Twee, And Not Quite As Twee

The latest New York magazine came in the mail, and one feature is ‘The Twee Party: Is artisanal Brooklyn a step forward for food or a sign of the apocalypse? And does it matter when the stuff tastes so good?‘ — love this.  It seems we’ve been talking about, and embracing these tee-tiny operations, the craft of foodmaking, for a while now.  Long enough for it to be stylish, there be a backlash, and then a backlash of the backlash to be stylish again.

No matter what scale of stylish it is, there is nothing like buying local and local-ish.  The last time we went up to Benton’s in Madisonville, Tennessee (which I will be doing a post on shortly), we continued north to Sweetwater Valley Farm.  It’s not a twee operation by far — a much grander scale as they have well over 1000 cows in their herd.  Their cheese is pretty great.

Sweetwater Valley Farm, Philadelphia TN

Sweetwater Valley Farm, Philadelphia TN

Sweetwater Valley Farm, Philadelphia TN
Some smaller dairies are members of the Southern Cheesemaker’s Guild, which is populated by cow, goat, and sheep dairies.  We also look up places to visit/shop at LocalHarvest.org and the listing of state’s roadside stands/u-pick farms, and farmer’s markets (Alabama’s is here)…
Bon Appetit did a feature on their ‘favorite Southern food products‘ which came from some pretty small operations.  One they mention is the increasingly popular Olive & Sinclair Chocolate in Nashville…they’ll soon be coming out with a bar called ‘Buttermilk White‘.  Sounds good.

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