Cheese Workshops
Haute Goat Creamery and United Market Street held their first workshop on May 19th, 20th and 21st 2007. It was a huge success. We had 13 participants and a few “observers”.
The class was a wonderful group, full of energy and ideas. In addition to the already planned cheesemaking with Haute Goat Creamery’s goats’ milk, Emily Sanders and James Wallace brought raw cow’s milk with which we practiced our mozzarella skills. Chef Chris Wilson, of United Market Street, presented a beautiful and delicious sit-down luncheon on Saturday. Sunday lunch was tasty tapas prepared by Charlie Broz, a doctoral RHIM student at Texas Tech, who also was a student of the class. Both lunches demonstrated methods using Haute Goat Creamery’s cheeses in food preparation and presentation. Each afternoon was finished with a wine & cheese pairing by Nathan Lowe, wine consultant, Virginia Sill, cheese specialist from United Market Street, and myself.
Cheese Class/Workshop/Internship 2008
For 2008, one of the students from 2007 wanted to return to Haute Goat, but she wanted to stay longer and learn more comprehensively about the entire operation. Several others made similar requests, so I set a week aside to do a more extensive class. The girls stayed in our home and worked right along side of us except the day I delivered 14 babies beginning at 4:45 a.m. (I think they missed those) with the last one coming around 10 p.m. The last one came between the soup and salad course of a grand meal that one of the girls prepared for everyone. It was a wonderful week. We delivered lots of babies, milked lots of goats, made lots of cheese, took a quick course on artificial insemination, visited a cow operation, visited a couple of wineries, and had guests from Texas Tech University give us a “wine and cheese pairing class”. Days were long but we covered just about every aspect. I hope that when I do that again that I am as fortunate.
Students’ comments include:
"Nancy generously revealed the mystery of savory, artisanal cheese; a great love and respect for the animals, waking up really early, keeping super clean, careful experiments, consistency, patience and fine taste."
“This should be featured in Texas Monthly or Southern Living”
“A wonderful gastronomic experience”
“Do more classes-this was FUN”
“This class was amazing. The food was great, the wine was great, I love goats!”
“So glad you’re in Lubbock. Your passion for what you do is manifested in the quality of your products”
Special thanks go out to:
Mike Ogletree of Ogletree Productions for filming and producing a high-definition video of the weekend. Available soon!
Kelly Marble of College Flowers for the beautiful floral arrangements
Sam Miller of Napa, California (www.bountyhunterwine.com) for helping with the wine selection for the wine & cheese pairings
Nathan Lowe, local wine consultant, for helping demonstrate how to do a wine tasting and explaining the wines
Virginia Sill, cheese specialist, United Market Street, for discussing cheese tasting and describing all the cheeses (and for her participation in the class)
Sandy Ogletree and Laurie Casler for all the behind-the scenes work they did. The class wouldn’t have come off like it did without their hard work.