Culinary kit benefits student exchange program
Rumiano Cheese Company, California’s oldest family-owned cheese company and a pioneer in organic and artisanal cheese, has announced the release of its “Kamome Chef Box,” a limited-edition home chef culinary kit.
Curated to commemorate the sister city friendship between Crescent City and Rikuzentakata, Japan, the kit is available at https://rumianocheese.com/pages/kamome-dry-jack. It features a special edition of Rumiano’s classic Dry Jack cheese that has been aged oneyear and finished with sea salt from Hirota Bay in Rikuzentakata, Japan.
All profits from Kamome Chef Box sales will benefit the sister city high school student exchange program that funds scholarships for two students in Crescent City and two students in Rikuzentakata to visit opposite sides of the world for a cultural and educational experience.
Highlighted during the recent Summer Olympic Games broadcast in an NBC Sports documentary, the two cities developed ties after a boat named “Kamome” from Takata High School in Rikuzentakata washed ashore in Crescent City, two years after having been swept out to sea by the tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake. A story of hope was realized when students at Del Norte High School cleaned the boat and returned it to the Japanese high school. This symbolic act of kindness created an unbreakable bond between the two high schools and inspired a “forever friendship” between the two communities. The relationship continued to deepen over the years, and in 2019, Rumiano Cheese Company traveled to Rikuzentakata with the North Coast Trade Delegation to forge a formal sister city relationship and student exchange program.
“The connection between our two communities is a special one, and this remarkable story is just in its first chapter. While we have many geographical similarities, we also have so much to learn from each other,” said Baird Rumiano, president and third-generation co-owner at Rumiano Cheese Company. “Japanese sea salt is extremely rich in flavor, and it gains a sweetness as it ages. Adding it to our classic Dry Jack, and aging it for a year in our nearly 100-year-old cellars, has produced a very limited supply of this special cheese.”
The Kamome Chef Box is available online and at the Rumiano Cheese Company’s Crescent City cheese store for $95. It includes three half-pound handcrafted wedges of limitededition Kamome Dry Jack, an 8.45 ounce bottle of Gunrock Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil made from more than 20 olive varieties from a grove on the UC Davis campus, an 8-ounce bottle of Miracle Soy Sauce made from 200-year-old cultures in Rikuzentakata, and a two-ounce tin of sea salt sourced from Rikuzentakata’s Hirota Bay, the same bay devastated by the 2011 earthquake causing the Kamome fishing vessel to drift ashore in Crescent City nearly two years later.
To learn more about Rumiano Cheese Company, visit rumianocheese.com.