BLOOMSDALE, Mo. — A Mennonite woman with a used 2001 Porsche Boxster and a Hello Kitty collection is making some of the most delicious French-style goat cheese in America.
The affection for Hello Kitty is a holdover from Veronica Baetje’s childhood. So is the Porsche. She got a taste for foreign cars helping her father in his south St. Louis repair shop. A few years ago, she figured there was no real harm in shedding the plain dark sedans favored by the Mennonites for something more fun.
The car doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of her velvet rounds of aged goat cheese or her pine ash-coated pyramids, which have won major competitions and enchanted cheesemongers from California to England. But racing through the back roads of this pocket of eastern Missouri with Ms. Baetje, her traditional head covering blowing in the wind and a Diet Pepsi in the cupholder, whatever one may think about American goat cheese and its relationship to God begins to shift.
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