Making Mac and Cheese Better with N.C. Mountain Cheese

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.] 

How much more would Thomas
Jefferson enjoyed baked macaroni
if he had used cheese from Ashe
County?

What’s the most important ingredient in macaroni and cheese? Except for the love that the preparer personally adds, is one item more important than anything else?

The questions may seem frivolous because today the recipe at home can be quite simple – unless you’re Thomas Jefferson, who was so consumed with serving the perfect macaroni that he bought a pasta-making machine in Europe. For his baked macaroni dish, he also imported cheese from France. Too bad that he probably didn’t know how good cheese from the mountains of North Carolina could be.

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...

Learning About Cheese Making (and Feeding a Baby Goat)

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.] 

To watch cheese being made, taste some artisan cheese samples, and take home a package or two, I headed to the Blue Ridge area of our state to travel part of the Western North Carolina Cheese Trail. Little did I expect to be bottle-feeding a day-old baby goat. Within minutes after arriving at Round Mountain Creamery near Black Mountain, NC, I was holding a full bottle of warm milk for an eager kid who cared little about who was feeding it.

Linda Seligman, creamery owner, teaches
me how to bottle feed a newborn goat.

The feeding was all part of the tour that I had arranged the day before. Before visiting the creamery, I reviewed information about the Western North Carolina Cheese Trail online. The trail, established in 2013, links together farms and creameries that show how artisan cheeses are made from goat and cow milk and inform visitors about the art and science of cheese-making. Helping to promote the cheese trail is the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP), which builds local food connections and helps area farms succeed. 

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...