The Tastiest Final Exam (June 25th, 2011)

For our final exam, we were assigned a project in which we each picked a cheese and wine. We had to present on our cheese and wine in terms of how each was made, where it came from, about the region, the history, and so on. I picked the Volnay wine and the Comte cheese. I bought the Volnay wine from the town of Beaune and I bought the Comte cheese from the Fort des Rousses that we visited yesterday. We also bought veggies, bread, sweets from today's farmer's market to go along with our final exam. We sat in a circle with Dr. Max and Dean Reinert while presenting on our cheese and wine. To get the full experience we tasted each presenter's cheese and wine.
To celebrate our time in France and our course, we went to Le Potin Gourmand for our last meal with drinks. We toasted to the course and were entertained by a Renaissance festival next door. After dinner, we went out to a cafe for expresso and sorbet as usual. Pictures are below as usual.

The Delicious Final Exam:

Comte Cheese (raw, aged 12 months, cow's milk)

Volnay Wine (Red-Pinot Noir)

Maconnais Goat Cheese

Dinner at Le Potin Gourmand and Dessert

Escargot

The Jura

For our latest excursion into the French wine country we went to the "Jura" region, which is just east of Burgundy and just across the border from Switzerland. I think that this might have been my favorite time out of the whole class, but I couldn't tell you why. Maybe it's because of the multitude of things we did in those two days, or the things I learned, or just the beautiful landscape.

Jura is a very mountainous region that grows completely different types of grapes than Burgundy does, so we were trying completely different wines in this region than we had previously, but the wine wasn't the only thing that had changed. Yep, that's right, the cheese was completely different, too. The pastures that the cows grazed on were different, so the milk they produced was slightly different and thus the cheeses made from that milk were very different.

The first attraction in the Jura region that we visited was the "Salins les Bains", a town known for it's medieval salt works. The salt works opened in the town of Salins in the 10th century and was still producing salt up until the 1950's. At the time the mine opened salt was just as precious as money and the two could almost be used interchangeably. The salt works stood through several wars and a lot of hard times, so why did it close in the 50's? The refrigerator. Weird, right? It makes sense though, because before the refrigerator salt was used much more as a food preservative. When the refrigerator was invented the need for salt declined and the mine could no longer operate competitively.

After the visit to the salt works we had another amazing lunch in Salins and then were off to our next stop, Tissot winery. We went for a tour through the winery lead by the winemaker, Stephane Tissot, who is the son of the founder, André Tissot. I could relate to Stephane as I am in the same exact situation as he is, although he's quite a bit older and quite successful. I was taking lots of mental notes while I was there and found his operation to be very interesting. They actually produce a wine using mold! That's right, and it's called "Vin Jaune" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_jaune). Basically, they allow a film of mold to grow on the top of the wine and then leave it like that for about 6 years, after that it's bottled and ready to drink. We tried some, and although it's a little counter intuitive, it was very delicious.

Our next destination was the town of Arbois, the home of Louis Pasteur, and where we would spend the night. Louis Pasteur is famous for creating the process of Pasteurization and for essentially singlehandedly creating the field of Microbiology. His home and laboratory were quite interesting, and were in very good condition. I thought it was so cool that we could visit the home of one of the greatest scientists ever and really see what his life was like. After, we had dinner at a local restaurant, "Taverne La Finette" and enjoyed the regions amazing cuisine and wine.

The next morning we visited the "Fruitière de Morbier", where they produce Morbier cheese, a very famous cheese only produced in that region. We woke up bright and early so that we would get there in time to see the cheese being made and we arrived just in time. After, we were treated to a tasting of the Morbier and Comté cheeses, and just like everything else we've had they were delicious. We really got spoiled, who knows what American cheese is going to taste like after this.

Our last stop in the Jura was the "Fort des Rousses", which was a fort built in the Jura mountains by Napoleon in the 1840's to protect the French border with Switzerland. Seeing as how Switzerland has historically always remained a neutral country the fort was not the best idea that Napoleon had, and never saw any action. The massive fort was constructed to house 2,500 soldiers and just as many horses and hold enough food to withstand a one year siege. So, eventually it became too much of a burden for the French government and was sold to the local township. One of the wings of the fort now serves as the towns municipal building, and the other is a massive cheese aging cellar. The cellar holds in the area of 75,000 Comté cheeses that are each probably about 80 pounds. That's a lot of cheese. We toured the fort and saw the aging cellars and had a picnic with a view out onto the border of Switzerland, which was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

T

he trip to the Jura was amazing, and during the three hour ride back to Cluny while everyone else slept I found myself awake reliving the places we saw and soaking in the beautiful landscape.

A Glimpse of Berlin

Sans Souci- Picturesque meadows










Sans Souci- Some of the constructed ruins








Natur Park- An old rail station that has been left to succession and the rail lines adapted to created paths through the new forest growth



















Old Berlin












Holocaust Memorial Site














Berliner Fernehturm














Views of Tiergarden from an observation tower

Comte Forts and Morbier Cheeses-Jura Day 2 (June 24th, 2011)

After a delicious breakfast at our hotel, we were off at 7:30AM to go see cheesemaking at an artisanal Morbier/Comte cheesemaking facility. This was higher up in the mountains of Jura region. The cheesemaking was handled by a principal cheesemaker and his apprentice. The milk was first heated and the starter cultures of LAB (lactic acid bacteria) were added in. After 4 hours, the rennet enzymes were added in to coagulate the milk. The milk curd was then separated from the whey by cutting and draining and pressing. We stood behind a sheet of glass and watched the two cheesemakers. After the curds were separated, they were placed in cheese molds and left to age. For the morbier cheese, the curds were placed onto top of each other, with a layer of vegetable "ash" in between. Traditionally, farmers made Morbier out of leftover curds of Comte cheese, and put ash in between to better preserve the cheese.
After the cheesemaking excursion, we had a picnic in the Mountains of Jura (next to the Fort des Rousses). As usual, it was delicious and full of cheese, meats, wine, breads, and chocolates! After and in between the picnic, we hiked up the mountainside with Dr. Max along the Fort. The Fort was built by the Swiss border in the old days as a defense on the eastern side of France. This fort now holds government offices and COMTE! It serves as an aging cave for 75,000 comte cheeses! The caves are maintained by a robot that washes each cheese with brine and flips it over while aging. We walked through the comte caves and watched a documentary about the fort and the cheese. The caves had an aroma of ammonia which required getting some used to because of all the amino acids that were degrading in the comte cheese (as they degrade over time). On the other hand, I learned to appreciate the art of aging the cheese since you absolutely need the space, time, and mechanics to age the cheese well.

The Morbier Making

Cheesemolds for the curds

The actual cheese! Yummmmmm (the one on top with the black line in the middle is Morbier)

Cow!

Morbier Cheese in town circle

Kruger National Park June 20-23

Hakuna Matata- Ain't no passing craze. It means no worries for the rest of your days.

We arrived at the Kruger National Park gate around 3 pm on Monday. We set up camp at the Skukuza Rest Camp and hit the shops while the crew made dinner. The next few mornings we woke up and were on the bus by 5:50 for game drives. We saw about a million impala and about a hundred different bird species. By the end of the second day we had seen the big five three times. The big five are the five most dangerous game to hunt and consists of elephants, cape buffalo, leopard, lion and rhino. When we saw the leopard it was actually on a rare occasion. Leopards are nocturnal and solitary by nature, yet we saw three adults and one baby in broad daylight. Hippos were everywhere showing their scars on their backs and their little ears twitching independently. We saw a small antelope, called a diker, and mongooses, skitter across the road hoping not to be seen. A pregnant cheetah lounged under a tree watching the cars go by.




Blue wildebeests and zebra roamed around while the vervet monkeys and baboons climbed trees and stole our oranges. Bushpigs (warthogs) wobbled around while hornbills joined our breakfasts. We went to sleep at night listening to the hyenas laugh and woke to lions calling.

While there we also took lectures on their current elephant situation, poaching, wildlife diseases and their management system. The people working on these specific topics at Kruger gave the lectures, so every question was answered. My favorite lecture was the one on elephants because it was hard to believe the elephant situation and even harder to understand why culling needs to be done. Elephants are currently destroying all the biodiversity in Kruger National Park because of their numbers. They are endangered, compared to what the numbers used to be; however, they are over populating the small areas that they inhabit. Unfortunately, humans creating fences stopped their natural migration patterns which allowed the environments they passed to recover from their destruction.

Elephants push down trees and pull up their roots while simply crushing all the bushes. Without healthy vegetation, the rest of the ecosystem will fail. They have nowhere to relocate the elephants because their numbers have risen enough that no one needs them. International pressure has convinced Africa to ban culling. I believe that reversing that law can do a lot of good for the entire country. Culled elephants can be given to local townships to help feed the poor, the ivory (if this was made legal also) could be sold to build the economy, and the biodiversity will be saved. It’s just a thought…

Microbiologist(s)’s pilgrimage(s) to Pasteur’s house (June 23rd, 2011)

Even though we did other things today such as the salt mine and the biodynamic winery, I've decided to have a separate blog post for the visit to Pasteur's house in Arbois [which we went to after the salt mine and winery]. Louis Pasteur moved here with his parents when he was 8, and then came back from Paris every summer to continue working/relaxing in his hometown. He had his own vineyard as well (see picture). Pasteur was the scientist who distinguished that yeast were important in wine production (not just enzymes or "ferments"). He also distinguished rods versus spheres in good and bad beer. The bad beer had bacteria instead of yeast (spheres). Another accomplishment that Pasteur was known for was disproving The Theory of Spontaneous Generation [that stated that life or microbes just occurred spontaneously with air]. And before he was known for all his microbiological work, he was also the founder of stereochemistry. And after his work on microbiology, he also came up with various vaccines, and the one for rabies is well known. And of course, he invented "pasteurization" which was meant for wine, but instead we use it for milk. Pasteurization is the heating of a substance for 165 degrees C for a few seconds in order to sterilize the substance.

The house that he lived in Arbois is now a museum. We took a tour through the house and walked around his lab!!!

The vineyard

A statue of Pasteur in town (everything in town is named after him)

Pasteur's House!

There was an exhibit outside his house. This sculpture shows three modes of replication in bacteria: budding (asexual), transfection (phage), and conjugation (pilus). I was so excited!!

The insides of Pasteur's house. He apparently loved to play billiards with his lab assistant for break-time.

After the salt mine, winery, and Pasteur's house, it was finally time for dinner! As a group we went to a tavern for a three course meal. I had a french onion soup (lots of emmental cheese!) and fondue (of Comte cheese!) with sparkling wine (can't call it champagne because it was not from Champagne, France). I was so stuffed, that I couldn't finish dessert (apple pie and vanilla bourbon ice-cream). After dinner, we walked around town to settle down the cheese in our stomachs. We walked past Pasteur's high school and the rest of town. Today was incredible and definitely tasty!

Hello from Little Cayman!

So I’ve been here since Sunday now and have been so busy I havn’t had a chance to even stop and think about everything. There is so much that we have done that I’m just going to give you a play by play, because otherwise I’ll be giving you a jumble of information.


Day 1: (June 18th) Basically this was the day of my departure. I got to the airport at 730 for my flight at 950, but there was a massive line. (see picture). Basically the computers went down and no one was being checked in. Planes weren’t flying out either, but the delays weren’t being listed. Over an hour later they finally get the computers up and I got checked in, but they didn’t know the depart time. I go to the original gate number and there was no plane, and I found out the gate had been changed I was at A, the new gate was in C. It took me 15 minutes to get there and by the time I did the plane was leaving (I could see it backing away). It was pretty much terrible. So my depart date changed to the 19th. (basically the worst day of my life…because if you read my first blog I was obviously nervous about flying alone.)


Day 2: (June 19th) I got on the plane! YAY. Except my carryon/ emergency bag had to be checked because the plane was full and then there was a delay, BECAUSE THE COMPUTERS WERE DOWN IN CHARLOTTE (my layover airport), of course. But I finally made it to Grand Cayman, to find out BOTH my bags had been lost. I pretty much had to worst luck in airport situations ever, and I missed my flight to Little Cayman. (basically the second worst day of my life).



The best part about this is probably the feeling I felt once I got there. I was so relieved and excited and a little on edge, but I couldn’t even be nervous about meeting my classmates and professor and everyone. Little Cayman is beautiful and more remote than I even thought. The resorts don’t even look like resorts (just beach houses), and there is a lot of trees and plant life and then ocean. We got in the truck to drive to the research center and we were driving on the left side of the road. Then right as we saw an Iguana crossing sign a giant iguana was in the road. It was pretty awesome. It is definitely a new experience and pictures don’t really do it justice. Once we got to the research center I was kind of just blown away. The research center where we are staying is mostly just one big house, but it’s all very open, and we are right on the beach. The water was so blue and clear, but you could see the dark portions of the sea grasses and small reefs.



I met all my classmates (9 of them) and then we had dinner where I learned 4 others had lost their luggage too, so I had calmed down, but I didn’t have much with me (thank god I grabbed a suit out of my carry on). That night we collected corals on the beach to begin IDing them, where we were all attacked by the immense amount of mosquitoes (something I was very unprepared for).

Falling asleep to the sound of the ocean, and the night breeze was nice too. It was still hot and sticky, but every day is so tiring you don’t really notice at that point.

Day 3: 20th
We all woke up by 730 which is breakfast and than after we went to scuba dive. I was nervous because I had just gotten my certification, and I had none of my own stuff too and had to borrow my mask (my face is small so it ended up leaking, (AND SALT WATER IN YOUR EYES HURRTTTS) my snorkel, booties (water shoes so you can walk on the sand with the coral and rocks and sea grass without getting cut and also needed for scuba fins), and fins. The first dive didn’t go so well comfort wise because of my leaking mask, but experience wise it was amazing. The water was so gorgeous and the coral and fish I saw were all different from anything I have ever seen. Later we went snorkeling in CCMI’s “backyard” and learned about the three different types of sea grass (Turtle grass or thalassic testudium, manatee grass syringodium filliformae, and shoal grass halodule wrightii). We also saw two different types of green algae, halimeda and penicillus and learned about how they are actually the main types of contributors to sedimentation (sand) on the island. This is because they actually have calcium carbonate within their structure. I found this really interesting that the sand here doesn’t come from rocks and erosion, but algae.

Day 4: 21st
This was both the most Holy S***, O-M-G, ndjfhjednfhhdsuifmds, and tiring day of my existence. After breakfast we went snorkeling in the “backyard” and looked at different types of coral and tried to identify or get a grasp on what was in the water behind CCMI. Considering this water just looks like ocean and blue water and in places some dark spots, it was amazing to see what was out there. We saw many different corals and tried to find unique finds like the invasive species of lionfish. When we got back we had lunch and YAY, by this time my luggage had come. I got it all out and then we left for s scuba diving trip. This was a two dive trip. We first started at Jackson Wall, which has been by far my favorite. The second you go under the water you are just awed by the pure massive expanse of coral, fish, and blue ocean in the other direction. The wall was huge and you look down and just see corals and then darkness, and you look up and see schools of blue tang. (look them up they are gorgeous). We went into an area where the wall of coral was on both sides of us which was scary because you don’t want to touch anything by accident. We saw a giant tagged Nassau grouper which ended up following us for most of the dive. The best part though (besides the entire dive) was the sea turtle. To express excitement underwater is apparently a difficult endeavor. All I could do was wave my hands energetically and watch as the turtle swam upward for air, took a breath, swam back down, and went to eat. It was the cutest (I love sea turtles), most amazing thing I have ever witnessed.


(Above the dive)

We then got back on the boat and went to our second dive on Barracuda Bite, bloody bay wall. This dive was not as exciting because I was tired and just too amazed by the sea turtle. We did see a barracuda though and I immedietly felt like Finding nemo and the drop off with the barracuda. We then got back on the boat and started on our way back. We were all so exhausted from both snorkeling and scuba diving we were just excited to eat. After we ate we kind of just passed out in the class room and listened to two presentations. (We all have a presentation on topics and we discuss them after they are done.) After that we mostly just sat around and did work or had free time.

Day 5: 22nd
All day we basically studied. We were given about 30 different coral and 30 fish to know and study. We were so exhausted from the two scuba dives and not getting free time that we got time to study and make index cards for all the different corals, fish, and algae we need to know. At some point we went out with two interns and for two hours either went out to identify damselfish, blennies, and gobys or to identify the different types of green, red, and brown algae’s in Little Cayman.

At night there was a storm, which was cool but the idea of lightning and living next to the ocean was a little scary, but cool none the less. It didn’t really rain though which was weird and you could still see the

Day 6: 23rd. LIONFISH DAY
Today we woke up and had breakfast and then split up into two groups. One group spoke to the professor (Tom) about our projects, while the other went to look at lionfish and dissect them and take notes. I was in the first group and I got the job of cutting out the stomachs. In previous classes I was always with a partner who didn’t give me much chance to dissect, so I was excited but nervous because I didn’t want to cut the wrong thing and make Morgan (the intern who is working on the research project) upset, so I was slow none the lease. We saw two large fish and small fish within the stomachs of the lionfish which was cool. While cutting the lionfish open I pricked myself a few times on their spikes. Usually these spikes contain venom. Since the lionfish has been killed the night before it wasn’t as strong so I didn’t feel anything after the first few pricks, but I had one in my pinky and it stung, like a wasp sting. It wasn’t that bad in comparison to a wasp sting, but it probably can feel a lot worse. After a while we were going to slow and needed to keep the fish cold so we had to stop. Currently we have been sitting in the classroom studying or having free time.



Later my lionfish group gets to talk to Tom about our research ideas and I’m excited. The other group is discussing working with the calcifying halimeda and I want to work with them on decalcification due to co2 input into the water (I hope).

In essence we never do the same thing twice, are always learning, but still enjoying ourselves. The worst part is definitely the bugs and the heat and stickiness is up there. As of today we didn’t have air conditioning, but we will tonight (yay!), so hopefully sleeping doesn’t feel so sticky, but it isn’t a bad price to pay for getting to live here for 2 and half weeks.

Although I know it is probably difficult to do, but everyone should spend at least a week on a tropical secluded island or at least sleep on the beach. Words to live by.

Time to go study. Off I go.

Hope your having a good day. I know I am!

Heather