ACS 2008: My panel

[gordonzola]

I spent a lot of time at the American Cheese Society conference stressed out about the panel I was moderating. I was stressed for a few reasons. 1. I proposed my panel and organized it 2. As I confessed a few weeks ago, public speaking scares me and 3. Right before we left town I got an e-mail saying 175 people had already pre-registered for it.

It should be noted that these are 175 cheese professionals so it’s not like I could bullshit like I do behind the cheese counter. (Joke!) Plus that email freaked my panel out. I heard from all of them within a couple hours of it going out. We scheduled an extra meeting at the hotel bar to keep everyone’s nerves at bay.

Our panel topic was “Keeping it Fresh: Harm Reduction for Cheese at Retail”.* I must admit that I used the phrase harm reduction as a joke and even as I thought it was a good metaphor I didn’t expect it to actually appear in the program titled that way. Now I feel all subversive. Today: maintaining humidity in the walk-in. Tomorrow: handing out needles in the park.

The panel went great. Juliana from the Pasta Shop,** Carlos from Zingerman’s, and Helder from Zuercher (a cheese distributor from Chicago) were all as nervous as I was but they didn’t show it. People seemed really pleased by the presentations especially after last year’s panel on affinage (cheese aging) that basically answered every question with “ You need to buy another cooler”.

Our message was fairly clear: except for a small handful of stores in the US, affinage is not for retailers. In fact, a few minutes into the panel I made the word “caaaaaaaaav” the word of the day ala Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Whenever a panelist or audience member said “caaaaaaaaav” everyone waved their arms and yelled. A room full of cheese professionals actually did this! Well, most of them anyways.

I haven’t gotten my evaluations yet, but I think most people walked away happy. Ricki Carroll, The Cheese Queen, someone I’ve always admired for not only being a founder of the ACS*** but for her politics got up at the end and thanked the panel for actually sharing information saying this was the panel she’d been waiting years to see at ACS and she now had more respect for retailers.

I was so exhausted that, even though it wasn’t quite noon, I had to go to the bar and skip the next session.




*The catalogue description: “Retailers who are truly set up to do affinage are few and far between, no matter what we may tell the customer. How do we maintain the integrity of the cheese we sell, factoring in the equipment we have available? Since many of us do not have extra room or extra money to buy a different cooler for every type of cheese, how can we make sure that the cheese we sell is of the best possible quality? How do we manage the cheese that arrives with defects or the cheese that we receive too young? Panelists will share tips, improvised strategies and practical solutions to handling problem and/or needy cheeses including detailing their attempts to create different climates in the same cooler.”

**I should probably link to the Pasta Shop site but Juliana’s mom made this personal site for her. Isn’t it cute?

***At the opening ceremony there was a video (made by The Cheese Chick about the history of the ACS and Ricki is filmed in her “Stop bitching, Start a revolution” tank top. Awwwwww.

Comments

"Problem and/or needy cheeses"

[effluvia.livejournal.com]

I suddenly feel a renewed kinship with cheese, especially the more cantankerous ones.