The Finnish Cheese That’s Baked Like Bread and Dunked in Coffee
At the Dane County Farmers Market around the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, you can find a lot of local cheese, as you can imagine. One of them is a bit of a delicious spectacle: Brunkow Cheese draws a crowd around a large vendor tent, where folks line up, toothpicks in hand, to skewer samples of an unusual Finnish variety of cheese: juustoleipa (pronounced YOO-sto-LAY-pah). The cheese-stabbing masses huddled around the Brunkow Cheese tent at the Dane County Farmers Market. (Kevin Revolinski)
This firm, half-inch-thick slab has brown spots on it from baking. The vendors cut up their “Brun-Uusto” and its flavored varieties for samples, dump the cubes on a large griddle to fry, and move them to sample trays when they’ve browned enough. Cue the cheese-stabbing masses.
Family tradition lives on Making maple syrup THATCHER DREMSA pours maple sap into a bucket while his syrup-making partner Atleigh Transø holds the lid Sunday afternoon in rural Mt. Zion.
MT. ZION - The days are getting longer, the nights are smelling fresh and green and if you listen closely enough you might be able to hear the drip drop of sap falling into buckets across the hills and valleys.
Late February into early March is easily one of the most favorite times for many. Spring is just around the corner and the sap begins to run.
Making maple syrup is a time honored tradition passed down from generation to generation in many families. But also something easily enough picked up by intrepid homesteaders and back yard farmers in the city alike.
Photo courtesy of the Dane County Farmers Market
MADISON, Wis. The Dane County Farmers’ Market will start the 2021 outdoor season at the Alliant Energy Center on April 10. The
Market organizers made the announcement Thursday morning, and said they’re confident the market will return to the Capitol Square sometime this summer.
“We will be building on the success and joy that many found in our modified operations during the 2020 outdoor season, and we are also confident that we will be allowed to return to the Capitol Square sometime during our 2021 outdoor season,” Market Manager Sarah Elliott said. “Our fundamental mission is to ensure that Wisconsin family farms and small food businesses can be economically viable and that our community has access to high-quality, fresh local foods. This mission continues whether we are permitted to be on the Square or not.”
Local restaurant owners plead for help to make it through winter
December 14, 2020 1:17 PM Jaymes Langrehr
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MADISON, Wis. Business was hot when the Heritage Tavern opened in downtown Madison in 2013.
When business was at its best, they would have to turn away people on Friday and Saturday nights. But things have changed this year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chef Dan Fox says on a recent Friday night, they only filled three tables.
Fox and the Heritage Tavern has done what they can to adapt, including shifting to a to-go menu and building a patio for outdoor seating.
Fox has other businesses in town, too, but says all are losing money and have lost about 70 of their employees, too. That’s why he’s pleading with the community to support local restaurants instead of national chains.