The Drawer That Is Never Empty

 

“You know, there is always a little something leftover for cheese” one of the times my mother’s voice would sound fuller than normal. She even looked taller when she could, with all confidence, assure me that no matter how long the phone might be cut off or worse, ringing off the hook with people looking for payment, there was a little savory crumble or smear of utter indulgence and joy tucked away in the skinny flat drawer of our oft sparsely stocked refrigerator.

 

Those early years my mother struggled being a single mother, and she did the absolute best she could to try and help me find joy in the little things seeing as the “big ones” weren’t available to us at the time. I learned to blow my wishes into a wand saturated with sudsy bubble liquid. Dream big, deep chest filling breath, wish telepathically whispered into the bubble that formed before my wide eyes. I would then stand there watching as those hopes and dreams floated way above my head and down the street, hoping the whole time that they would go as far as they could before bursting spreading my desires to places out of my reach. Never knowing that one day bubbles would play an instrumental role in a career that took me places I could never have dreamed of standing there on the grass, barefooted, a little hungry, bubbles trailing down the street, my attention drifting to a tiny nibble from the special drawer of the refrigerator. 

 

 

 

My adoration and appreciation of great cheese followed me into my adult life and the cheese department at The Wine Country was the very first department I was fully in charge of twenty something years ago. I started by bringing in the standards, Brie, Camembert, New York Cheddar and a smattering of my beloved blue cheeses. The more confident I got watching people grab handfuls of various wrapped wedges, the more I began to explore, but for the most part sticking with the vast world of cheeses from Europe. That began changing, like a lot, about 6 years ago.

 

When I began as the cheese buyer for The Wine Country the term “American Cheese” held with it a very different connotation. Most of us were immediately picturing those thin, waxy slabs wrapped in, and frankly tasted a little like, plastic. Good for a comforting, old school, grilled cheese or melted over a burger patty at a backyard barbeque, but maybe not one wants to nibble on while enjoying a wine from your local wine merchant. I can assure you that American cheese has been folded into the foodie world. People are not only open to trying artisanal cheeses from The United States, they are devouring them and coming back for more. I for one now believe with all my cheese loving heart, the cheeses from The United States have surpassed, in terms of diversity, many cheeses from the Old World. There. I said it. 

 

 

 

I think, for us anyway, the real awakening came with the cheeses from right here in California. Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog, Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk and Mt. Tam, the mild offerings from Central Coast Creamery and the bold Blue from Point Reyes. We had access to these fine local gooey offerings and the quality, well like I said, pried our palates and minds right open. This led to local purveyors seeking more incredible cheeses from around the U.S. for us to discover and the things they have brought for us, game changing. Period. Now some of the cheeses I am reordering, suggesting, and taking home to feed my inner cheese monster are, you guessed it, “American Cheese”

 

Still stocking those beloved eye-opening, or palate prying, favorites like Humboldt Fog, Mt. Tam and Red Hawk but we are always bringing in cool new thinks from small U.S. creameries and below are some of my new all-time favorites. Happy snacking from the cheese drawer everyone!

Your Local Wine & Cheese Nerd,

Samantha Dugan

 

 

 

Sweet Grass Dairy Pimento Cheese 6oz, $7.99

Now this cheese has been featured a lot on our social media pages, blogs and my face. We are crazy in love with this spreadable, smokey, mild but immensely addictive cheese. The grated bits offer texture, the pimento gives us a gloriously smokey note and we have eaten it pastas, grilled cheese sandwiches, burgers, as a dip for fresh veggies and I have been known to smear it on a bagel or toast. Limited only by your imagination. 

 

 

 

Milton Creamery Prairie Breeze 6oz, $6.99

This is such a brilliantly intense cow’s milk, Cheddar styled cheese. Just a big blast of almost caramelized milk flavor. Like a cross between great Cheddar, Parmesan and aged Gouda with a rich mouth feel and a super long, almost sweet finish. A favorite for grating over salads, burgers, and simply nibbling on with fresh fruit. Gorgeous cheese.

 

 

 

Milton Creamery 4 Alarm Cheddar 6oz, $4.99

Not for the weak of palate! They aren’t kidding about 4 alarm here, this is wicked fiery cheese that is great grated into a more mild cheese for tacos, burritos, chili or if you are a fire eater, again, just to nibble. 

 

 

 

Jasper Hill Farm Harbison 9oz, $16.99

This is a super sexy, oozing, pungent, silky cheese that has a bloomy rind and is wrapped in a band of spruce bark which imparts a wicked cool herbal flavor. Not the most beautiful on the outside but this stinker is spilling out with sumptuous feral and olive oil flavors. Crusty bread, crackers and fresh fruit, heavenly. 

 

 

 

Boxcarr Rocket’s Robiola No size indicated but it is a thick hunk, $21.99

This is another more pungent, gooey cheese that ranges from being fudgy to being running and silky. Cow’s milk washed with vegetable ash that takes on a wrinkly outer skin. Inside you get mushrooms, grass, creamy milky notes, and it finishes with a bright tang. Lovely spreadable cheese for a cheese plate or dolloped into mushroom dishes, like pizzas.

 

 

 

Beecher’s Smoked Flagship Cheddar. No size indicated but about 4oz, $9.99

Beecher’s was another creamery that started it all in terms of artisanal domestic cheeses and they have a massive following even outside their shop in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. The regular Flagship has won awards for years, but fewer people know about this smoked version. Great crumbly texture, like Cheddar but with a powerful smoked flavor. A favorite for grilled ham and cheese, burgers, nibbling with sweet fruit and adds tremendous punch to grilled pizzas.

Nice To Know- Repost

Reposting in honor of Kim Dugan, the uncle that found me and filled in a bunch of missing pages. The ones that I flipped past with wavering indignation, hostility, bruised soft spots and the occasional anger. He let me know I was indeed wanted, adored, remembered and ached for. Thank you sweet angel, Rest In Peace. I love you..... 

“They gave me a dozen yellow roses the day you were born. You were their first grandchild and they were really hoping for a girl so they were very happy when you showed up, a tiny little girl that looked just like her father.” All my mother would say and pretty much all I really knew of my grandparents on my father’s side, I mean aside from some really grainy and not so deep memories of them and awkward visits that were somewhat forced and always fraught with a weird kind of sadness that I was far too young to understand at the time.  

When I was older more stories would come, ones that carried with them an even darker and bloated sense of sadness than I used to feel watching my mother’s big blue eyes fill with tears as climbed back in her VW Bug and left me for visits with my father’s parents. The older me was granted inside access to the stories of rage, sadness, fear and abandonment in foreign countries. Stories of a tyrannical and absentee father that in turn raised a son that, at least in my estimation, abandoned his child as well. Through all the odd and fragmented telling of these events I found myself feeling about my paternal grandparents much as I did about my deceased father at the time, “If they didn’t care enough, well neither do I” Cynical and cold? Maybe but it was part of the protective armor that had been forming over my heart, that barrier that kept most people at lengths far enough that I had hoped they wouldn’t be able to thump away even harder, or even sweeter,  at what was in fact, a rather bruised heart. A thick layer of “Don’t you dare” that would serve me well at a time when I needed it most, and in some strange way I now find myself feeling grateful for….that old, “without knowing pain you can know no pleasure” or whatever, well there is real truth in that. 

So icy cold grandparents on one side and none on the other, like one side loathed me…or worse, ignored me with such venom that it stung and the other just vanished. I learned  that my father’s father died and felt nothing, absolutely nothing. I remember crying the night my mother told me my father had overdosed but I’m still not sure if it were my heart breaking or if I was feeling hers do so. Hard to miss or feel pain for that you don’t know or really understand, males in my life in the form of father or grandfather? Never meant much….but when I would allow myself a fleeting second of wonder, just a few moments of “How come?” I never quite understood how any woman could just write off a granddaughter she was once so thrilled about that she laid yellow roses at my side. Like most things one can’t answer I would just shrug it off and ignore that nagging little twitch, spend my time thinking about and working on the things that did in fact matter like work and the raising of my own child. 

“If you are the Samantha Dugan I am looking for” the letter that arrived in my inbox at work nearly two years ago now, a letter from my father’s brother telling me that he had been looking for me. I once again found myself buckling into the armor, forthcoming but not willing to open up, expose myself to people that had left me nearly 35 years ago. Why would I? Why should I? I’m a happy woman now, living in a life I love and wouldn’t change for anything and that all came about without any help or hugs, any knowledge or involvement from them other than leaving me with a hole or missing half and the occasional sense of wonder. As I heard these things flitting about in my head and sometimes coming out of my mouth, well it became pretty clear, I wasn’t as over it as I thought. 

So began a conversation, one between my uncle and I that would answer lots of questions, sort of and fill me with many more. “I thought I had found you when I went to The Wine Country’s bio page, but when I read that you were married I assumed Dugan was your married name so you couldn’t be the Samantha I was looking for.” His words were slipping past the crust and his dedication to writing me long letters and pages of stories about his family…or our family, I felt myself slipping out of that armor and aching for more. “After your father died your mother was supposed to go to your grandmother’s for a visit, she never showed. My mother waited days, called and even went by where you were living, you guys had just vanished. She sent cards for years but they always came back. We had no idea where you had gone. We learned not to speak of you later in her life because it always made her cry.” 

I read the pages of history my uncle sent, the stories so unlike those my mother told that I would swear I was hearing about two different families. Even now I’m not sure if my uncle is sugar coating things, my mother just made things up or if my father had filled my mother’s head with lies and crazy delusion, thing is, doesn’t matter. None of that matters now, nearly everyone is gone and I can’t even ask my mother why she ran with me, shunned them if that is what really happened. The here and now is all that truly matters and now I have this uncle and the knowing that my paternal grandmother didn’t just vanish, that she wondered and ached for me…can’t say as that changes the way I feel about them or myself for that matter but I must confess, it’s nice to know.

Grandma Jane,

I’m sorry. I’m sorry we didn’t get to know one another. I’m sorry I never got to partake of a meal in your kitchen, one that I can remember anyway. I’m sorry if you were hurt by my mother or her family. I’m sorry you never got to meet your great-grandson. I’m sorry for the times I was angry and worse, apathetic. I’m sorry I never thought to look for you. I’m sorry you and my mother never found peace in each other, you both suffered a life changing blow,  began a new life of loneliness the day that lethal dose ran through my father’s, her husband’s, your son’s veins. Things were far from easy but I’m now a happy and strong woman very much in love with my life. As soon as I send this note off into the ether I will be stepping into my jeans that are way too big for me and I like them that way, buttoning up my Wine Country shirt, also too big and again, the way I like it, to go into work where I have been given some of the greatest moments of my life….where I discovered there is something besides angry that I am good at, to teach and share with people my beloved Champagnes. A second class we had to add because the first one filled up so quickly. Seventy plus people wanting to come taste and learn with me. I’m not alone, Grandmother Jane, not even close and I hope that if there is anything beyond this life we live here, that you can see and feel that….

I’m not perfect

Not beautiful

Not brilliant

But….

I’m not angry

Not resentful

Full of laughter

Sort of funny at times

Fiercely loyal

And….

Very forgiving

Rest peaceful dear lady….and thanks for the roses, and the tears.

Samantha  

Moving On From Paris

Quiet here this afternoon in the sweet little flat we rented at 2 Rue Guisarde which is located in the 6^th here in Paris. I am hesitant to use the word quiet even though the street is not a big one, there is always a continuous stream of noise and activity the likes of which remind you that you are in fact in the middle of a city. Sometimes just folks on foot, young teens and loudly chatting passersby, others, a roar of trucks, road workers, delivery drivers and guys peddling by in a rickshaw, horrible Euro disco blaring from the speakers as if this was some incentive for someone to climb aboard. The bar scene on our little street, and the streets adjacent are furious and there are no fewer than 6 restaurants or cafes on our tiny block alone. Italian, Tapas, classic bistros and brasseries drawing people in at all hours of the night, spitting them out on to our little street full of wine and feverous merriment. My first or second morning here, once again unable to sleep, (like being across the world is going to help that problem) I was sitting at my little dining table, cup of steaming hot green tea glued to my hand as the voices down below climbed up the outer sides of our building and landed with a thud on my table like the morning paper. The last of the nights party monsters stumbling home and at just the same time I watched the lights flicker on at the Italian restaurant across the way, one of the team of staff, there at 4:30 AM, to clean, prep and prepare for lunch service. Pretty amazing to watch part of the city crawl home and the other part start percolating to life in the same exact moment. 

So yeah, quiet might not be the right term for this place, hell anyone that has heard the recyclers come, the ear-splitting clang of joyously consumed wine and beer bottles tumbling into the belly of the incredibly clumsy sounding trucks knows that these tight street make one very aware you are not alone here….I kind of love it for that. Except when I don't of course. But right now, the lunch crowd is finishing up on this Tuesday afternoon. The church bells have a few more hours before they go off, the kids likely back in school or maybe on their way home and there is just the distant clank of people on the sidewalk savoring the last of their café or bottle of wine. The servers are huddled beneath awnings taking long drags of a much needed smoke while chatting on their cell phones, their words I don’t understand but the sentiment very familiar. I do love the voyeuristic part of travel, I don’t think I knew just how much until this trip. 

Of course I’ve been to Paris before, quite a few times in fact but it was always at the beginning or the end of a trip that took place in other parts of France. My first time here I had all of 3 days to see the city, one on the way in and 2 before lugging off after 25 days saturated in the wine growing regions of the gorgeous country. So in and out has always been the way I’ve seen this place which is why when my friend Amy and I concocted the plan to have she and my husband run the Paris marathon together, and it just so happened to fall a couple weeks before a wine/work trip I planned on taking, well I knew I was to see Paris is a whole new light. 

 

Amy loves Paris more than any person I’ve ever known. She spends months here alone, eating, drinking, shopping, cooking and exploring and she and I have always shared a love of France but before this trip had yet to experience together. My passion has always rested in places like Beaune, Loire and Champagne and hers in the big, bright, adventure and history drenched city of Paris. To be here together was something of a dream for the two of us. 

Now Amy and I are very, very different people. She can visit and re-visit the museums she loves, stroll through the parks and markets for hours just wandering, wondering and wandering and I, well I am more of plant myself somewhere and watch the city tell me who it is kind of gal. Amy is a professor, a passionate and voracious reader of literature, not to mention she has made this sort of her second city so she wears it like a glove. I had wondered if I would be able to keep up with her but after breaking my leg early this year, I knew I would not, not in way that I’d hoped anyway. Not the end of the world in the least as when you are a close as she and I, you have no need to cling to each other and we just fine wandering and roaming in our own way and then coming together when there was something she couldn’t wait to show me. We also had to squish a marathon in there too so as always, there wasn’t nearly enough time and last night, her final night, I was hit hard with a combination of, well of I don’t know what but I couldn’t eat, drink, really even move that much and slept over 14 hours. Had to cancel on her last meal here……still stinging from that and as I sit here, her flat above mine now empty, not only physically but metaphorically, my loud little pad here feels really, really quiet. 

  

Got one more night here before taking off for Normandy in the morning. My 14 hours of sleep and night of complete shutdown has left me a little lonely, way fucking hungry and wanting to spend this evening, my last evening in Amy’s city, a coupe de Champagne in my hand, wandering and wondering. Missing her and going over it all in my head and reliving our too few days here.