A big, heartfelt congratulatiuons to Susan Smotherman for being the 1st place winner in the Creamery’s Art Fare Contest! She has won a $50 Zingerman’s gift card, good in any of our retail or restaurant locations.

For 2nd place, we have Kerry Gottlieb, winner of a 6-pack of hand-made gelato, shpped directly to her door.  We hope she enjoys this little taste of Ann Arbor.

3rd/4th/5th placers have won themselves a limited edition Art Fare T-shirt! Congrats to Jeff White, Lauren Hall, and Joanne Inglis. Enjoy your shirts!

Art Fair was so much fun for us.  Thanks to everyone who came down for a scoop.  It was great to make new friends, see some old ones, and just be smack-dab in the epicenmter of all of the activity.  I love the circus-like atmosphere that takes over downtown Ann Arbor during the Art Fair.  It is a veritable kaleidoscope of sounds, smells, colors, and folks from all walks of life.  And you couldn’t have asked for better weather!

Eastern Market

We are very excited to announce our newest Farmer’s Market: the historic Eastern Market in Detroit.  We are thrilled to be able to bring our cheeses into the heart of the city and share tastes with many many new palates.  If you’ve never been to the Eastern Market, you just have to find the time to head down.  Eastern Market almost feels like a city-within-the-city, crawling with vibrant colors, smells, sounds, and throngs of people filling canvas bags with organic produce, farm fresh eggs, breads, flowers, and now our hand-made cheeses!

We will be there from when the market opens at 7am on Saturday, until 3pm or when we run out of cheeses to sell, whichever comes first.

Hope to see you in Detroit!

Here is a GoogleMaps link to Eastern Market.

As many of you Creamery enthusiasts know, we recently hosted our fifth annual start-of-summer Gelato Kickoff to cool everybody off.  (And a mighty success it was! with scoops of our newly revealed El Mysterioso/El Rustico – unconched, vanilla bean-studded Askinosie chocolate in our vanilla gelato – disappearing down hatches by the dozen.)

But now it’s time to heat things back up.  For the first time on our shelves and in some of our favorite cheeses, we present: harissa from the Mahjoub family of Tunisia.  Harissa is a spicy, red pepper paste mixed with tomatoes, coriander, caraway, garlic and olive oil, and is most commonly found in North Africa.  It is used as a condiment in various dishes, including couscous, tuna, olives, lamb, and vegetables, and is also a central ingredient in the national dish of Tunisia, lablabi, a chickpea stew.  It is a bit smoky, quite spicy, dense, and really tasty, and we are selling both large and small jars of it in the cheese shop.

Now, we thought the harissa itself was a pretty wonderful addition to our dry goods selection.  The Mahjoub business is – like Zingerman’s – very interested in preserving food traditions, using natural ingredients, and seeking delicious flavors.  But then we met the inspiring Majid Mahjoub himself and learned of his great love for harissa blended into – none other than! – fresh cream cheese.  That’s when we really got excited.  We mixed up a trial batch post haste, spread it on crackers, and feasted.  The salted tangy creaminess of the cheese subdues the heat just enough, and provides the perfect platform for the flavors of the harissa to run wild.  According to Majid, there has been no such formal union of fresh, full-flavored, preservative-free cheese and fiery harissa available anywhere until now.  And it is a match to behold!

For our second creation, we tried adding harissa to bocconcini – the miniature-sized mozzarella balls we make fresh every morning.  We called it harissarella, and it’s already become the staff favorite and a runaway hit at the Farmer’s Market.  You can rip off a hunk of Bakehouse Paesano bread and dredge it in harissarella, or use it to top eggs for brunch.  It’s fantastic in pasta, too.  You can’t go wrong.

So crank up the A/C and get a little harissa and fresh cheese in your life… the summer has just begun.

[Notice!  For those who can't get enough of Tunisian cuisine, we are also carrying the Mahjoubs’ piquant orange marmalade and fig jam, both very nice with our double cream Manchester, flinty Ypsi, or fresh goat’s milk cream cheese.  To learn more about the Mahjoub family, farm, and products – including the extra virgin olive oil they make in their olive grove on a reconstructed Roman stone press – check out www.moulinsmahjoub.com.]