Living on The Edge

Living on The Edge
By The Attraction Specialist, Jennifer Large Seagrave

Reprinted from Relationships in the City, July 2007

Last Friday night, my friend Kirsten and I sat silently in darkness, a small fire burning in the pit a few feet from an uncovered sweat lodge surrounded by yucca and sage brush, watching a wispy cloud bank alternately cover and reveal night’s blanket of stars over The Edge Retreat near Fruitland, Utah. Evening had darkened the unnamed valley so filled with green cottonwood and reed grass in the afternoon’s light, and sheer sandstone cliffs riddled with dark creases and crumbling with age still stood silhouetted against the indigo horizon. It was nearly eleven on a moonless night, the call of restless crickets competing with snapping flames.

Crickets are really not an anomaly, but growing up in L.A. and now living in the heart of Salt Lake City, I had forgotten about them. And that seems to be at least a little of what this place is all about: remembering the calm that gets lost in rush hour traffic, supermarket lines and day planners scribbled with to do lists and appointments. The dragonfly-adorned welcome sign outside its entryway reads: “The Edge…you can relax now.” And you really have no choice. If the quiet and beauty of the place doesn’t demand it, the hot tub does.

After a lovely two-hour drive past mountains, meadows and reservoirs and animated by an Amanda Quick romance-on-tape, Kirsten and I arrived about an hour before sunset. We let ourselves into the huge retreat kitchen, where guests store their own food and prepare meals. Gleaned from a friend’s remodel, the rose granite countertops and Sub-Zero refrigerator found their way to The Edge as if by fate, the way all things seem to come home here.

When we talked with owners Suzanne Sullivan and Chris Lang later, while sipping wine on a sun drenched veranda, Suzanne admitted, “I came out here in a Lexus and high heels. When I got here, it was as much a mess as I was, all sage brush and dirt…a little ghost house, sitting up here on the edge of a cliff.” Taking a huge leap of faith and leaving her posh Wilshire condo downtown, Suzanne moved up to the quirky old house in need of a huge amount of work…both her and the house! “I was so messed up, I thought I could do it.” And, little by little, money found its way to the retreat’s coffer, craftsmen found their way to building a bunk house, bath house and guest rooms, and many visitors found peace and solace in its hospitality.

After greeting us, Suzanne showed us around her little piece of paradise. From the architecture to the arrangement of buildings, the place seems to invite a sort of communal unity in both obvious and subtle ways. While the welcome gong in the meeting room lets out a low, pervading call to congregate, the bunkhouses’ two ten-bunk rooms hold workers, friends and retreat mates together in undeniably close quarters.
The Star and Moon Houses hold bedrooms of rustic beauty, but no bathrooms, calling for communal use of the bathhouse. If this sounds like a hardship, think again. This bathhouse holds every comfort and amenity a group could ask for including three shower rooms with pine-lined showers, three water closets and four porcelain pedestal sinks. It is a hexagonal work of architectural mastery, with all the modern luxuries and conveniences.

We stayed in the Sunrise Room, one of two modern guest rooms above the bathhouse, boasting full east-facing windows that certainly did let in the morning light, thankfully delayed a little by high valley walls. After our soak in the hot tub and fire under the stars, Kirsten made use of the deep bath in the Sunset room on the west side of the house while I tried out the showers downstairs. I’ve never used a shower with a head mounted seven feet up; water fell on my hair as if from the sky.

The beauty of The Edge Retreat is hard to describe. I’m not entirely certain the flowers and wood, houses and views comprise it. The humming birds are part of it, and Suzanne herself, who leads a Course in Miracles women’s retreat four times a year together with her teaching partner Sue Borg. But there is also an undeniable, lingering je ne sais quoi about the property that commands peace and completes its beauty. It’s an ethereal magic that hangs about the place, and brings out the part of you that recognizes it. “When I came here I focused on healing my own life,” Suzanne says. “This is all a manifestation. The retreat is within.”

And now she is ready to move on down the road, literally. Looking for the appropriate buyer for the womb in which her life changed and developed, Suzanne plans to move into a smaller cabin a couple of miles away. She hopes The Edge will remain a retreat for those seeking peace and closer relationships with one another. I left there feeling closer to the inner calm I had just about forgotten I had.

You can find out more about The Edge Retreat and its events and amenities on their website at http://www.theedgeretreat.com/.
The Edge Retreat
Email: info@theedgeretreat.comDirect: 435.548.2479Fruitland, Utah

Jennifer currently writes the monthly Attraction Specialist and Wine and Cheese Review articles for Relationships in the City, while pursuing a doctorate in literature. She teaches writing and literature at the University of Utah and University of Phoenix. With ten years of experience in the gourmet food industry and forays into a multitude of religions, her experiences have led her to become a connoisseur of both inner and outer attractions.

To Brie or Not to Brie...Part 1

To Brie Or Not To Brie…Part 1

Reprinted from Relationships in the City, July 2007

Since last month’s Relationships in the City article on “How to Give a Wine and Cheese Party” got you all excited about cheese, I thought it apropos that this month the wine and cheese reviewer should say a little something about cheese. Often, when invited to a get together, even a game night at my friends’ house, I know the hostess will have a bottle of something, and I feel the need to contribute to the party. More often than not, some cheese and a French baguette or seeded flatbread is what I choose.

Frequently the cheese choice we all make when called upon to produce in this fashion is a creamy wedge of brie. But do we buy it because we don’t know what else to bring? We want to be sophisticated, but we want to like what we bring. Brie seems an obvious choice.

Whichever supermarket you frequent, from Smith’s to Costco, Wild Oats to Liberty Heights Fresh, it will have a wedge of brie, and it will most likely cost between $5.99 and $13.99 a pound. Costco describes its basic selection on its website this way: “Margaux de Brie is a 60% double cream soft-ripened cheese.” I wonder how many of us really know what that means. Read on and you will be one of the few.

Reading a cheese label is a little like reading a wine label, especially if the cheese is French. Cheeses in France are regionally regulated like wines, and their labels usually tell where they are made, the official variety name, and what kind of animal their milk derives from (I often find a little picture of a cow, sheep, or goat does the trick for them). When sold in the US, labels also feature an ingredient list consisting of the type of milk used in the making, along with rennet (which curds the milk), cultures (which grow the rind and keep the cheese aging properly), salt and occasionally color.

While this all seems straightforward to us label readers here in the US, the fact that most of us aren’t familiar with French cheese regions, and that nearly all cheese is made with the same four ingredients, makes these labels somewhat unhelpful when it comes to knowing what a cheese will taste like…so you will just have to taste and remember.

A standard double cream (or double crème) brie is a cheese made from whole cow’s milk with enough cream added to bring the butterfat content by dry weight (if you dehydrated it) to 60%. Rather than trying to figure out something rational about this number, the best way to know what 60% butterfat by dry weight feels like in your mouth is to taste some, and remember it. It should feel creamy with a tiny bit of a pungent and earthy flavors. Double crème brie hosts a classic balance of buttery richness and mild flavors; hence its ubiquitous appeal.

A single crème brie, most often Brie de Meaux in the US, is a more flavorful, sophisticated variety of soft-ripened cheese. All brie is soft-ripened--that means the cheese not only has cultures added to the mix when it is curded, but it has a culture patted onto its disk-shaped outside as well. As the bloom (the white, fluffy stuff on the rind) grows, the interior of the cheese becomes softer and more flavorful. Brie de Meaux will taste enough like what you and your friends will expect, but with a little less richness and a little more flavor or grass, straw and mushrooms. At 52% butterfat by dry weight, its lighter texture is more springy than your run-of-the-mill double crème, such as the ever present President or Costco’s Margaux. And because it is made in smaller, artisan production, it costs closer to $15 a pound than a double crème.

If you linger in Costco, or make it to Liberty Height’s Fresh, Wild Oats or another cheesy establishment, you will most likely find a “triple crème brie.” This is an outstanding choice if you know your friends like rich, sultry, buttery, and full flavored cheeses. Triple crèmes have enough added cream to bring their butterfat content to 72 or even 75%. The extra fat makes the cheese ripen to a much softer, even runny consistency.

The bloom on this cheese should be even more fluffy and fresh looking than on other bries. I say this because the fat content of the paste conducts the strong flavors of the rind much more thoroughly than regular brie. St. Andre, Pierre Robert, Brillat Savarin, and Explorateur regularly develop a very strong, even spicy flavor as they age. A tiny bit of ammonia on the rind (which naturally develops in all brie and marks its age as passing) becomes prominent in a triple crème when it gets a little too old.

Belletoille, although a real triple crème, hardly develops differently than a double crème, so I don’t like to waste the fat calories on it. However, it usually sells for about $12 a pound, while the other varieties I named run between $18 and $24. The one cherished cheese secret I’ve learned recently is that Costco carries a Delice de Borgogne triple crème for about $10 a pound…and it’s wonderful.

So next time you go for a piece of brie to take to that wine and cheese party you were invited to, know what you are reaching for. And tune in next month when I’ll write about some even more tantalizing, alternative selections that will knock your friends’ sock off. Until then, eat well.

Jennifer Large Seagrave worked in the gourmet food industry for ten years, including several years as a cheese buyer and consultant at such California establishments as Mrs. Gooch’s, Whole Foods Market, Wally’s Liquor, and The Pasta Shop. She is now pursuing a PhD in literature at the University of Utah.