Happy (belated) Birthday, Barb

My mentor, boss, and sweet friend of nearly 25 years, Barbara Fenzl, celebrated her birthday last Saturday. She was traveling at the time, so I celebrated with her yesterday.

We didn’t take a photo together, so I’m posting this vintage picture of Barb, Jacques Pepin, and me… one of my all-time favorites. And it is the perfect picture to post since I bought her a vintage item as her gift.

Do you know what it is?

Does “les fromages de la ferme” or “Aux bons Fromages” give you a clue?

To loosely translate… “the cheese of the farm” and “good for cheese” – does that help?

It’s a vintage cheese safe. It is used to bring cheese to room temperature, or to its perfect serving temperature, all while keeping the cheese safe from flies, pests, or dare I say – a mouse!

When Barb opened it, she said, “Now I can be my own affineur!”

“Your own what?”

She explained that affinage is the most crucial step of cheese making as it involves the aging process. An affineur is a person in charge of that process. In France, cheese-makers will often send their cheeses to the best affineurs, even if it means sending the cheese to the other side of the country.

The affineurs receive the cheese completely fresh before they’ve developed, and then, they take care of the cheeses in such a way that each acquires its own unique characteristics. The affineur ages the cheeses in the right humidity and temperature, often in caves.

Cool! Take a friend to lunch and you might learn something new at the same time!

Over the weekend, I found the perfect paper to wrap my gift in. I popped into West Elm on a whim and went directly to the “clearance” section, as I always do in all stores… and found this wonderful “Cake Paper” runner roll. I knew it would also make great gift wrap, especially since it was marked down from $29.95 to $9.97 a roll! (In the store it was marked down 66% off – looks as though, online, it’s only 50% off.)

How cute is that!?!

We had a wonderful lunch at Rusconi’s American Kitchen on the northeast corner of Tatum and Shea. If you haven’t been there yet, I highly recommend it.

In fact, Chef Michael Rusconi will be one of the chefs teaching, along with Barbara and me, at Les Gourmettes Cooking School in the fall.

If you are interested in being added to the email list – so that you too can receive class and registration information – then send an email with your name and phone number to: [email protected].

The new schedule will be emailed out next month. The Birthday Girl and I would love to see you in a class!