Redhead Creamery's Hallow Frost is Ringing your Doorbell

Let me start this with a ghost story

Some storms you remember. This one, you survive.

The Armory on the UW Madison campus 1991

Ask anyone who lived through the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 what they remember, and they won't start with a number. They'll look past you for just a second and ask: where were you?

From October 31 through November 4, 1991, a massive storm crawled over the Upper Midwest and refused to leave. Moisture funneled north from the Gulf of Mexico met arctic air spilling down behind it, and the result read like a campfire story: record early-season snow burying eastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin while a glaze of ice crippled southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. Duluth recorded 36.9 inches of snow. The Twin Cities saw records snowfall too, with 28.4 inches piling up. Around 100,000 people lost power. Twenty-two people died. And when the snow finally stopped falling, arctic cold settled in over the drifts, shattering record lows and keeping roads choked with snow for days.

I was going to college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison at the time. It was the only time in the university's history that it closed. If you were there, you remember the quiet — the kind of hush that falls when an entire region decides, all at once, to stay inside. It was a blessing in disguise if you are familiar with how UW Madison celebrated ANYTHING in those days!

Hallow Frost - Hurry, GRAB IT!

Enter Hallow Frost

Thirty-five years later, Redhead Creamery has given that feeling a shape. It's called Hallow Frost, and it looks the way the blizzard felt: a snowy white bloomy rind hiding something dramatic beneath — a warm golden-orange interior colored with annatto, cut through by a dark line of vegetable ash. Slice into it and you find a delicate lactic-set soft-ripened cheese, creamy in texture with a mild tang. It's made with milk from Redhead Creamery's family dairy farm and handcrafted in Brooten, Minnesota — a small-format cheese that stands out immediately in a specialty case, on a grazing board, in a gift box, or in a seasonal display. Available as a single or a 9 pack.

So light the candles, put another log on the fire, and slice into something that looks like October 31, 1991 feels in memory: dark, dramatic, and a little bit haunting. And if you were there, tell someone where you were. The storm deserves the company.

I wonder how well it would roll down Bascom Hill?

To dig into the history

• 1991 Halloween blizzard (Wikipedia)

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