On a spectacular Sunday in mid-October, Jennifer and I hosted the Utah chapter of SlowFood. Jennifer and Deneice Housley, a good friend that works for us packaging and cleaning cheese, spent the morning decorating tables and cleaning up the yard.
Our friends Tim and Tammy Vitale, Graham Hunter and Debbie Bronson catered the event. Tim showed up at about noon and took over our kitchen, our neighbor’s kitchen and several rooms in our house. The rest of his gang arrived by 1:00. To watch them work was to see poetry in motion. They are all such good friends, and have a lot of fun cooking together. Of course, the many empty wine bottles that were scattered about the kitchen may have been somewhat responsible for the fun that was being had.
We broke up into groups of four to six folks each and toured the farm. We had our long-time employee and USU intern, Justin Ward, and our friend and consultant Daniel Butters give a talk about cow nutrition and milking sanitation. Jennifer gave a talk about cheese making and affinage. We had some friends and fellow small-farmers talk about their heirloom vegetables and fruits. And a local grass-fed beef and lamb producer visited with folks about her operation. All the while Tim and his crew were serving us multiple courses of appetizers, most using our cheeses in some very tasty ways. It was quite a sight to see folks standing among dairy cows, being served from trays carried by Tim’s somewhat-formally-dressed staff.
I took it upon myself to try to keep the whole thing on schedule so that we would all finish the tour and be seated for the main courses at around 4:30. That was a tough job that proved a bit more than I could handle. All of our guests and presenters enjoyed their roles more than I had expected. But that was fine, because Tim had underestimated the time the tenderloin would take to roast. So, somewhat by accident, the whole event went very well. We sat down around 5:00 to a wonderful five-course meal.
The weather cooperated too. It was a reasonably warm afternoon with a slight breeze that showered us in falling leaves as we sat down to eat. And eat we did. Everyone went home well-satiated. And cold rain arrived in the middle of the night, well after we had gotten everything cleaned up and put away.
