Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

Awaiting my first class at the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont, I solemnly, silently swore to my late sister Sharon, whose bequest on that August 2009 day began funding an intense and still active foray into fromage, that a new career path would certainly intersect at some point – even if my eventual occupation omitted immersing my hands in milk. Still, my declaration of independence on 4 July 2010, establishing Cheese Happens LLC, was made minus any notion of flip-flopping the cheese/bread equation. But in soothing the disappointment bred by losing the locus of my dream downtown creamery/bakery with a surge in sourdough breadbaking and a torrent of tweaks to my Old Waverly scone/muffin/tea bread/cookie formulas, I freed myself to acknowledge 40 years of baking will forever trump all amassed and eventual cheesemaking. Cheese will still happen, but baking is the bomb.

How hilarious that a year after writing about forming Cheese Happens LLC in Let Freedom Ring, the new proposed location's roof hosts a replica Liberty Bell and Statue of Liberty (a gift to the United States from France). Just back from French bread camp in Vermont, where we baked in the glory of a monumental French oven, I sat in my truck (Maryland-tagged CHEVRE) and stared at this familiar-as-home, forlorn warehouse, perfectly set up and sized for both bread and cheese, with love bubbles in my eyes, morphing Emma Lazarus' words to reflect, rather, a future vision of me, over-tired and under-capitalized, boiling before a steamy, (hopefully) French oven, shepherding my dough from gassy little balls into magnificent miche, batards, and baguettes - with my chevre logs aging gracefully down the hall. On the .65 mile ride home (close enough to what I wished for), Lady Liberty beamed at me from a Remax billboard.