Goose in Bloom: preview party features goods from the Goose

Much more than a garden show, Orchard In Bloom is a twenty-year-old tradition that brings the community together to help raise over $100,000 for outdoor education programs for the children of Indianapolis. And this year's preview party includes treats from the Goose! Got your tickets yet?

Before The Bloom – Preview Party
Thursday, April 29, 2010
6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Holliday Park
63rd & Spring Mill Road

Happy Earth Day from the Goose

To celebrate Earth Day, the Goose has another introduction to make. Our re-purposed, recycled but still new to us composters have made a happy home near the Goose Garden.
Designed and built by Tom Battista and Tyler Henderson, our composters are made of discarded but reclaimed food-grade barrels and slices from an old tree that had to be cut down in the Meridian Kessler neighborhood. Organic waste from the shop goes in and luscious, rich compost comes out. The barrels are filling up and peculating, preparing this year's waste for next year's garden, while last year's compost already sits on the Goose Garden just steps away.

It's all part of a delicious cycle that makes sense for Mother Earth and Mother Goose: eat, compost, grow, eat, repeat.

New to the Goose: Welcoming Kelley!

Kelley brings the best of both worlds. She's a big city gal who left her career managing staff at an upscale Chicago restaurant to move to Indy where her fiance is starting a new job. "I'm still getting used to driving here," Kelley says. "It only takes 5 minutes to get through downtown. That's at least a half hour in Chicago." But she's also the small town, farm girl who just last weekend helped her dad sort seed on her family's pig farm in Coal City, Illinois. "There were only 140 kids at my school," she says, thinking about the big transition she made when she came to Purdue to get her degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management.

Kelley is especially fond of blue cheeses (ask her about the Black Ledge Blue!) and loves charcuterie because of the way such simple things--like salt, air, and time--can transform flavors and textures. Stop by the shop and help us welcome Kelley to the Goose!

Fait Gras: grassfed Michigan cows deliver organic cheese

The Meerman family at Grassfields gets straight to the point. They named their Michigan farm Grassfields and that's all their Holstein and Jersey cows eat. They named this cheese Fait Gras and that's exactly what they did.

The family was looking for a way to use the extra cream produced on their farm, so they got to work and "made fat," or fait gras, that is.

A raw and organic cow's milk cheese, Fait Gras is a high cream cheddar that's firm but melts in our mouth with herbal, grassy, and sharp flavors.

Lock 21: new raw milk cheese at the Goose

For six generations, Brian Schlatter's family has been farming in the corner of Ohio where the Wabash & Erie and the Miami & Erie Canals converge. While young Brian follows in his ancestors' footsteps by turning raw milk into alpine-style cheeses, he took to the tow path to honor a seasonal cheese he only makes when the cow's at Canal Junction Farmstead are on a full pasture diet.

Now at the Goose, Lock 21 is a raw, cow's milk cheese named for the canal lock about 2 miles from Brian's farmstead. This cultured cheese begins as a packed mixture of young, soft curds and whey. Earthy, mushroomy flavors develop and the texture softens and smooths while the cheese ages for months before hitting our shelves (and your plate).