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Food

Hot Summers Are the Perfect Time for Eating Stinky Cheese

Sometimes it's too fucking hot to turn on a stove or exist inside an apartment. And when faced with the bursting farmers markets and the overwhelming selections at the nearest cheese counter, sometimes, less is more, and simple is good.
Photo via Flickr userDidriks

There is something about living in New York during the summer months that makes you really appreciate getting the hell out of here. But not all of us are lucky enough to escape the concrete heat and stinky subways as our bodies slow down, swelling in the humid air.

Summer storms come a little too fast and last a little too short to really feel relief.

Instagram fills with snaps of tan feet jetting out over the Hampton Bay area and late night bonfires in the Hudson. Kudos to all you living it up (and thank you for the images) but one thing to look forward to whether you are stuck in the city or out frolicking in the country is picnic-style dining, which is the summer norm.

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I'm always a little hungry, and sometimes it's just too fucking hot to turn on a stove or exist inside an apartment. And when faced with the bursting farmers' markets and the overwhelming selections at the nearest cheese counter, sometimes, less is more, and simple is good. Just ask anyone who has had to make a decision about what to order at a Guy Fieri restaurant.

One of the all-time best combinations is a young goat cheese and some fresh veggies. Now is the time for baby carrots and tender radishes, bundled and ready to be eaten. Paired with Vermont Creamery's Bonne Bouche, the crunch and slight sweetness of the veggies makes the slightly buck, super creamy cheese a wholly orgasmic experience. The seductively silken texture is perfect to be pierced and scooped with the tender spears of root.

Vermont Creamery has been around for a while—almost 30 years to be exact—and was the love child of two idealistic agricultural lovers, Alison and Bob. Both having roots in the dairy world—one by family lineage, the other by way of working on a farm in France—they came together to create a fresh chevre needed for a fancy dinner. What began as a happenstance is now a thriving family. Once making everything by hand on their land, they now support a whole growing movement in Vermont of family-run farmers who value the quality of life for their animals as much as their own. The romantic notion that cheese can create and sustain a community of earth-lovin', animal-valuing, agricultural-appreciating families so that they can live off the land and thrive, well, that's what small-batch cheese does.

Bonne Buche is ash-ripened, which means that there is ash that is dusted on the exterior of the cheese before the rind is developed. This practice was once used to protect the rind from flies and such, but is now more of a traditional thing, kinda like marriage or circumcision, but less painful and barbaric. The delicate rind of geotrichum bacteria develops over the course of a few days/weeks as the goat cheese ages in humid caves. A thin layer of cream develops just under the silken rind, and the center develops a velvety density, just waiting to be smeared on that fresh, young root vegetable I was talking about earlier.

So even when it's too hot—when you are starting to get cranky, and the sweat keeps dripping down your back—you can experience the fresh Vermont air and the wholesome hippy way of life by eating some Vermont Creamery goodies and smoking some dank outdoor green.