The Land of Milk and Honey and Bacon and Cheese and...

1. Shelburne Farms maple-cured, cob-smoked bacon
2. Dakin Farm maple-cured, cob-smoked bacon
3. Shelburne Farms honey
4. Flag Hill Farm Cyder
5. Amish butter
6. Ayinger Ur-Weisse Dünkel Weizen
7. Stratford Organic Creamery whole milk
8. Celebrator Doppelbock
9. Dakin Farm cob-smoked bacon odds and ends
10. Dakin Farm Maine blueberries, packed in water
11. Shelburne Farms smoked cheddar
12. Dakin Farm yellow-eye beans
13. Lazy Lady Farm "O My Heart"
14. Orb Weaver cave-aged farmhouse cheese
15. Orb Weaver Vermont farmhouse cheese
16. Bee Haven Honey Farm pure Vermont honey
17. Dakin Farm buckwheat pancake mix
18. Vermont Common Cheddar Crackers
19. King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
20. Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen blue cheese
21. Gore Dawn Zola blue cheese
22. Jasper Hill Constant Bliss cheese
23. Black Gilliflower apples, a.k.a. Sheep's Nose apples
24. Stevens Lady apples
25. Cabot Creamery salted butter

Yep, you guessed it. We just made another one of our famous cross-border shopping expeditions to Vermont. Actually, we went down on a weekend getaway, to get out of the city, go for walks, and have another nice meal at American Flatbread, but one thing led to another. "...An endless banquet" is digital proof that we've found Montreal to be nothing if not rich (in at least two senses of the word) when it comes to its food culture, but there's something about our friends to the south and the landscape they call home that never fails to impress us. And somehow this admiration of ours has a way of turning into a lot of little food expenditures. The reason for this has something to do with our weakness for dairy. Good dairy, that is. And what, exactly, is so special about Vermont's dairy? Well, that has something to do with the kind of pasture land you find in Vermont, with the fact that Vermonters, to a degree that's almost unheard of these days, continue to hold on to their farms, and with the fact that the number of people who keep cows in Vermont (even just one) is so much higher than the average. Noel Perrin said so much back in 1978 in First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer, his account of small-time farming, and life among small-time farmers, in Vermont, and this situation has continued to hold until now. In fact, in Perrin's mind these factors helped explain why Vermont was better looking than its neighbor to the east, New Hampshire.

QUESTION: Why is Vermont more beautiful than New Hampshire? ANSWER: Because of Vermont farmers. Remove the farmers, and within ten years New Hampshire would surge ahead.

This is a serious argument. If you just consider natural endowment, the two states are both fortunate, but New Hampshire is more fortunate. It has taller mountains, it has a seacoast, it even owns the whole northern reach of the Connecticut River, except a little strip of mud on the Vermont side.

But New Hampshire's farmers mostly quit one to two generations ago and started running motels or selling real estate. The result is that most of New Hampshire is now scrub woods without views. Dotted, of course, with motels and real estate offices.

A lot of Vermont farmers, however, are holding on. Almost every farmer has cows, and almost every cow works night and day keeping the state beautiful. Valleys stay open and green, to contrast with the wooded hills behind them. Stone walls stay visible, because the cows eat right up to them. Hill pastures still have views, because the cows are up there meditatively chewing the brush, where no man with a tractor would dare to mow. (That's the other argument for butter besides its taste. I once figured that every pound of butter or gallon of milk someone buys means that another ten square yards of pasture is safe for another year.)

Sure, Vermont is suffering from sprawl and free-market economics these days in a way that it wasn't 30 years ago, but not nearly to the extent that most every other corner of North America is. And some things may have even improved over the last three decades, like the farmstead cheese scene. And the strength of the farmstead cheese scene has everything to do with the fact that Vermont has so many cows, and especially so many cows raised on small farms. And there is something to be said about Perrin's argument. I mean, as much as we love mountains and forest and that kind of thing, there's something to be said for pasture land and the views it affords. So maybe it all does boil down to this: four legs good.

You'll notice that we brought back a lot of Vermont dairy: organic milk, artisanal butter, and lots of farmstead cheese. We've hardly worked our way through our treasure trove of cheeses yet, but so far standouts include Lazy Lady's O My Heart, which is as creamy and as delicate as they get, and Orb Weaver Farm's cave-aged cheese, which has a wonderful caramel side to it. And let's not forget those Vermont Common Cheddar Crackers, made with real Grafton Village cheddar. Who needs Smartfood when you've got something as classic and as versatile as your Vermont Common Cheddar Cracker. Plus, who can argue with 175 years of experience? So cheese and cheese-based products were a hit.

But the other major discovery was Vermont bacon. Now, as much as I like bacon, I'm certainly not an all-out bacon fetishist, not the kind of person who left vegetarianism behind for bacon, not someone who'll take bacon any way they can get it. I've got some standards. Luckily, it's easy to get very good, high-quality bacon around these parts. Even our two local grocery stores--Sa & Fils and P.A.--have truly excellent bacon available behind their counters--throw in some of the city's premium boucheries/charcuteries, like La Maison du Roti or La Boucherie du Marché, or the city's amazing Eastern European charcuteries, like Charcuterie Hongroise or Slovenia, and you're laughing. But, believe me, you've never had anything like the bacon we found down in Vermont. Cob-smoked (as in corn cob-smoked), maple-cured bacon. Thick-cut, succulent, smoked and cured beyond perfection. I still can't get over it. We bought a couple of packs for our own personal, breakfast-time consumption--one pack of Shelburne Farms, one pack of Dakin Farm--and then we bought a couple of 1-lb. packages of Dakin Farm cob-smoked "odds and ends" just to cook with. We're talkin' heaven.

The next best discovery was beans, real New England baking beans, yellow-eyes and soldier beans. 2006 harvest. I know. You're thinking to yourself, "Beans?" You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes. They cooked to perfection in a fraction of the time the last batch I made did, and instead of being a characterless vehicle for the baked beans' other ingredients, they had a real flavor of their own, and cooking them created a rich pot liquor, just like it's supposed to. I can tell you one thing: I'll never use supermarket-bought navy beans ever again. That's it. It's over. Why would I ever go back? Together with a 1/4-pound of those Dakin Farm "odds and ends," I made the best damn batch of beans I've ever made. Seriously. Forget about "world-class." These were otherworldly.

Then there's the honey. Fantastic stuff, and at a fraction of what honey costs here in Quebec. I've still never quite understood the Great Price Hike of 2002 (or was it 2003?), the one that jacked up the price of honey by at least 60-80%. Whatever the cause, it doesn't seem to have affected Vermont's beekeepers.

And if that wasn't enough, we found apples, too. Somewhat rare stuff. Stevens Lady Apples, a tiny, perfectly colored, perfectly formed, slightly flattish variety, that, it's said, was kept tucked away in ladies' bosoms for safe-keeping until needed as a breath freshener. And Black Gilliflowers, a.k.a. Sheep's Nose apples, a cooking variety prized for its slightly spicy flavor.

Some people go on a trip and buy t-shirts and snoglobes and keychains, and that's cool. Other people go on a trip and buy milk and honey and bacon and cheese and beans and apples, and that's cool too. Trust me.

aj

[You can find out all about Shelburne Farms and Dakin Farm, etc. via the miracle of the Internet, and you can even order some of this stuff online, but wouldn't you rather go for a nice drive?]

Bayley Hazen Blue

Vermont blue and figs
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

A few years ago, I came across a cheese map of Quebec which detailed where the fromageries were and what they had to offer. We used this map a lot to find amazing local cheeses, and it became one of our main excuses for our weekend trips across the province. Quebec, like some other parts of North America, has been experiencing a renaissance in artisanal cheesemaking so you can find dozens and dozens of small cheesemakers scattered across the countryside. Thank God! There are so many incredible local cheeses right now in Quebec, such as Riopelle, Athonyte, Le Pizy, Valbert, Victor et Bertholde, and hundreds more, and so many of them are made with raw milk, too. Clearly there's a lot to be excited about, but there's still room for improvement. For reasons that might seem obvious, the cheeses that have emerged as part of this renaissance have tended to be French in style, rather than English, or Italian, or anything else. This is both a blessing and a curse. It means we have some very impressive high cream content cow's and goat's milk cheeses, but it also means that we're short on artisanal versions of the English-style cheeses that were staples here earlier. Another one of our weaknesses is in the area of artisanal butter production. To be rolling in French-style cheeses but to be lacking in French-style, fresh-churned butter is simply absurd.

Meanwhile, just south of the border, a parallel dairy renaissance has been underway. It's not that Vermont produces any more cheeses than Quebec, but step into nearly any general store in Vermont (and nearly every small town has one) and you'll find lovely local cheese, butter, milk and cream readily available. So, for instance, the blue cheese pictured above is something we bought at a little general store in Greensboro. We stopped in there looking for directions to Jasper Hill Farm, which is also in Greensboro and which we'd heard rave reviews of, but we were told that the farm didn't have a retail outlet. And, in any case, the woman at the store wasn't exactly sure where Jasper Hill Farm was located anyway. Lucky for us, they happened to stock Jasper Hill Farm's cheeses, so we picked one up. It's called Bayley Hazen Blue, and it is simply amazing, a perfect cheese. It might well be the best blue I have ever had in my life. We ate it with an apple-quince chutney and were blown away by its flavour.

Jasper Hill Farm makes only five different cheeses, and they are much sought-after by restaurants and boutiques in America. They have the aforementioned blue, Bayley Hazen, Aspenhurst, a Leicester-style cheese which is aged for one year--this year's vintage is sold out already, Constant Bliss, a soft-ripened cheese, washed-rind Winnemere, and another blue called Bartlett.

Our Jasper Hill experience was so good that plans are definitely in the works to make a trip to Vermont to pick up whatever else we can find of theirs, since their cheeses are unavailable in Montreal. * If anyone is interested in going in on a whole wheel of cheese, let me know. I can think of no better Christmas present...

If you want to plan your own Vermont cheese tour check out the Vermont Cheese Council's site. You'll find everything you need to know about Vermont goat's milk, sheep's milk, and cow's milk cheeses, recipes, and your very own spiffy Vermont cheese map.

m

* For those of our lucky readers in NYC or SF, Murray's ** and The Cheese Board regularly carry Jasper Hill Farm's cheeses.

** Did you know that the Murray's crew have a blog?