The culture team is at it again! We're proofing the entire spring issue before it goes to print early next week. Such a hardcore work day requires an epic lunch break, which is happening now, thanks to a local (and wildly talented) chef in Brooklyn - you may know her from her restaurant, Homemade

Here are some pics of what's going on in our design team's office today!

I don't get out much these days beyond the local watering-hole, but the limited circle of restaurants I have gotten around to visiting in 2011 served me up some awesome cheese-centric dishes. Here are my top six menu items featuring CHEESE in Boston/Cambridge:

Deuxave (Back Bay) besides being generally delicious, serves goat cheese & potato croquette with their steak. If you're wondering, that means creamy whipped potatoes are mixed with goat cheese and then fried. Screw the steak, these croquettes are freakin amazing.

City Girl (Inman Square) serves a tasty brunch in their tiny space on Saturdays and Sundays, part of which is a goat cheese bacon & caramelized onion egg sandwich. Yup, it's really good. Mostly because it combines three of my favorite ingredients (bacon, goat cheese, caramelized onion). You should try it.

This is one massive wheel of cheese, and it arrived at the Concord Cheese Shop, in Concord, MA, on Thursday amidst great fanfare. A parade in celebration of the cheese drew many townsfolk, and the cheese made quite the entrance via a 200ft. red carpet. Enthusiastic fans and photographers cheered and snapped pictures of this 400lb crucolo cheese, and costumed children dubbed the Crucolo dancers tossed chunks of cheese.

This is the second annual arrival of a 440lb wheel of cruculo, and everyone's already excited for next year! See photos below.

We're all hard at work here, trying to pull brilliant ideas out of our brains! Here are a few more photos of the brainstorming crowd at work. Big thank you to the Chesman's for loaning us the use of their wonderful stone house in Stowe, Vermont!

The culture staff has descended upon the offices of our new design team in Brooklyn for the table proofing of our winter issue. And what an office this is! Lots of space, and it's been great working with Andrea, Carol and Deb of Red Herring Design.

Here are some pictures of us all, as well as a sneak-peek at the new issue's layout. Woooo.

Thanks for having us Red Herring!

After a long two weeks of Restaurant Week in Boston, I was poorly prepared for the impending hurricane on Saturday night. My feet were tired, my clothes and person were dirty, and there wasn't a flashlight to be found in my apartment. My roommate and I looked over our supplies, wondering how long we'd be able to survive if the power went out.

Our plan was to eat everything in the fridge first, so as not to let the perishables go bad. Sadly the fridge was a barren wasteland.

Here we all are, looking over every page of our next issue. One undetected slip of the eye, pen, or computer key equals a big, glaring typo that will haunt us all until our memories fail.

....there's no pressure though.

We've got snacks and beverages from Rubi's and some good canine company.

The Culture crew just got back from the Fancy food Show on Wednesday! It's quite the experience the first time around. This year it was held in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in D.C. It also happened to be murderously hot outdoors, which made the cavernous interior of the venue a welcome refuge.

Laid out in aisles by country and state, with rough categories within that structure, the show is massive. Overwhelming is a word I heard often in the three days we were there. It took a full ten minutes to get from end to end at a swift clip.

That said, thousands of vendors are there to show off their product, which means mass amounts of free food, drink, and…ummm…CHEEESE!!

My ears are still ringing with the sounds of Adam Moscowitz’s voice at this year’s Cheesemonger Invitational (last Friday the 8th). Despite a depressing drizzle outside, the competition could still be heard and smelled from many yards away. Held in Larkin warehouse, in Long Island City, the event was a big frigging deal.

For perspective, note this: three Australian cheesemongers made the trip from down under JUST for this event.

Beer from Six Point Brewery and an enormous cheese spread from Tia Keenan kept the crowd fueled throughout the night, and the enthusiasm was palpable.

Yesterday I moved from one apartment in Boston to another - a disgusting activity, given the temperature outdoors.

During the process, my moving-helpers and I decided to pull the empty drawers out of my dresser before carrying it down the stairs to the street.

This is when we found a handful of yellowed sheets of paper, wedged up in the interior crevices of my dresser.

These sheets of paper were two separate New York Times articles, one from Sunday November 20, 1988, titled The Aging Grace of Roquefort, by Florence Fabricant