Vermont Butter & Cheese Tour

On July 14th a small group of Slow Food members (including 2 from the Essex campus!) took a tour of the Vermont Butter & Cheese Co. facility. We were fortunate enough to have Allison Hooper herself guide our tour and explain both the company history and the current day operation.

Allison brought us through a wonderful tour, covering the entire facility, from pasturization, cutting curd, aging, and packing of the butter and various cow’s and goats’ milk cheeses. She also treated us to a wonderful tasting of the delicious products they carry. My favorites were the cultured butter with sea salt crystals and the creamy goat cheese. Visit our photo gallery to see more of the tour and spectacular cheeses!

13 July meeting minutes

From our secretary:

Introductions

Jenny spoke about Slow Food as a group. We are the largest campus convivium in the country. There will be a trip to Vermont Butter & Cheese Company on Monday July 14th at 2:00pm. We will be leaving from 7 School St. and meeting at 1:15pm. Chef Tom will try to attend the tour.

Slow Food will be going on a tour to Wellspring Farm on July 21st. We are going to pick whatever vegetables are in season to contribute to our Chef’s Table dinner. The Chef’s Table meal will be on July 23rd. The proceeds will be used to send students to Italy for the Terra Madre Convention in October, as well as towards the Slow Food NECI fund.

Paul suggested that some of the money in our Slow Food NECI fund should go towards a tasting menu or for an informal survival meal (similar to the pig roast) for Slow Food Members.

Slow Summer Dinner:

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

A dinner to showcase the bounty of summer, focusing on Vermont foods. Paul suggested a tapas style menu for that meal. We decided that we will discuss the 8/20 Survival Meal more once we establish the details for the dinner on 7/23.

Ryan suggested that for the second slow food meal, we do a tour of summer across the U.S., using local Vermont food.

We will be doing a practice run of some of our dishes after we pick up some produce at Wellspring Farms. We talked about local advertising for the Chef’s Table Dinner. We will be contacting local newspapers to get news out about the meal. Possible print advertising may include: Times Argus, Seven Days, or Burlington Newspaper.

Jenny said we need a team of 5 to prep in the kitchen prior to the event, a team of 5 in the kitchen Wednesday night, and a team of 5 servers. One member of the team of 5 servers will be announcing each course. Chef Tom will be the one to decide who will be working which station the night of the event and the days prior to.

Frank suggested that we ask guests if they would like to donate their sky miles to the students going to the convention. Chef Tom, in a previous meeting, brought up the sky miles idea, perhaps setting an envelope next to the biscotti upon departure.

If any one has a dish to be used in the menu, please email Paul.Davino@student.neci.edu, so that he can have the proper Italian spelling for the dishes.

Meeting tonight!

Hi all,

Don’t forget, we have a Slow Food meeting this evening at 6:30 at 7 School St. We’ll be introducing the group and the Slow Food concept to new members, discussing the Slow Journey Through Italy fundraiser on July  23rd, and I’m sure we’ll have several other bits to get through. We now have an 8-course tasting menu for this event!

Reminder: Tomorrow is the Vermont Butter & Cheese tour at 2pm.

Hope to see many of you tonight!

It was all about the eggs

…and the mushrooms, and the greens, and the cheeses! This past Sunday was our first survival meal of the Mod for our incoming students, and an opportunity for us to recruit new members for our convivium.

Our meal was inspired by the Piedmont, the location of Terra Madre 2008, and was predominately composed of local ingredients. We made pasta from King Arthur flour and local chicken and duck eggs. The freshness of the eggs allowed us to serve a delicious fettuccine topped only with extra virgin olive oil. Locally-foraged mushrooms bought at the farmer’s market the previous morning filled ravioli topped with a beurre rouge sauce. The mushrooms were also featured in a risotto and a second risotto contained Bayley Hazen Blue from Jasper Hill Farm and bacon from Vermont Smoke and Cure.

We had a bounty of local greens, also from the farmer’s market, bread baked by Slow Food members at La Brioche, and a large cheese platter of assorted Vermont Butter & Cheese Company cheeses. Baking and Pastry students provided us with a delicious array of sweets. Thanks to everyone’s hard efforts, the meal was a success, hopefully we have engaged some new students, and we are still thinking about our next survival meal!

Blog getting up & running!

Hi all,

I’ve just started the blog this evening and will be working on it over the upcoming days, including uploading photos, posting events to our calendar, related links, uploading meeting minutes, etc. To help in this initial effort, please send in any photos you have from Slow Food events.

If you subscribe to the RSS feed, you’ll be notified as the site is updated. Please pass on any thoughts you have on what to include here.

Thanks!

Shelagh