Santa Fe, Thanksgiving Cheese, and Frivolities with Nina Haines
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Hello! Nice to see you! We’re still in post-election malaise, but we’re still showing up like the world expects of us.
We’ve got quite a few new subscribers here, so we thought we’d reintroduce ourselves and the frivolity-fest that is Creamline. We believe that things that are coded as frivolous are actually vital for our well-being, so we devote our time and words here to the frivolous things that bring us joy. Taylore’s a full-time drinks editor and former beauty/lifestyle editor living in Brooklyn. Christine is a writer, cheese professional, and part-time pastry cook currently based in New England (and New York City before that.)
We crank out Creamline twice a month. Today’s letter is free for all subscribers (yay!) and for future letters, we’re offering subscriptions for $5 per month if you subscribe before December 1. That will ensure you get all of our cheese, beauty, booze, and food content.
This week, we’ve got the delightful Nina Haines (founder of sapphic book club and publishing imprint Sapph-Lit) taking over our Frivolities section. Let’s get into it.
I. A Thanksgiving Cheese Board Blueprint
Christine: Despite the horrors, I guess we’re still doing Thanksgiving this year?
Being an American has always required us to hold (or ignore, if you’re not big on history/integrity) a lot of uncomfortable truths, including that our favorite uniquely American holiday is rooted in Christian colonialism and white supremacy. The election results have made clear that there’s plenty more of that stuff ahead. I’m sad and frustrated. I also care about connecting with my loved ones over good food and comfy pants. I care about buying food, especially raw ingredients, from farmers working in a way that replenishes the land, rather than stripping it of its vitality. I care about using those raw ingredients to make something delicious and nourishing, that hopefully feels both like art and like a big hug.
Even if you have zero interest in cooking for the big day, a cheese board is a spectacular way to contribute. As someone who used to run the education department at Murray’s Cheese and literally has a credential of “Certified Cheese Professional,” I have some strong opinions about cheese, mostly along the lines of “it’s an incredible way to enjoy yourself while supporting good people working hard and important jobs.” It’s also a great way to get a lot of credit for contributing to a party, while doing very little work.
If there’s a great cheese shop near you (if you need suggestions, I’m happy to offer them—just leave a comment below on Substack), I highly recommend going there, chatting with the mongers, and putting a cheese board together. If there’s not a great shop near you, or if you’re burnt out and need to simply load a virtual product in a cart and ship it directly to your door, I got you. Below are cheese board suggestions from two of my favorite online purveyors—one in NYC, one in the mountain west.
Most people recommend an ounce per person per cheese for a party without a lot of other food. For Thanksgiving, because there’s so much other food being served, you probably want more like ½ or ¾ of an ounce per person per cheese, especially for a bigger group. You’ll notice that there are a range of styles and milk types in each suggested board, which is best practice for a stellar cheese board. There are three cheeses per recommended board. I prefer a cheese board with fewer cheese types because it allows people to get to know each cheese and play with condiment/drink pairings, but obviously if you want more, do more!
I didn’t do include blue cheeses, though I love them, because cheese is often served before a meal in the US and I don’t want anyone’s palate blown out by a strong cheese before the feast, ya know? Suggested snacky accompaniments are included, though I obviously recommend bread and crackers too.
I broke these into the categories I like to include for my own boards: one cheese that everyone will like, one cheese that’s the equivalent of a Criterion Collection movie—not for everyone, but the Francophiles and neurodivergent weirdos (it me) will really appreciate it, and a more aged cheese with tyrosine crystals (an amino acid that our bodies convert to a host of tasty neurotransmitters, including dopamine) for when you’re nearing your breaking point from all this fucking family time.
Let’s begin, shall we?
Caputo’s, Salt Lake City
Crowd-Pleaser: Caputo’s House Cheddar
This one-of-a-kind Caputo’s original lands beautifully between the cavey horseradishy flavors of a British clothbound cheddar and the ethereal butterscotch flavors of an American clothbound cheddar, with a satisfying crumble. Where cheddar is such a staple cheese for us in the US, I find that this hits some deep nostalgia for folks, while offering much more elegance and complexity than your shrink-wrapped grocery store cheddars. I love serving this one in big granular chunks, like unpolished gemstones.
Fucking Cool: Ferme de La Tremblaye Brie Fermier
I can and will talk about this cheese ad nauseum (and have written about it for Creamline before, go read it from our un-paywalled archive!), but basically the pasteurization laws in the US make it difficult to get the otherworldly mushroom-and-brassica-bomb Brie-style cheeses (cheese folks call these “bloomy rind”) that you find in France. This mimics the flavors of unpasteurized Brie, in the most glorious way. It’s like the best broccoli cheese soup you’ve ever had, encapsulated in a piece of cheese.
Dopamine Re-Up: Ewephoria
Truthfully, this goes in the crowd-pleaser column too, but it’s aged for around a year, so there's some great tyrosine action. A sheep milk gouda-ish cheese from Holland that’s basically butterscotch in cheese form. Impossible not to love. It’s excellent with the pairings below, which lean more savory, but if you want a more desserty vibe, I highly recommend having a slice of this cheese with a piece of your favorite salted almond chocolate bar as a cracker.
Pair with: Pretzels and mostarda, the fruity, spicy, tangy condiment from Northern Italy that pairs with basically all cheese. Caputo’s has this delicious-looking crab apple one, or you can make your own, using this Saveur recipe. Sub dried cranberries for the cherries to make it extra festive!
Saxelby’s, NYC
Crowd-Pleaser: Nettle Meadow Big Kunik
A bloomy rind cheese made with goat milk and the rich cream of Jersey cows (the breed, not cows from the land of Snookie). It’s creamy and rich, with a tinge of mineral-rich herbaceousness that makes it soooo light on its feet. The late great Anne Saxelby called it “gelato with a rind.”
Fucking Cool: Stony Pond Swallow Tail Tomme
In my medium-humble opinion, this is the best cheese being made in Vermont right now. When you first taste it, you kinda get young cheddar vibes as far as both flavor and texture, but then, all of a sudden, you’re in a forest. You’re inhaling the fresh cool air of October mornings. You’re entering a cave. The juxtaposition of snackiness and earthy autumnal character is just so wonderful.
Dopamine Re-Up: Uplands Cheese Extra Aged Pleasant Ridge Reserve
Anything Uplands makes automatically goes in the “fucking cool” column too, but extra aged = tyrosine = dopamine!
Pleasant Ridge is the most awarded cheese in American history, made by Andy Hatch, one of the most beloved people in the cheese industry. He only makes two cheeses: Pleasant Ridge in summer, when his cows graze on pasture; and Rush Creek Reserve in the fall when his cows are eating hay. I love Saxelby’s notes on the flavors, so we’ll let them narrate this part. “As the cheese ages, the smooth, milky, grassy, nutty flavors present in younger wheels morph into intensely fruity (sometimes pineapple-y, sometimes leaning more strawberry) flavors with a dash of meat stock and barnyard thrown in for good measure.”
There are a few perfect cheeses in the world, and a handful of perfect cheeses being made in the US. Anything Andy makes is perfect, and always will be.
Pair with: Apple slices (preferably from heirloom apples, and make sure to squeeze a little lemon juice over them so they don’t oxidize) and an autumnal jam.
II. Snow in the Southwest
Taylore: I just arrived home from a trip to Santa Fe to visit Stephen’s parents, so a post-mortem is in order. For once, I didn’t overpack — maybe riffing on Joan Didion’s go-to packing list really did me some good. We left a New York at a balmy 80 degrees and arrived in New Mexico to 16 inches of snow, and I nearly cried with happiness driving my future in-laws’ gigantic Denali up the side of a mountain from the airport.
It was only my second time in Santa Fe, and since we took care of the tourist-y stops the first time around, this trip largely revolved around meals. And at most of them, I was asked the most important question of the week, one that’s essential to New Mexican cuisine: red or green? When it comes to chile, I’m usually a red or Christmas-style kind of girl. But at Tia Sophia’s, downtown Santa Fe’s most essential breakfast spot, the answer is staunchly green. They’ve been cranking out behemoth burritos and smothered enchiladas since 1975. We ate there twice, and I brought home green hatch chilis in both frozen and powdered form so I can wistfully recreate their sauce at home.
Another Southwestern treat you really can’t find in New York: sopapillas. They’re fluffy, rectangular dough pockets usually fried in lard, and they come alongside almost any dish you order in Santa Fe. You can get them stuffed with meat and potatoes or use them to sop up sauce, but my favorite way to eat them is drizzled with honey. We ordered in Christmas-style lamb burritos one night to avoid tearing ourselves away from the fireplace, and dipped some whole wheat sopapillas in honey made by Stephen’s uncle’s honeybees.
After some shopping (The Ark Books) and some drinking (Santa Fe Brewery, As Above So Below distillery), we hit Izanami on our last night in town. It’s the restaurant at Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese spa I’ve been dying to hit for years — maybe next trip! — and it was my favorite meal of the week. Pork belly with pickled watermelon rind, sake flights, ribs, chicken gyoza… we practically crawled home.
III. Frivolities with Sapph-Lit founder Nina Haines
The Rageful: Music has always been my great communicator — it's how I bonded with my father through his chronic illness that left him unable to speak (classic rock), it's how I share my emotions with my therapist when I can't find the exact words for how I'm feeling (Taylor Swift), and it's how I'm currently managing the traumas of the American experience in the wake of the results of the election. I love a good playlist, so my best friends and I collaborated on one called "i love angry women" — give it a listen here and let me know what you think. My current favorite songs to scream-sing in the shower are "Not Ready to Make Nice," "Prodigal Daughter," "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me," "Labour," and "Man's World."
The Rejuvenating: My therapist assigned me some homework about six months ago: do things that your inner child loved to do, and move your body more in ways that feel good to you. Since I started freelancing at the top of the year and left the traditional 9-to-5 schedule, I've been toying with the idea of getting back into horseback riding. I started riding horses when I was about seven or eight years old and rode almost every single day until I left for college and moved to New York. The loss of that part of myself was absolutely felt, but I assumed there was nowhere for me to go now that I lived in the city. Boy, was I wrong: I now ride two to three times a week at two different barns deep in Brooklyn and it's been so joyful and fulfilling. Nothing beats galloping on the beach to me!
The Rebirth: If you haven't watched the Martha Stewart documentary that just came out on Netflix, stop what you're doing, set aside the 2 hours and watch it as soon as possible. I grew up in Connecticut and I'm no stranger to the influence of Miss Martha, but I was too young to really comprehend why she went to jail or the fact that she went to jail at all. She truly is the original influencer and a shrewd businesswoman, and yes, she's an avoidantly attached perfectionist bitch, but I adore her all the more for it. What a comeback!! Martha, if you're reading this, call me. I loved your commentary on the equestrian events at the Olympics with Snoop <3 Let's go ride horses together!
The Resilient: My sapphic book club, Sapph-Lit, has read two absolutely incredible books recently: Chlorine by Jade Song and Heretic by Jeanna Kadlec. Chlorine blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale — it brutally unpacks the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies and serves as a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming. You can see my interview with the author here! Heretic is a memoir of leaving the Evangelical church, reckoning with religious trauma while also interrogating just how much Evangelicalism has and continues to affect all Americans (through our power structures and pop culture) and how it drives our democracy towards fascism. QUITE relevant to today if you ask me.
The Radiant: I'm typing this newsletter while doing the viral Biodance collagen sheet mask. My skin has literally never looked better than when I take this mask off after letting it marinate for eight hours. Whenever I do a mask, it transports me back to 2015 when I thought "face mask = self care." My therapist then challenged me to name self-care practices that didn't have to do with capitalist consumption, but this mask didn't exist then. Believe the hype!! Give in!! Your skin will thank you <3