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GOURMET NEWS JULY 2017 www.gourmetnews.com Naturally Healthy NATURALLY HEALTHY 1 4 Boxable Snacks Continued from PAGE 1 them combining fruit, whole nuts and dark chocolate. Next year's launches will be nut varieties without fruit, which will amp up the protein and lower sugar. The snack squares are non-GMO and gluten free, and they contain no artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners. They're offered in 12-count singles cartons and 5-count multipacks. Cheesewich, which is a product with two slices of high-quality cheese from Burnett Dairy sandwiched around a slice of deli meat, is currently offered in four varieties: Cheddar Jack Cheese & Hard Salami, Colby Jack Cheese & Hard Salami, Pro- volone Cheese & Hard Salami and Pepper Jack Cheese & Hard Salami. They're pack- aged in a 2.5-ounce single-serving that's vacuum sealed for a refrigerated 12-month shelf life. Each offers 14 to 16 grams of pro- tein and is gluten free. This fall, Cheesewich will launch Bacon N Eggs, a gas-flushed vacuum-sealed pack- age of two hard-cooked eggs and turkey bacon. The packaging offers grocers a 60- day shelf life, and the product will retail for somewhere around $2.59. G.H. Cretors, better known for its pop- corn, just launched Hi I'm Skinny vegetable sticks with a front-of-label claim of 100 calories in each 0.71-ounce single-serving bag. There are three varieties: Sweet Onion, Sweet Potato and Sea Salt. The Sweet Onion and Sea Salt varieties are made with quinoa and whole grain corn meal, and each offers 2 grams of protein and 140 calories per serving. The Sweet Potato variety is made with rice flour and offers 1 gram of protein and 140 calories per serving. Individual packs will retail for 99 cents to $1.49. The company also makes Hi I'm Skinny Protein Snacks in a Mesquite BBQ flavor that offers 5 grams of protein in a 140-calo- rie serving and Hi I'm Skinny Superfood Sticks in a Mean & Green flavor that in- cludes green pea flour, kale powder and spinach powder in a snack that offers 2 grams of protein in a 130-calorie serving. Nature's Bakery, which markets "Energy for Life's Great Journeys," is offering Organic Brownies in twin packs that are packaged as six twin packs per box. Flavors are Double Chocolate, Cool Mint and Salted Caramel. The company also offers several flavors of Oat Bars that combine oats with various fruits or organic honey. These are also packed in boxes of six twin packs and retail for $4.99 per box. All of these feature the USDA Organic seal on the front and top of the package. One bar of the Honey & Oat bars has 60 calories with 10 from fat and contains 6 grams of sugar. The Organic Brownies, made with stoneground whole wheat flour and organic cane sugar syrup, have about 70 calories per brownie, depending on the flavor, and 6 grams of sugar. SunRidge Farms, makers of organic and natural foods, has just launched its all nat- ural kids mix at the Sweets & Snacks Show in May. The all natural kids mix combines almonds, peanuts, raisins, apples, milk chocolate, peanut butter cups and milk chocolate rainbow drops for a snack that offers 4 grams of protein per serving and is a good source of minerals with low sodium. There are no trans fats or hydrogenated oils, and the kids mix contains no artificial ingredients. The milk chocolate for the rainbow drops is made with certified Fair Trade Cocoa, and it's non-GMO. Kids mix is offered in bulk cases for parents to pack- age themselves for those lunch boxes. Finally, You Love Fruit Leather has come up with a healthier alternative to mass mar- ket fruit leathers with You Love Fruit and You Love Veggies leathers made with 100 percent fruit and vegetables, so they're gluten free, USDA organic, kosher and non- GMO. The leathers are offered in Mango, Mango Coconut, Apple Cinnamon, Pomberry Acai, Tart Peach, Passion Fruit Punch, Key Lime as well as others, and Carrot & Chia Seed, Spinach & Kale and Spiced Beet Root flavors for the You Love Veggies. They're packaged in two serving bags with 45-50 calories per serving. One- ounce packages retail for about $1.99. GN The Taste of Indiana's Whitewater Valley BY LORRIE BAUMANN When you take a bite of Jacobs & Brichford Farmstead Cheese, you're tasting the grass in Matthew Brichford's pastures, the soil that nourishes the grass, the genetic endow- ment of his 85 dairy cows, the values that dictate how he and his family cares for his pastures and his animals, the skill of a ded- icated cheesemaker and the quality of his palate. You're also getting a taste of the eco- nomic realities of trying to make a living as a dairy farmer in 21st century America. Brichford's been dairy farming since 1995 on the farm that's been in his family since 1819, practicing rotational grazing and or- ganic principles in the Whitewater Valley of southeastern Indiana. He has 1,350 acres that's mostly forested, with around 450 acres of pasture. "We found that commodity dairying wasn't sustainable," he says. "There was no premium market that I could get into from a commodity sense.... We'd never had the opportunity to market into a mar- ket that allowed us to get the reward for the quality of what we did." After years of thought and planning that included courses in cheesemaking at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, River Falls, and the Uni- versity of Guelph, Brichford decided to give farmstead cheesemaking a try. Working with Neville McNaughton of Cheesezsorce, Brich- ford made his first cheese in mid-2012, and he started winning important awards right away. In 2016 alone, his Jacobs & Brichford Everton Premium Reserve took a gold award at the World Cheese Awards. His Briana won a silver award. Briana with Truffles won a sec- ond-place award at the American Cheese So- ciety Judging and Competition, and Adair won a Good Food Award. Those awards follow a bronze award for Everton at the 2015 World Cheese Awards, a 2015 Good Food Award for Ameribella and a 2014 Good Award for Everton. "We kind of interpret classic French and Italian cheeses, but like Ameribella, it tastes a lot different than a Taleggio you get in the store. It speaks of the flavors of our farm. I like that aspect of it, developing things that work with our flavors here," he says. "I'm a farmer that makes cheese. We're trying to find cheeses that pair well with our milk, which has a distinctive taste because of the breed- ing and the feeding program we have here." Today, Brichford and his family operate a farmstead cheese operation in which they milk 85 cows, a composite herd with Nor- mande, Jersey and Tarentaise genetics, cho- sen for the butterfat and protein they put into their milk and for their traditional as- sociation with classic French and Italian alpine cheeses. "Protein is what cheese- making's all about, and the butterfat adds a lot of flavor," Brichford notes. The Normande breed comprises about 40 percent of the French dairy cow population, and that milk is the traditional milk compo- nent of important cheeses like Pont L'Eveque, Livarot and Camembert. Beaufort, the leg- endary French alpine-style cheese that was the inspiration for Jacobs & Brichford's Ever- ton, is traditionally made from the milk of Tarentaise cows. "The Tarentaise cows have a gene that imparts a particular flavor to their cheese as well," Brichford says. The cattle graze on pasture grasses whenever the weather permits them to be outside, com- ing for milking to the outdoor dairy parlor that's managed by the oldest of Brichford and Leslie Jacobs' three daughters, Miah Jacobs- Brichford. "Grass farming is hugely important to what we do. I'm an environmentalist farmer. I come from that background," Brichford says. "I farm using organic methods, taking good care of the soil and the animals. It's all part of one big continuum." The cows are milked seasonally, and cheesemaking follows the rhythm of the year to produce about 50,000 pounds of cheese annually. "With a seasonal herd, the milk's different every day," Brichford says. "Standardizing, making the same every time, is not what we do. With the seasonal production, we try to have consistency, but there is going to be some variability any- way. You try to maintain consistency be- cause you have to have product integrity, but you're thrown a curve ball every time.... You're always making guesses about what might happen, based on what you've done with your last batch, but you don't know." Maize Jacobs-Brichford, the couple's mid- dle daughter, is an interior designer in Chicago who uses her vacation days to drive around the countryside selling the family's cheese. The youngest of the three daughters, Eliza Jacobs-Brichford, is completing her PhD in psychology. "She's going to be the one sup- porting us in our old age," Brichford jokes. The creamery makes nine cheeses. That's more than Brichford wishes he was mak- ing, but he's bowed to the demands of the market. There's Everton, which was named after the small town near the farm. Mod- eled after Beaufort, which Brichford calls his favorite cheese in the world, it's mar- keted at six to eight months old. Everton Premium Reserve is aged at least 18 months. Briana is a fontina-style semi-firm, smear-ripened cheese aged for a minimum of 90 days. Briana with Truffles is the same cheese with Italian truffles blended into the creamy paste and aged a minimum of 60 days. Ameribella, named after Brichford's great-grandmother, is a soft cheese like a Taleggio with a moist rind and a funk rem- iniscent of proofing bread dough, and it's currently the creamery's best seller. Adair is a Rebluchon-style cheese, smear- ripened for a thin and soft orange-yellow rind and a paste that's creamy with a slightly lactic taste. Tomme de Fayette is a traditional tomme-type cheese with fruity and grassy flavors and slightly citrus notes, and JQ is a fresh soft-ripened cheese with an earthy flavor that's named after Brich- ford's great-grandfather, John Quincy, whose picture appears on the label. Phetamias, Jacobs & Brichford's newest cheese, is a cow's milk feta made in Indiana and sold in a package whose label includes a picture of the donkey that runs with the family's small flock of hair sheep. Brichford is toying with the idea that his next cheese might be an Indiana take on a French-style Munster. "The donkey's name is Pete," Brichford says with a chuckle. "Sacrilege on sacrilege is what we do." "We had to do all those because when I started out, I was just making the Brianna, the Everton and the Ameribella," he adds. "They're all raw milk. Ameribella has a short lead, Brianna a little longer and Ever- ton is aged a little longer. Being in the Mid- west, some of the cheeses are too strong for some people." With the awards they're bringing home, Jacob's & Brichford's cheeses are generating a premium price that's moving the farm- stead towards profitability. "I really like doing it. Marketwise, we'll see how things pan out. Adair is starting to take off. We won a Good Food Award with it," Brich- ford says. "Things are improving all the time in that regard." GN

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