Ethical Dairy: Avoid being vegan, but support humane treatment of animals!

The word "vegan" conjures up images of sad, dry-looking cupcakes that a dreadlocked and neutral-tone wearing woman is offering me while exclaiming, "you wouldn't even know they're vegan!" When in my mind I know for a fact that this pseudo-treat will be sub-par and I feel sorry for this person on a foodie-level, though guilty for knowing that they're sticking to their anti-animal cruelty prerogative better than I am.

I suppose I could give up dairy products, or all animal products as vegans do, and feel righteous and ethical. However, I love to cook and create new foods with dairy products and eggs, and of course with my new cheese obsession, veganism is a long way off. So I've begun to research just which brands of dairy actually have cows out in pasture, have not been buying from factory farms, and can provide me with a product I feel morally confident supporting. Can I have my cake and eat it too? (And hopefully a cake with eggs and butter).

I used Cornicopia Institute's Organic Dairy Report to find information on brands of milk and cheese that you would find in a California supermarket. All ratings are on a scale of 0 to 5, with five being the most ethically produced brands (based on information on ownership structure, milk supply, disclosure, certifier, pasture provided, cull rate, hormone and antibiotic use, and farm management). The list has been edited to brands you would find here on the West Coast. Apparently, conventional AKA non-organic dairy, gets a negative rating, so only organic sources are considered.

5 (Outstanding)

Organic Pastures Dairy Company
Butternut Farms

4 (Excellent)

Green Field Farms

Cows love their pasture.. buy a 4 or 5 rated brand!

Trimona Yogurt
Rumiano Cheese
Organic Valley (CROPP)
White Mountain Foods
Alden's Organic (Oregon Ice Cream)
Amish Country Farms
Julie's (Organic Ice Cream)
Nancy's (Springfield Creamery)
Green and Black's Organic-USA
Cedar Grove Cheese
Organic Creamery (DCI Cheese)
Wallaby Yogurt
365 organic (Whole Foods)
Cowgirl Creamery
Straus Family Creamery
Three Twins Organic
Clover Organic Farms
Stonyfield
Sunnyside Farms
Sierra Nevada Cheese Company

3 (Very Good) - none in California

2 Private-Label (Good, but refuse to participate in the study, info based on "industry sources.")

(TESCO) Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Market
Woodstock (UNFI)

1 Private-Label (some or all factory-farm dairy)

Great Value (Wal-Mart)
Kirkland Signature (Costco)
O Organics (Safeway)
Simply Balanced (Target)
Trader Joe's
Wild Harvet (Albertson's)

0 (Ethically Deficient - produce or purchase factory-farm dairy)

Back to Nature (Kraft)
Challenge Dairy Products
Horizon
Humboldt Creamery (Foster Family Dairy)
Applegate Farms (Hormel)
Grassland Butter
Greenbank Farms/Stonefelt Cheese Co.
Natural Prairie
Spring Hill Cheese/Petaluma Creamery
Wholesome Valley (Galaxy Foods)

What I found surprising was that Horizon, a milk I had on my cereal all throughout my childhood and looks like a reputable source, has the worst rating. The fact that Kraft, Wal-mart, Costco, and Target brands were in the bottom tier was not such an epiphany. Safeway and Trader Joe's also support factory farm dairy which I find disappointing because I tend to shop there often and thought that they had higher standards. The top rated brands are not as familiar to me as I assume they are a smaller production and sold at Whole Foods or speciality stores. Wallaby and Straus Family Creamery yogurt, Cowgirl Creamery cheese, and the 365 brand milk I have all seen recently at Whole Foods. Stonyfield and Clover Organic milk might be an even better bet because they have a rating of 4 and are more widely distributed.

So maybe it's not impossible to cut support to factory farming without going vegan if you know the background of your dairy purchases. I already do not eat meat, but I would assume you could research ethical meat producers the same way. And if we were all angels, we would shop solely at local farmers markets for everything from meat to vegetables to cheese. One step at a time!

Maids A-Milking

Today I learned to milk a goat. When Bev asked if I had milked a goat before, I replied, “I’ve never milked anything in my life.” She laughed and sat me next to Yummy who was standing on the milking bench, munching away and waiting impatiently for me to get started.

I reached this climactic insight into cheese making in pursuit of a sliver of cheese Johnny secreted to me during a wine and cheese pairing prep at Tolosa Winery. This particular cheese, Templeton Gap, is a washed-rind soft goat cheese and pairs especially well with Tolosa’s 1772 Pinot Noir. I immediately became enthralled with Templeton Gap: its billowy rind, discolored creamy inner layer, and bright white interior – Johnny explained to me that soft cheeses will ferment from the outside in, and hard from the inside out.

If it was from Templeton, I didn’t have more than a thirty-minute drive to find the source. I realize any normal person would enjoy this cheese with crackers, perhaps buy the cheese if they saw it at the supermarket, and leave it at that. However, I wanted to know how a small creamery produced a cheese like this and what were the animals like? What was the property like? Johnny put me in touch with Bev Michels, owner of Alcea Rosea Farm (producer of Templeton Gap) and coincidental wine club member at Tolosa Winery. She told me to just head on out the next day and be prepared for hot weather.

Indeed, it was 71° in San Luis Obispo and when I was greeted by two ranch dogs upon opening my car door in Templeton the blast of hot air was 97°. Bev came out of her ranch-style home to greet me, an older woman in her sixties with cropped white hair and of medium build in a simple peach-colored dress and thong sandals. She walked me over to the goats’ pasture where the curious ones starting bleating and climbing up on the gate to get a closer look at me. On the other end of the pasture I could see goats climbing on an abandoned wooden play structure, while behind me was a vegetable garden, a neat red hen house, and a small orchard interspersed with a row of grapes being trained up. Three pigs and three piglets were on the other side of the orchard with their own matching red pig-shelter and a sign, les cuchon. Beyond were rolling hills that had turned brown with the heat and dotted with hardy oaks – a typical north San Luis Obispo County landscape, one that always reminded me of Murphys in Bear Valley or a frontier town where you can ride your horse onto Main Street to pick up groceries.

Bev pointed out a few goats of about ten and explained that every year the baby goats–kids–that were registered had to have names that started with the same letter. The kids she was keeping this year started with “F” and were named Fig, Flour, and Fennel. She had me follow her past her milking station, don some booties and enter the creamery. Some cheese was hanging over a trough, and I learned that the “curds” were what stayed behind in the cheese cloth while the “whey” was the liquid protein which drained into a bucket placed under the trough. Bev said she had no use for the whey and used to dump in out in the fields, but it attracted flies and smelled foul. After a little thought, she began feeding it to the pigs who lapped it up like sugar candy and became so tasty themselves as a result, that she had a waitlist for her pigs come harvest time.

Curds and Whey.

Bev walked me through to her study where she had two cold rooms for aging. In one she had several racks of a red-waxed goat cheese, an experimental beer-washed goat cheese, and lo-and-behold… Templeton Gap! When she opened the second cold room door, instead of cheese there were racks of wine, “My husband re-purposed this one,” Bev chuckled and shook her head.

I followed Bev back outside and we stood in front of the pig enclosure. She turned on a hose and the pigs came running out to get sprayed down and wallow in the mud. Three adult pigs, and in a neighboring enclosure, three baby pigs sat under a grove of sunflowers. 

Milking Station.

Back in front of the goat pasture, Bev told me to let one out so we could start milking. I looked around for a halter to lead a goat ten feet to the milking bench, but I quickly found out the goats know the order in which they are milked and once let out of the gate, will run over to the milking bench, hop up on it, and wait to be fed. The metal bench itself was about two feet off the ground and in the shape of an “L.” On the long side, a trough at goat-head height kept the goat standing there busy, while the person milking sat on the short side opposite the goat. Yummy (of the “Y” kid year) was the first out the gate, and after settling into the food at the bench, Bev washed her udder and showed me how to squeeze the milk from her teats into a metal pail. Of course she made it look so easy and quick. “Five minutes per goat, and each produces about a gallon per day,” Bev explained, “I milk twice per day, and ideally you would want to milk twelve hours apart, but I milk at 6am and 4pm so I can eat dinner like a normal person at a reasonable hour.” She moved aside and I sat down in her place. It took me several tries to get any milk to splash into the bucket, but with a little practice I slowly managed to milk the goat at about one-hundredth the speed. I milked a goat today!

Mission Accomplished!

Taleggio - A Cheese Profile

“Taleggio! Taleggio!” that’s what Johnny says the children of Italy run through the cobbled streets yelling. And with good reason! This was my favorite cheese of the group I bought from Whole Foods on a Wednesday evening.

Johnny invited me to accompany him on his daily stop at Whole Foods after work to help me choose some interesting cheeses. Among them: Monterey Jack (real Monterey Jack, a hard cheese with a texture like Parmesan and a strong flavor that inhibits me from incorporating into any type of food), a typical goat cheese Brie, Taleggio, and (of my own choosing) truffle Gouda. We spent a full fifteen minutes giving the Whole Foods employees anxiety by putting our noses in the cheese displays. Johnny picked up and described different cheeses, which were worth the money, which were over-priced (American soft cheeses like Red Hawk and St. Pat by Cowgirl Creamery). After going home and experimenting with my precious loot, Taleggio has been by far the most fun to create recipes around and most delicious to eat alone.

Technical notes: Taleggio is a smear-ripened Italian cheese that is one of the oldest known soft cheeses – it’s even mentioned in the writings of Pliny the Elder!

You know what else? IT MELTS! I didn’t expect this of a super creamy and gooey cheese. Spread it on a crusty piece of French bread and place it in the toaster oven or under the broiler. The tangy and yet milder soft cheese oozes into the bread with the ease of mozzarella. This has been a wonderful snack alone, but also pairs well with dried apricots. I enjoy it on the side of a green salad for lunch.

Taleggio has also been my lunchtime companion when I am at work for lunch (no access to a toaster oven). I can pack a cucumber sandwich brown bag lunch that consists of thinly sliced country bread, Taleggio spread on one slice and avocado on the other, slices of cucumber in between them, and drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with fresh dill. As always, don’t forget a square of dark chocolate for dessert.

Overall a great adaptable cheese, it is much like Brie but has a more elastic consistency and better flavor. It pairs best with Pinot Noir (or Rosé of Pinot Noir if, like me, you haven’t made the jump to reds). And word to the wise: no suave points for eating the rind here, it’s not edible.

Johnny

John is the concierge at Tolosa Winery, or as he likes to say, Edna Valley's oldest living bottle-boy. He consistently sports pastel-colored pants with a matching belt and bright plaid Ralph Lauren Polo: "Ralph Lauren is my spiritual guide" he mentioned to a customer who commented on his outfit. He settles for nothing short of the best and drives a pristine old white Targa Porsche. Those who know him call him "Johnny" and will have heard him pontificating about tannins and Burgundy vs. Bordeaux wines to many a customer. He is a wine and cheese expert with eleven years of experience at Tolosa; he was there when it opened. My favorite thing about Johnny is his dry humor and sophisticated etiquette. He will turn up his nose at people who clink glasses and talk loudly in the tasting room, but his arrogance is tempered by his self-deprecation. "Old, slow, and kind of out of it" is his favorite Yelp review, of the dozens that include his name as the best part of their Tolosa tasting experience. Johnny constantly uses the word "facetious" to refer to himself, and he certainly is - he makes blunt comments about the trashy wine tasters attending the Pismo Car Show or about the "vacant LA beauties," but will go out of his way for the customers he respects.

Johnny in the early years of Tolosa. 

Luckily I fall into the latter category. He calls me Kiki and enjoys showing me YouTube videos of Kiki Dee and Elton John singing "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." I have become his protege in wine and cheese and he has given me his own magazines, books, and hand-outs on the subject. However, we don't limit our friendship to shoptalk, rather we talk about anything from Nina Simone, current movies at the little independent theater downtown, to the poem on this morning's NPR broadcast The Writer's Almanac. Johnny has realized my interest in food and taught me everything I know about cheese. On Saturday and Sunday Johnny does a reserve wine and cheese pairing in a spacious room overlooking the vineyards on the opposite side of the winery. When it gets busy he lets me help him prep the plates and tells me all about each cheese: its history, what it pairs well with, how it ages, where it comes from... you'd be surprised how much there is to know! Vlaskaas, Humboldt Fog, Gran Queso - he slips me slivers of cheese as we work and has begun training me to present the pairing to customers. Already a so-called "foodie," Johnny has pushed me to follow my curiosity into the depths of the culinary world. Be prepared to start reading about food! 

Job Searching

After a quick diversion in Europe away from regular life, I neither "found my identity"(so to speak), nor uncovered a profound life-plan that had - potentially - just been simmering below the surface of my consciousness and needed some sort of upheaval to be recovered. Returning to regular life is not possible for me. It's not that I don't want to, I terribly crave some stability, but the job search begins and I might end up anywhere or be anything. The adults think this is a wonderful opportunity - the world is my oyster. And it is, though I seem to become paralyzed by too many options and therefore become another statistic of an apathetic millennial.

In my more productive moments, the job search charges forward. An article/blog/idea ignites my most energized enthusiasm, not unlike Sir William Wallace shouting a battle cry from his stallion and pacing the ranks of his Scottish army - unprepared but throbbing with passion. Through these efforts, I obtained a position at a winery in Edna Valley. I am now a "tasting room host," or attendant? I'm actually not too clear on the job title, but I pour wine. So far, I've only spilled on one person, so I'd say it's a success!

I know nothing about wine. Well, that's a lie. I adore dessert wine, tolerate some whites, and detest all reds (I'll stick with craft beer, tequila, champagne). My first day on the job, two middle-aged ladies vigorously swirled their 2013 Pinot Noir, stuck their noses in the glass, resurfaced and urgently proclaimed that this wine reminded them of a park. No, the dirt and grass at the park. Wait... It's just like a picnic basket! I almost doubled over laughing but kept my bar-tending cool. I knew this job wouldn't be so much about wine as it would be about the characters I would meet.

Severson's Album Cover.

A couple of my favorite customers so far have been an old cowboy and his wife. They came in on a busy Saturday and were relegated to the corner of the bar where I was able to make small talk with them between pours for my other winos. Aside, I thought of calling this blog post "An Introvert Learns Small Talk" because serving wine has been a crash course on how to be friendly and talkative to strangers (not a natural ability for me). Usually, I end up telling my life story to most of the clientele, and the cowboy was no different. I told him where I was from, how I got here, my endless number of interests... I went to Cal Poly, studied molecular biology, don't want to do research, maybe grad school, I love to write, animals, art, etc., etc.. He leaned on the bar and said "just follow your passion, if you don't, you will always regret it." He saw the guitar charm on my necklace and asked if I played. After that we had a long conversation about Johnny Cash, and he turned to his wife and asked her if she had something for me in her purse. She pulled out a country album and handed it to me. "Wrote 'em all myself!" The cowboy said. "They're about love and living out on the range." His wife smiled at me and said, "yep, after playing for the NFL, he found his voice in music." She looked at him with a proud little smile and hooked her arm through his. I poured their last taste, a 2012 Syrah, and tucked the CD away where I wouldn't forget it. Jeff Severson of the Redskins, country musician and cattle rancher, took his wife's hand and they left with their spurs clinking.

With the Barkers and the Colored Balloons

This will be a blog about growing up. About navigating a life that has outgrown childhood but hasn't yet reached the security of adulthood. That's why I chose to title the blog after Neil Young's melancholy song about leaving a happy childhood behind before being ready. I feel like I have been preparing my whole life to be independent, but when I got out of college, I had so many options that I felt paralyzed to do anything at all. I wanted to get back to the security of school, of having a plan. But that's part of becoming an adult, isn't it? Creating your own plan and executing it as you feel is right.

My plan is to write about what it is like to be a twenty-five year old, part of the generation deemed: entitled, apathetic, glued to their screens. How are we finding jobs? How do we view marriage? What do we care about? I cannot speak for a generation as a whole, but I want to at least share the stories I have: the career struggles, foodie exploits, research topics, and culture of life as a millennial.