Slow Food Nation Highlights

My Favorite Food Discoveries

Bayley Hazen Blue from Jasper Hill Farm - Perhaps I loved it so because, as Jasper Hill says, "though drier and crumblier than most blues, its texture reminds one of chocolate and butter."

Which leads me to...

Pastureland Butter - Organic, grass-fed butter from Minnesota, clearly from happy cows. Wow. Creamy, salty goodness. We had butter samples on small pieces of baguette. It's the first time I wanted to eat butter instead of cheese.

Interestingly, the butter seemed almost healthy compared to the luscious Mt Tam cheese from Cowgirl Creamery enjoyed by so many. (It's not making the discovery list as I'm an old fan of the Mt. Tam.)

Meadow Creek Dairy Grayson. The heavens parted as I first tasted this cheese, and I wondered where I'd been my whole life.

Prairie Fruits "Angel Farm" Farm Cheese from Nubian goats.

Askinosie White Chocolate - I know, I know heresy to rave about white chocolate, which isn't really chocolate. Maybe it's that the droplets were sitting in a pool of natural cocoa powder that made them so sublime. Or perhaps it's the more-than-Fair Trade goodness packed in each creamy bite. But I was a convert.

Brazin Wine from Lodi (which seems hard to find in a net search). The crowd unanimously loved this Zinfandel.