Abstract:
Oregon has a growing artisan cheese industry and is developing a reputation as
one of the country’s leading regions for many varieties of cheeses. This thesis is an
exploration of four of Oregon’s premier artisan creameries. The primary research for
this project included visiting the farms and cheesemakers, tasting the cheeses and
interviewing professionals. Secondary research consisted of consulting texts written by
food writers, popular periodicals and recipe books.
The thesis consists of four essays; each essay is made up of narrative accounts of
visits to farms, descriptions of the cheeses and recipe suggestions for cooking with the
cheeses.
Through the process of writing this thesis, the author discovered the challenges
of writing about food. These challenges included the following: learning the jargon of
the cheese industry, cultivating a voice within the genre food writing and researching
technical aspects of the cheesemaking process.
