By JIM KEVLIN

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RICHFIELD SPRINGS

When Harriet was a 6-year-old in Middlebury, Vt., her mother bought her an Easy-Bake Oven.
“All I wanted to do was to bake,” she remembered the other day. “I’ve been doing it all my life. And I love it.”
When she retired from teaching in Utica public schools in 2004, she told her husband, Dick: “I want to do a bakery.”
In looking for a location, she heard about the one-room Hallsville schoolhouse in Pleasant Brook, east of Roseboom.
“Since I was a little girl,” she continued, “I always wanted a one-room schoolhouse: And there it was.”
It was meant to be.


Before long, she and Dick, a former B-52 bomber pilot who had retired as director of the Utica Refugee Center, were in the midst of renovations.
The schoolhouse was converted into a two-bedroom home, and the 1846 Methodist Protestant Church next door into the bakery.
Because of the location – Pleasant Brook, though delightful, is tiny – the Sesslers soon found a bakery could not fly on its own.
They added lunch.
Then they added what became one of the SweetTooth Schoolhouse’s signature features: Ethnic dinners, every two weeks.
The first was German – Dick is of German heritage and knew how to make sauerbrauten – but soon their offerings were ranging several continents.
Then Harriet remembered something else she loved.
Her memory was brought to the fore when she was in North Carolina visiting her daughter, who had a friend working at a place called La Teada’s, featuring afternoon tea and dress-up parties.
“I remember from my childhood how much I loved to dress up with my mother,” said Harriet.
Done.



“Dressing up brings out the little child, the little girl,” she continued. And, occasionally, also the little boy: She bought a couple of tuxedos and men’s hats when she discovered male patrons felt left out.
Last year, as the price of gasoline continued to rise, customers were less likely to hop into their cars and drive to Pleasant Brook.
Also, the Sesslers were driving back and forth daily from their home in Richfield Springs, 15 miles each way. It just seemed to make sense to look for something near home.
As it happened, Harriet had just the thing in mind, a former monument-company building on Lake Street, a high-peaked building made out of an unusual light-brown brick.
Harriet had heard it was tied up in an estate, but her Realtor made an inquiry, and within 24 hours they had an agreement to buy it.
At some point, someone had intended to turn the building into an Italian restaurant, and the fancy chandelier from a New York City hotel was already hanging in the middle of the room.
In the course of renovations, the Sesslers discovered the building’s foundation was made of stone from Belgium.
(Their mason told them ships used it as ballast, then the ballast was dumped at ports in the New York City area. Upstate folks would salvage it.)
If you’d driven along Lake Street over the winter, you would have seen Number 42 all boarded up. Little by little, the building brightened and brightened until, in early July, a bright pink sign went up by the road.
The Sesslers were back in business.
They’re serving lunch from 11 to 2, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. There’s a lot of custom baking going on; lately, quite a few rhubard pies. Also, scones.
The private lunches and dinners are on the increase, birthday parties, showers. The Red Hats frequent the place.
There are dress-up teas and dress-up luncheons, just as Harriet envisioned.
And the ethnic nights are back. Friday, Aug. 1, French cuisine was featured. (The application is in for a liquor license, expected to be issued by fall.)
Friday, Aug. 16, there will be a Riggie Night, featuring that Italian-by-way-of-Utica specialty: breast of chicken in Alfredo sauce, with roasted red peppers, black olives, mushrooms, lots of Parmesan cheese, and “a few jalapenos.”
“Veeeeeeeeeery rich,” said Harriet.
Mini-strombolis, minestrone, antipasto and, for dessert, that crowd-pleaser, cannoli.
Saturday, Aug. 9, the Pleasant Brook era will officially end, as Lambrecht Auctions of Walton will be on the scene, selling off the two buildings and many of the antiques inside.
For now, Harriet and Dick are having a little too much fun to think too far ahead.
One thing’s for sure.
“We don’t want to get really huge,” said Harriet. “I don’t want to be mass-producing stuff. I want it to be small, cozy, so that people know us and we get to know our customers.”

Labels: Features, Glimmerglass, Local Businesses

By JIM KEVLIN

MILFORD



Jersey Girl?
“Buttery, smooth,” said Bob Sweitzer.
Celena?
“Rich and sharp,” he said.
“Tangy,” chimed in Sharon Tomaselli, his business partner in the Cooperstown Cheese Company on Route 28 just north of this village.
In an era where the Spaghetti Factory doesn’t make spaghetti (it’s a restaurant), the Factory at Franklin makes retail sales (it’s a mall in Tennessee) and the Shout! Factory doesn’t make shouts (it’s an online video store), you may be surprised to learn something called the Cooperstown Cheese Company (www.cooperstowncheesecompany.com) actually makes cheese. (Yes, it has a retail store as well.)
The house cheese?
“Creamy and nutty,” Bob continued.
Ransiera? “Smooth, pleasant.”
Krista Magno? “Mouth puckering!”
Don’t you find your mouth is watering already?
Most of these cheeses are of a style that originated in Northern Italy, home of Sharon’s ancestors. The style also happens to be called “toma,” which, you may have noticed, are the first four letters of her surname.
For all these reasons, it just seemed to make sense that the partners would adopt “Toma” as their company’s brand, as in Toma Tenero, Toma Celena and so on, cheeses she and Bob have been manufacturing in the low-slung former dairy for the past year now.
Bob focuses on production; Sharon on marketing, and she has been placing the company’s products in such outlets as Honest Weight and Eats in Albany, Adams in Poughkeepsie, Stinky Brooklyn in that very borough, and Green Star in Ithaca.
She had just returned from a sales trip to Zabar’s, the high-end New York City grocery, when she and Bob were interviewed the other day. Placing Toma cheeses there would be a real coup.
Locally, the cheeses are sometimes available at Danny’s Market, and one variety may be sampled on the Blue Mingo’s cheese plate.
If “Toma” just seemed to make sense as a brand name, the rest of the Cooperstown Cheese Company’s story is much more serendipitous.
Bob and Sharon actually spent their careers in the papermaking industry.
The future business partners met in Milford, N.J., where both worked for Curtis Specialty Papers, she as COO, he as mill manager.
Raised in Providence, R.I., she had gone to McGill in Montreal, later receiving an MBA from RPI. For Boise Cascade, Curtis and Mead, she bounced around from Windsor Locks, Conn., to Portland, Ore., International Falls, Minn., and Rumford, Maine.
Bob was born in Springfield, Mass., although his dad and mom were from Syracuse and Buffalo respectively. He received a bachelor’s in chemistry from Cornell and, once in the paper industry, received a master’s from the Institute of Paper Chemistry, then in Appleton, Wisc. His wife, Janice, had lived in Ithaca all her life; after they married, the couple moved 12 times.
Janice and Katie, an 11th grader at South Jeff, are living in the Watertown area until the daughter graduates. Sharon’s husband, Wayne Ransier, a computer programmer in the Boston area, will be moving here soon with daughters Brittany, 16, and Krista, 13.
Bob and Sharon ran into each other again at a mill in Deferiet; he was manager, she was a consultant. Throughout their acquaintance, they found they worked well together and began talking about going into a business of their own in – logically – papermaking.
One deal came close, but fell through, and they found themselves negotiating for a cheese factory in Upstate New York. That deal also fell through, but they caught the cheese bug – Sharon knew nothing about cheese except that she was “a serious cheese eater”; Bob made cheese as a hobby – and soon found themselves negotiating with Bob Myers, who runs an organic dairy in Morris, for the low-slung, red-roofed building they eventually bought.
“We had to set it up again as a cheese plant,” said Sweitzer, adding, “It’s an ideal floor plan.”
Plunging right in, the partners made five different cheeses in the first batch alone, including the house cheese – “our own invention” – that is “a little like provolone,” but very creamy.
They found an ideal source of raw material on Lester Tyler’s nearby Sunny Acres operation, Brown Swiss.
“Lester’s milk is perfect for cheesemaking,” said Sharon, “just the right blend of fats, proteins and sugars.”
The fledgling cheese company may very well have caught a wave, with concerns about energy causing Upstate New York and other regions to refocus on what might be produced locally, instead of trucked in all the way from California. Nine miles north in Cooperstown, partners Brenda Berstler and Melissa Manikas have launched Savor New York (www.savorny.org), seeking to market Empire State products.
For her part, Sharon was surprised to find how much is being produced upstate.
The Cooperstown Cheese Company’s factory store – artist Kyla Coburn of Milford did the cows-and-mountains mural, itself worth a visit – not only sells the locally made cheeses, but all manner of New York foodstuffs. (One product, It’s A Hit chili sauce, is being produced by a woman in Goodyear Lake.) The only exception: Sharon could only find two upstate cracker makers, so had to cast the net a little farther.
Another indication of that a regional food craze may be burgeoning is the sudden boom in farmers’ markets. In addition to Cooperstown’s, such markets have popped up in Richfield Springs and Oneonta in the last couple of years. Bill Isaacs is launching one in Cherry Valley this summer. And Cooperstown Cheese has started its own, from noon to 6 p.m.Tuesdays.
Asked about the challenges to date, the two point out they are the company’s only two employees; the time investment is significant, perhaps even constant.
The moments of jubilation?
The partners pause. In the rush of starting a business, they haven’t taken the time they should have to celebrate the achievements. The work itself is enough.
“It’s always really neat when we un-mold our cheese,” said Sharon, “and it looks good, and it smells good, and the taste...!”

Know Little About Making Cheese ... You’re Not Alone

The unexamined life ... It’s the rare person among us who isn’t a cheese eater. But how many of
us know how it’s done? Here’s a quick primer from Bob Sweitzer and Sharon Tomaselli, partners in the Cooperstown Cheese Company. “It all came from the same recipe originally,” said Bob, and was spread through Europe by the Romans; thus, similar cheeses are found throughout the continent, although under different names. You start with cheese curd; in effect, curdled milk.
You place it in a vat, and it begins to develop acidity; different kinds of cheese require different levels of acidity. Some cheese is pressed, some isn’t. Pressing determines the weight – the consistency – of the cheese, and the rind. How much salt is added, or what flavors may be added help determine the final outcome further. Feta, for instance, needs to be soaked in a brine. Cooperstown Cheese is using only cow’s milk, but sheep and goats milk can alter flavor to a
minimal degree. Most important in controlling the flavor is what the animals are fed, the partners said. Jersey Girl, for instance, made under contract with a farmer in Worcester, uses only milk from grass-fed seasonal herds, so the raw material is only available from late spring
until late fall.

Labels: Businesses, Community, Features, Glimmerglass