Mustard Tasting

I went to a mustard tasting today. Some gal named Rebecka Weinsteiger got lots of compliments from her friends on the mustards she'd been making, so she thought she'd give it a go.

I have no idea how many of the 6 mustards I got to taste were actually hers (I'm guessing #1 was Grey Poupon), but they were all tasty (except for #4). I know, you can't tell the difference between them - don't blame me, you should have gone to the tasting.

Rebecka was just trying to find out what kind of mustard might sell well in the Corvallis area, and what kind of price she could charge. We don't use a lot of mustard, but I'd plunk down $5-$8 for a jar of artisan mustard once or twice a year.

The tasting had a couple of different kinds of sausage to dip, some pretzels, and a tofu sausage (blech!). There were slices of apple and turnip for cleansing the palette. I first tasted all the mustards on pretzels - so I could get a good idea of the mustard by itself. Tasting them that way, I only really liked #1 and #6 (a classic dijon, and a rustic whole-grain mustard). After I filled out the survey cards I went back and tried the mustards with chunks of sausage - wow, all but #4 were great. Sure the sausage was good, but the combination was very tasty and totally changed how the mustards came across.

I did give Rebecka the tip to drop off a little gift basket of mustard at John & Caprial's up in Portland. On one of their cooking shows they went on and on about their love of mustard, so I hope they find Weinsteiger mustard to their liking.

I look forward to buying a bottle of mustard from her farmer's market stand in May.