Helen Howarth is a woman who’s not afraid to use adjectives. Listen to her description of gruyere cheese: “tangy, caramel-y, luscious and divine.”
Perfect. I tried a bite of gruyere when I went to check out her new shop, Fromagio’s Artisan Cheese Spenard, this week.
This is Howarth’s second cheese shop in Anchorage. A place she describes as, “candy store for grown-ups.”
While I was there Howarth gave me a quick lesson on cheese: goat cheese is whiter in color and more tangy. Cows produce more milk and their cheese tends to be sweeter. Cheese made from sheep’s milk fall somewhere between cow and goat cheese and are a fattier cheese. There is even water buffalo cheese, which tastes kind of like cheese that uses cow’s milk.
Howarth handed me a chunk of Brillat Savarin, French Triple Cream. It was soft, almost white, it stuck to the butcher paper.
“It’s essentially butter on steroids,” Howarth said.
She told me to try and taste the different grasses the cows were feed, could I tell what time of the year they were milked?
Maybe I couldn’t on this trip but, that won’t stop me from trying again.
“Butter on Steroids”
It Takes A Gingerbread Village
Almost eight years ago, in a tiny apartment in Fairbanks, my husband asked me to marry him on Christmas morning. I said yes, and ever since then Kyle has asked me to marry him every Christmas morning. It’s a tradition I love and always look forward to. Our lives are crazy busy now, we just had a second baby, we bought a new house that we’re remodeling, the dog still isn’t trained(!), but it’s important to me for our girls to have their own Christmas traditions. A good friend recommended the gingerbread village at the Hotel Captain Cook.
Joe Hickel, the head pastry chef at the Cook, started making gingerbread houses, which became a gingerbread village, 34 years ago so he could name something after his daughter, who was the first girl born into his family since anyone could remember.
Today a visit to Marina’s Village has become a tradition for many people in Anchorage and the Valley. I hope you make it one of your Christmas traditions.
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