Isn't that pretty? It's a round of "Constant Bliss" cheese from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, made with raw cow's milk. In the background you can see one of the delicious sandwiches we made with it and some piquillo peppers. In the same shopping trip, we bought some crackers and a goat's milk brie. I'm not entirely sure that it's correct to call anything made from goat's milk "brie," but that's the idea, anyway, and a fine idea it is, too.
These pictures are from early in the summer, when we were in Chicago for a wedding. The wedding and our hotel were not quite in Chicago, in fact, but in Oak Park, the very pretty home of a number of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings (and, for a long time, of Frank Lloyd Wright himself). Our hotel was conveniently located very near the Marion Street Cheese Market.
If I lived in Oak Park, I would spend a lot of time in this market. (We spent a lot of time there as it was.) I've lived near excellent cheese shops before -- the Cheese Board in Berkeley, most notably -- but there was something about this one that I liked even better. The cheese was great, the people extraordinarily pleasant and helpful, and everything was arranged at a very manageable scale. I've heard that they might be moving, or might already have moved, to a somewhat larger space since then, but I'd bet that it's still just as lovable. If you're in the neighborhood, drop by and check it out for me. Oh, and look! They have a Flickr set of photos of their cheeses. I find that highly endearing.
This photo makes me want cheese NOW.
Posted by: Tanya | 11/15/2007 at 10:19 PM