Pre-Order Your Holiday Cheese Tray

To make your holiday party planning and preparations a bit easier, Foster & Dobbs has developed four beautiful cheese trays for every taste and budget. The Delicious One features three pasteurized cheeses paired with olives and marcona almonds. The Scrumptious One offers three bold and beautiful European cheeses paired with pears, mission figs, and hazelnuts. The Yummy One celebrates three classic European cow’s milk cheeses accompanied by apricots, cherries & candied walnuts. The Lovely Local One serves up three perfect Pacific NW cheeses with pears, cherries & hazelnuts. Each tray comes ready for your table in three sizes serving 4-6, 8-10, or 12-15. A complete menu is attached. You may order in the shop or over the phone (503-284-1157). We appreciate 24 hours notice on cheese tray orders.

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Cheese of the Month Club: A Terrific Gift Idea

If you have someone on your gift list that loves cheese and tasty food, here’s an idea: Give them a membership to Foster & Dobbs’ Cheese of the Month Club. Each month, your loved ones will enjoy a package of delicious treats, causing them to have warm and happy thoughts of you. In three or more month memberships, Club members receive three special cheeses that have been carefully selected to be at their prime. There will always be at least one American Farmstead cheese and at least one European cheese, and the third will be chosen to complement the other two. Included in the package will be information about each cheese and suggestions for use.

Cheese of the Month Club Prices
three month minimum:
For pick up at the shop: $35 per month (starts at $105)
Delivered within the Portland city limits: $50 per month (starts at $150)
FedEx delivery: $70 per month (starts at $210)

* Shipping to Hawaii, Alaska, and some rural areas will cost a bit more.

To sign up for a membership, call or drop by the shop. It only takes a minute to send someone a gift that they’ll enjoy for months to come!

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Visiting the Bees

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit the bee yard that Tim’s uncle Tom Foster keeps on a farm west of Portland. Tom has a deep knowledge of bees and beekeeping, passed down from generation to generation in the Foster family. As the bees surrounded us with their peaceful hum, he explained their habits and needs to me and showed me a bit about life inside the hive. Fascinating critters, these bees: although their individual lives are simple and narrowly focused, the life of the colony is complex, dynamic and intricate.

Here are a few things I learned during this visit:

• The pitch of their buzz changes when they’re aggravated. For the first half hour or so that we were there, the bees hummed quietly at a mid-note (let’s say Middle C). After opening up most of the hives to inspect them, though, their pitch jumped up several notes (A Sharp!) and the volume jumped up along with the pitch. It was clear from the buzz that they thought we’d been there long enough.


• The queen bee lays all the eggs, which are identical to start with. Those that she fertilizes will become females and the rest will be males (drones). The drones live only to mate with the queen; they get one brief liaison and then drop dead: the short, glorious life of a drone.


• There’s a particular altitude where queens and drones from any number of colonies get to meet and mingle, which Tom called the Drone Zone. It’s a sort of single’s bar in the sky.


• When a hive becomes too crowded, a new queen will be nurtured. About a third of the bees will leave with the older queen to swarm and find a new place to live; the remaining bees will start attending to the new queen.


• Most bees live a couple of months, although workers who collect pollen die after 2-3 weeks because their wings simply wear out and they can’t make it back to the hive. Queens can live for three or four years.

I hope to spend many more afternoons this summer with Tom at the bee yard, learning about them, pestering him with questions, and eventually harvesting their warm, delicious honey.

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Save 20 - 40% on Selected Holiday Treats

While we enjoyed the snow, the recent winter storm that froze the city has left us overstocked on a variety of sweet and savory treats. Save 20 to 40 percent on a wide range of holiday products that will make a delightful addition to your own pantry or the perfect hostess gift. Sale stock includes our popular salt collections, Savannah Bee’s Winter White Honey, Balsamic Jelly, the Briggitine Monk Fudge (from Amity, OR), a trio of hot Italian condiments (hot peppers in olive oil, salt and honey), and much more.

Save 40 percent on the delicious Corsini Panettone in Classic and Apricot flavors. The Corisini panettone is a delicately fruity, light and mildly sweet cake. Delicious on its own, panettone also makes fantastic french toast or bread pudding. The two-pound cakes are on sale for $17.95.

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Making Cheese at Home?

We know Portland is a big DYI kind of place, but are there home cheese makers out there?

A few weeks ago, customer Eric Schrepel stopped by the shop to ask if we knew of anyone making cheese at home. Eric, turns out, is a foodie’s do-it-yourself-er (FDYI). Not only does Eric make cheese at home, but he also roasts his own coffee and publishes a map of his favorite coffee joints at www.espressomap.com. Last Wednesday, The Oregonian ran a nice feature about Eric on the front page of the Living Section.

Eric is interested in getting together with other avocational cheese makers to sample cheese, talk technique, share knowledge, and exchange experiences – to chew the curd as it were. I told Eric that Foster & Dobbs would be delighted to host such a gathering, so if you are interested, drop us an e-mail, post a reply, or give us a call.

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Vermont Shepherd

Ever since we started dreaming of having a cheese shop, Vermont Shepherd topped the list of cheeses we wanted to carry. So we were sad last year when there was none available at the time we were opening Foster & Dobbs. It is a highly seasonal cheese – made only when the sheep are able to spend their days grazing in the pasture – and all of last year’s wheel had been sold out. Happily, we were able to begin receiving this wonderful cheese in the fall.

Vermont Shepherd is an aged, raw milk sheep cheese. This cheese has a golden brown rind and rustic shape, every wheel is distinctive. The texture is smooth and creamy, the flavor is sweet, rich and earthy with hints of clover, mint and thyme. This is the oldest and most well known of the American sheep’s milk cheeses, and is only available August through April.

David & Cindy Major make the cheese with friends and family on their 250 acre farm in Westminster West, Vermont. They began making cheese in 1993, though the first few years the cheese was pretty awful and mostly ended up on the manure pile. They finally decided that if they were going to make cheese, they needed to learn how to do it right, so Cindy wrote to several French cheesemakers asking for guidance. The Majors then packed up the family and traveled to France where they visited and learn techniques from these small, family-run creameries. They were most excited by a cheese they learned to make in the Pyrenees and brought that recipe home to Vermont. The first few wheels they made were gnarly looking and had very smelly rinds, and the Major’s weren’t confident that they’d really figured out how to make cheese. But finally, Cindy worked up the courage one day to cut one of the odd looking wheels open, and when she did all their concerns melted away: the cheese under that lumpy, smelly rind was delicious. The first time they entered this new cheese in the American Cheese Society’s annual competition in 2000, the cheese won the award for Best Farmhouse Cheese, as well as Best in Show.

Today the family makes Vermont Shepherd in small, 10 to 30 wheel batches, 3 days a week during the grazing season. Each wheel comes with a little card on which Cindy has noted the weather conditions, what the sheep were doing and nibbling on, and any particular influences the day the cheese is made. The cheese is aged on wooden boards, an age-old method that helps in the development of natural cheese rinds. Each day it is turned, brushed or washed to cultivate beautiful, natural cheese rinds. These rinds, free of plastic and wax, help to enhance the cheeses' flavor and give Vermont Shepherd its unique characteristics.

Some Ways to Enjoy Vermont Shepherd:
• As an appetizer, serve with crusty bread.
• As a dessert, pair with a cherry preserve (a French Pyrenees classic) or glazed/roasted figs.
• Almost any wine goes well with this cheese. Some in particular are: Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, Burgundy.

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Colston Bassett Stilton: The King of Cheese

Stilton ain’t called ‘the king of cheese’ for nothing. When at its best, it is truly one of the finest cheeses in the world – a creamy, velvety paste with a huge spicy aroma, and a rich, cheesiness that is sweet, salty, nutty, and savory with notes of honey, leather, dried fruits, and much more. When it is not good, it can be sharp, biting, overly salty and a little sour.

As England’s only name-protected cheese, production of Stilton is limited to a small group of makers who must adhere to strict guidelines, but while the basic recipe and geography is controlled, quality can vary greatly from one maker to the next. At Foster & Dobbs, we carry only Colston Bassett Stilton, which is widely regarded as far superior to the others. Our wheels are hand selected for us by Neal’s Yard Dairy in England, which assures that the cheese is in prime condition when it reaches our case.

Stilton was first recognized as a type of cheese in the early 1700s, and was mentioned in Daniel Defoe’s book, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain 1724-26. It took its name from the village of Stilton in the county of Cambridgeshire, though it believed by many to have actually been first made by Mrs. Elizabeth Orton on her farm near village of Melton Mobray in Leicestershire. The recipe was a family secret, but one of Mrs. Orton’s daughters married an innkeeper and moved to the Bell Inn at Stilton. There, she sold her mother’s cheese to travelers passing through and word of this exceptional cheese spread far and wide. Though Mrs. Orton had called the cheese “Quenby” as its fame spread, it became known as Stilton cheese. The cheese was never made in Stilton and even today, protected by a certification trademark, it can only be made in the three adjacent counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.

Colston Bassett Stilton is made in the village of Colston Bassett in Nottinghamshire, from the milk of five herds that graze near the creamery. The creamery has been buying milk from the same five farms since the early 1920s. Since the creamery was established in 1913, there have only been 3 manager/cheese makers: Tom Coy (1913 – 1960), Ernie Wagstaff (1960 – 1996), and Richard Rowlett (1996 to present). Their Stilton is more traditional than the other Stilton creameries.

To make Stilton, milk is gathered daily from the farms and pasteurized, then inoculated with Penicillium roquefortii along with the starter and culture that encourage the milk to form curds. The milk and curds are treated gently at each step of the process, which preserves the structure and results in a luscious creamy texture when the cheeses are mature. The curds are cut by hand into small cubes and allowed to drain overnight. The next morning they are milled, salted and gently ladled into hoops where they stay for several days. The hoops are turned daily to encourage more whey to drain away. Once removed from the hoops, the cheese is rubbed by hand to smooth its surface and seal the edges. The cheese then begins the aging process and is stored in very specific temperature and humidity conditions for many weeks, during which time its characteristic crust develops. For the first month, the cheese is turned every day and after two months the wheels are pierced with stainless steel needles, introducing air into the paste and encouraging the development of the blue veining. It is aged about 4 months and tastes best in autumn and winter, when it is made from the rich summer milks.

Colston Bassett Stilton has a velvety, pale ivory paste that shades toward amber near the rind and is marbled with greenish blue veins. Its knobby natural rind runs tan to grey with patches of white.

A Few Ways to Use Colston Bassett Stilton:

Slice Preserved, fresh walnuts and place atop bite-sized pieces of Stilton.

Top Stem Ginger Oat cookies with a bit of Stilton

Put a slice of Stilton on a plate, pierce it gently with a fork, and pour a bit of Tawny Port over it. Offer bread or crackers for people to smear it on.

Crumble it into salads or atop cream soups.

Colston Bassett Stilton with Port-glazed Pears

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Let us help you!

If you’re hosting a holiday dinner — or just need to show up with something tasty in hand — we can help you put together a delicious cheese and/or charcuterie tray. Come by the shop or call a day or two ahead of time and let’s talk about what you need. We can have your order ready within 24 hours and trays come arranged for the table. Unwrap and serve. How easy is that?

And remember, we have lots of great gifts for your hosts!

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Twig Farm Goat Tomme

From Twig Farm in West Cornwall, Vermont, comes this lovely little drum of deliciousness. Michael Lee and Emily Sunderman have 20 acres and a small herd of goats: 18 milking does, a handful of kids, a buck named Bogart and his pal Ernie (another goat whose job is entertaining Bogart). Most of the goats are Alpines, but there is also a Nubian and a few Saanens.

Their land – covered by rocky ledges, scrabbly trees and brambly bushes with patches of soft grass in between – is an ideal habitat for goats, which are by nature browsers rather than grazers. They nibble on grass but prefer the leaves and vegetation that they cull from the shrubs and trees. A browsing diet such as this means that the goats give less milk than those fed on hay, silage and manufactured goat feed, but their milk is so much more flavorful and nuanced – it truly reflects their terroir. Michael and Emily breed their goats in the fall for springtime kids, so there’s milk for making cheese from late spring to midwinter.

Modeled on a Provençal Tomme de Chevre, the Goat Tomme is a raw milk cheese with nutty brown, slightly felt-like rind. It’s aged about 85 days and develops a paste that’s firm and white with an earthy, grassy flavor. It’s simply amazingly good. Emily suggests pairing it with cherry jam, apples, ripe tomatoes, or maybe in a salad with beets and greens, and Michael likes to have it with a pale ale or cider. I like it any way I can convey it to my mouth…

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