This Cheese Doesn't Suck: Avalanche Chevre

It's springtime on the Front Range.  The woodpeckers are making a ruckus, the rivers are just starting to swell with snow melt, but most importantly the goats that are herded out here are in the middle of kidding season.  What does that mean exactly? It means the goat milk is flowing!  Finally the first batch this year of fresh chevre from Avalanche* is now available!!! This cheese is worthy of those 3 exclamation points.

It's those little logs. c/o Avalanche

 It is hands down the best chevre I have ever had the pleasure to consume.  Some chevs end up with a dense clay like texture (which is not a bad thing, however).  This little log of goat cheese goodness is actually fluffy all through, with springy moisture and melts as soon as it hovers over the tongue.  Amazing, right?  It has the classic citrus note of a chevre but on a much subtler scale.  It's creamy paste brings up notes of lightly sweet fruit preserves, cut green grass, and hint of winter alfalfa.  In Englishy speak: It's damn fine cheese. Go eat some. Right. Now.


*Avalanche lets their does have some maternity time before & after they kid.  Hence we don't get any fresh chevre from them during the winter months.  Those long, long months where we all craves the milky delicioussss...*drool*....  But I digress.  They love their animals and even elect a "Goat of the Month" rather than an "Employee of the Month".  Three cheers for excellent animal husbandry resulting in oh-so-happy animals!

Arroyo: March's Goat of the Month. c/o Avalanche

Random Recipe: Buttermilk Roasted Chicken

Okay folks this post actually has nothing to do with cheese.  Thus making my closing statement of my last entry null and void...at least until next time.  However I feel compelled to share the following recipe link with the world.
I prepared this Buttermilk Roasted Chicken (note: I added a dash of chile powder and a pinch of tumeric since I was lacking paprika) for friends last night and was rewarded with squeaky clean plates and arguments over who got the last piece.  Yeah, ego trip.

How it looks in the Smitten Kitchen.  Mine was less boney.

The Smitten Kitchen (see clicky links in the side bar) is now my favorite go to blog for quick, innovative, and so-good-your-friends-will-dry-hump-your-leg recipes.

Cheese = Art

My extreme nerdiness for all things cheese has really hit a boiling point this week.  My absence from this blog has not been due to illness, alien invasion, or a fantastical European tour involving me consuming every piece of cheese and glass of wine in sight. (hint hint to any independently wealthy readers out there...).  No, I have been in the throws of creativity.  Involving needlepoint and Pierre Robert brie.

Yeah, I'm on the mustache band-wagon.

Seriously.  I manifested a slightly anthropomorphized Pierre Robert into a piece of embroidery art.  Apparently having cheese in my fridge and/or belly was not enough for me.

The Hubs is now accusing me of making our kitchen even cheesier (har har).  Being that this little art project is going to be acquiring other needlepoint friends.  I'm thinking a piece of Quickes Cheddar done in linen thread would look nice.  



Should you want to kitsch out your living space with a cheese embroidery of your very own you can find my work at The No Coast Company store.  (i also sell normal things like hand knit woolens. you know, like a normal person.) 

I promise the next post will be back to the regularly scheduled self importance involving how freakin' amazing whatever cheese I'm into is.


Happy Hump Day, everyone!