As the flow builds up it’s less creamy, with a stronger protein, and more complex, especially when the cows go out to graze the early spring grass.

CHEESE  -  In the cheese dairy, the challenge is to adjust the make to the milk to produce something that is recognizably our cheese every day.  We assess how firm the junket sets after we put the rennet in, and cut sooner or later to match.  A more fatty milk will need more moisture driving out of it by cutting more finely, but as the protein in the milk increases, we cut the junket less to avoid making too firm a cheese.

I love the challenge of this changing season of making a complex, enduring flavour which doesn’t beat you up, with the right amount of creaminess and acidity in the front of the flavour and the complex brothiness unfolding for several minutes, a warm aroma hitting your nose from your palate. 

RIND  -  It’s very exciting, we have brought our cheese mite down to an almost invisible level with our mite blowing/extracting set up.  Now we discover we are getting almost invisible rinds, so you could be eating the rind, barely see it, think the cheese had an off-flavour.   

What’s happening?   Over the years, as our mite problem built up since losing our fumigant, we have erred on the side of protecting the cheese – plenty enough lard, 3 muslin cloths on the top and bottom of the cheese and used ozone to slow up mite breeding.  Now we’ve got no mite to eat the lard and mark the rind, and the ozone cut down the mould growth that helps form the rind (which the mite were doing in their own destructive way).

We’ve eased back on the lard, taken the third cloth off and turned the ozone off.  We are starting to get higher levels of mould back, which will help, but the other measures will take a year and more to come through as the cheese we are making now matures.  In about a fifth of the cheese, the top and bottom rinds are so invisible that we are cutting them off, just so you don’t get and accidental mouthful of rind – and some people like it, but I don’t. 

Please forgive us for this accidental effect of a joyful story, that we have licked the mite.  If you know any cheesemaker suffering from mite, let me know, I’d be delighted to share our solution with them, as the ideas that made it were a generous gift to me from handling of Australian iron ore and our Devon Grain farmers’ co-operative.*

RECIPE  -  I love the comfort food of potatoes, bacon and cheese, with the starchiness of the potatoes balancing the richness of the cheese.  It’s an easy supper for a winter evening.

Chop an onion & sweat in Quickes Traditional Butter, when softened add some chopped bacon.  Slice some (2lbs) firm potatoes, skins on if you like which I do, (I’ve got some Ratte potatoes I grew in the garden) into the mix and leave to sweat a little (5 mins or so) with a lid on.  Put into a greased baking dish, add a little milk or cream if you are going for the full dairy experience (1/2 pint) and Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar (about 8oz) shredded roughly, season with pepper, add some dried breadcrumbs if you have them.  Bake for about 30 minutes at 180°C or until the potatoes are cooked and the top is lightly toasted.  Serve with roasted vegetables or a salad if it’s looking a bit warmer.

MARY QUICKE

New Westie Fans!

Westie was allowed out of his box once again and this time managed to make friends Deb Woodward and Linda Luke from McKenna Marketing...

Westie with Deb Woodward

Westie with Linda Luke

Assistant Buyer at Roche Bros-Boston

Where in the World is Marian? Coral Gables, Florida

Marian set off on her adventures again, this time to Coral Gables in South Florida:


We were invited to work the weekend Vendor Fair at the Whole Foods Market in Coral Gables, south Florida. This was organized in conjunction with Corine Lachtara, Whole Foods Market and Evan Brown, Account Manager at Gourmet Foods International, our local Distributor.

This proved to be a most successful weekend where we featured Barber’s 1833 Cheddar, Red Dragon and Cotswold. 


This Vendor Fair was held on a beautiful Spring weekend, in south Miami, Florida, (close to the famous Coconut Grove) which brought plenty of customers out to sample and purchase our cheese…..they loved it!

Marian

Gerry, Evan Brown and Marian

Gerry, Corine Lachtara and Marian

Jackeline... with Barber's 1833 Cheddar, who cut and wrapped the cheese as quick as we could sell it!!

Marian & Gerry with Cheese Shop Manager, Christian and Assistant Manager, Crystal.