Latest news with #Montez
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Woman issued summons for threatening Longmont's Vance Brand Airport
The Boulder County Sheriff's Office issued a summons today to a 74-year-old woman accused of leaving a threatening voicemail to the Vance Brand Airport, according to a press release. The summons is for obstructing government operations, a Class 2 misdemeanor, according to Colorado Revised Statutes 2024. Such misdemeanors carry a possible penalty of 120 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $750. The Longmont Times-Call policy is generally to not name people unless they're charged with felonies. The sheriff's office received a notification Friday that a Longmont city employee received a voice message from a caller claiming to have shot at an in-flight ultralight aircraft near the Vance Brand Airport. The airport, at 229 Airport Road, is owned and operated by the Longmont city government. The woman owned a starter pistol that was confiscated by detectives; however, the pistol was unable to fire live ammunition, according to the release. The sheriff's office has not received any reports that someone was directly threatened or that property was damaged, Vinnie Montez, a spokesman, said in the release. The office does not have information that there was a credible threat to the aviation community. Montez said. However, the investigation remains ongoing. Any victims or anyone with information can contact the Boulder County Sheriff's Office tip line at 303-441-3674.
CNET
05-05-2025
- Health
- CNET
A Cheesemonger Reveals: The Best Way to Store Your Cheese
Don't ditch that half-eaten block of cheese. By storing it the right way, you can keep any variety of cheese fresh and delicious for days and even weeks. To keep cheese tasting as good as the day you bought it, avoid plastic wrap or storage bags. These methods can starve cheese of the air it needs to breathe, and leave it tasting stale along with ruining the texture. If you want your cheese to taste as good as the day you first sliced it, it's time to store it like the pros do. To get the real scoop on cheese storage, I spoke with John Montez, a certified cheese professional and the education lead at New York's legendary Murray's Cheese. He broke down exactly how to treat your cheese right, no matter the type, so it stays flavorful and ready for your next snack attack. "Cheese is a preserved product," Montez said. "It's high in acid and salt and has a lot of the water removed compared to milk. So it's rare that you would ever have to throw out a piece of cheese." Cheese, in other words, is built to last; ergo, an investment worth having. With Montez's help, here's what you need to know about cheese to understand its aging potential and how to best cut and store your fancy cheese so you never have to throw it away. Cheese is a living thing A little extra mold on your cheese should not deter you from hanging onto it. Just scrape it off with a knife and carry on. Murray's Cheese Certain cheeses, like blue cheese, wear their mold more proudly than others, but it may be helpful to think of cheese as the controlled decay of milk and know that there's pretty much always mold involved regardless. The snowy-white rind of brie and other bloomy-rind cheeses are a type of mold, as is the mottled outer surface of a firmer cheese like Gruyere. Fear not. If you've ever taken a probiotic, you already inherently understand that not all microbes are bad. Read more: There's a Lot of Fake Parmesan Cheese Out There. Here's How to Tell This is all to say that, first of all, a little extra mold on your cheese shouldn't deter you from hanging on to it. "If you see it molds up a little bit, generally you can scrape off that mold and it's no problem," says Montez. Because of the lack of water content in cheese, food mold can't penetrate it very deeply like it would with many other food products. "Look out if it's black mold or something like that," he says, "but the thing is, it's rare that a piece of cheese becomes unsafe to eat. It's going to become unpalatable to you long before it's unsafe." Cut your cheese so it's easier to wrap Precise cuts that leave flat surfaces make it easier to wrap your cheese so it doesn't spoil. David Watsky/CNET Keeping the cheese palatable, then, is the real goal. How you store your cheese is going to have the biggest impact on its longevity -- but how, when and what you cut it with can also play a part in its ongoing flavor and texture success. Precise cuts that leave flat surfaces make it easier to wrap in the most effective manner, and keeping the cheese whole for as long as possible is also helpful to its longevity. "Minimizing the surface area (exposed to air) is going to prevent cheese from drying out or getting moldy," says Montez. "So, for example, if you're going to prep cheese ahead of time for a party, the longer you can leave it as a whole piece, the better," or if you're a habitual meal-prepper, resist the urge to cut up a whole chunk of cheese for easier access, and just cut as you go. As for making clean cuts, "you can get done pretty much any job you need to get done with a chef's knife," says Montez. "When it comes to softer cheeses, a skeleton knife is good to have as something that reduces the knife's drag, or a wire-based cheese harp which is used in a lot of cheese shops. Nowadays, you can even find cheese boards that have a built-in wire. These are really good for leaving as much of the rind intact on bloomy rind and other soft cheeses as you can." Wrap your cheese, but don't use plastic There is specialty cheese paper you can buy, but butcher or parchment paper will work just as well. David Watsky/CNET One of the two main goals when wrapping and storing cheese is to allow a little bit of airflow so that your fancy cheese can still breathe. "The main idea here is you don't want to wrap it in plastic," says Montez, "There are a lot of active microorganisms in cheese and you want to keep them alive by the time you're going to eat it." If you're wondering why then, was the wedge of precut cheese you bought from the grocer or cheese store wrapped in plastic, presumably by cheese professionals, the answer is marketing. "It's mostly for display purposes," says Montez, since you're not likely to buy what you can't see. "There are cheese shops where they exclusively wrap in paper, but that's rare. If you're a big shop that moves a lot of product, it's not a problem if you know if the cheese is wrapped in plastic for a couple of days, but beyond that, it can be bad for the cheese." You can extend the life of your artisanal cheeses by rewrapping them in paper after you bring them home. "Formaticum makes great cheese paper that is specially formulated to keep the outside from drying out while allowing the cheese to breathe," says Montez. "If you don't have cheese paper, wrapping it in wax paper, parchment paper, butcher paper or whatever you have is good." Formaticum makes excellent cheese storage bags and wrapping paper. Formaticum It can take some serious practice to achieve the crisp folds of experienced cheesemongers, think of your cheese as a little present (which it is, obviously), and wrap it as though you were using festive wrapping paper. "You want the paper making contact with the piece of cheese," says Montez, "so crease as you go, and make sure all of the faces of the cheese are contacting the paper in an even, flat way." If this seems at all intimidating, Formaticum also makes handy, cheese storage bags where no origami-level folding is required. How and where to store cheese so it lasts longer Cheese you intend to consume within a couple of days doesn't necessarily even need refrigeration. And real Parmigiano Reggiano never needs to see the inside of your fridge. David Watsky/CNET "What you're really trying to accomplish when you store cheese is keeping the cold air from the refrigerator from blowing on it, because that's going to cause it to dry out more quickly," says Montez. Wrapped cheeses should either go into a drawer within your fridge, into a corner where the fan doesn't entirely reach, or even in a small container with the lid cracked to keep air circulation available. Hard cheeses, or even some softer cheeses you intend to consume within a couple of days, don't necessarily even need refrigeration. You can simply seek out something to cover them such as a cheese dome, or for the truly committed, a cheese grotto. According to Montez: "Parmigiano Reggiano never needs to see your refrigerator. You can keep it pretty much indefinitely at room temperature." I guess that answers the question a user had on the r/AskCulinary subreddit about freezing cheese -- you can do it but you don't have to. For more information, here's how to tell which cheap wines are actually good and how much money you can save by shopping at Trader Joe's instead of the supermarket. FAQs Why don't I want to wrap my cheese in plastic? Cheese is a living organism -- wrapping it up in plastic kills those good microorganisms you want to keep propagating before you eat your wedge. Instead, package your cheese so that it has some airflow.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Up North residents hit by ice storm endure cold, power outages: 'How are we gonna manage?'
Elizabeth Montez, 44, lives in the rural outskirts of Harbor Springs. When severe ice storms swept through northern Michigan last month, she and her family hunkered down in a Traverse City hotel. When Montez returned to her home, "it was like driving into an apocalypse." Montez, a member of the Waganikising Odawa (Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians), told the Free Press she had been without power for about two weeks after the storms. She and her family — a husband and two children, ages six and 11 — finally received power back Saturday night. "We realized, like, oh my gosh, how are we gonna manage in this house that's 40 degrees with two little kids and stuff? So we bundled up," Montez said. "We all slept in one bed to keep each other warm and everything. It was really scary because we could still hear all of the trees falling all around." Montez had no power, water, or heat for nearly two weeks — and she couldn't work her remote job without internet and power. She has spent the month of April scrambling to keep her family warm while making sure she can keep her job. And she says she's not alone. As crews work to address the damage and reconnect residents to the power grid — which is operated in northern counties by Great Lakes Energy — rural citizens like Montez feel like they've been left behind in the aftermath of a storm that prompted a state of emergency declaration from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer doubled down Friday, requesting a Presidential Emergency Declaration following her White House visit with President Donald Trump. 'Approval of this request would bring critical federal resources to support local response operations that are still ongoing,' said Col. James F. Grady II, director of the Michigan State Police. Meredith Migizi's team at Miigwech Inc. in Alanson is on the ground addressing the emergency every day. To her, help can't come soon enough. Migizi's community center, Miigwech Inc., usually aims to serve the indigenous population in Emmet County. But Migizi, who herself is Wagankising Odawa, said she has been serving hundreds of people — indigenous or not — from half a dozen different counties across the state as people cope with the fallout. "We typically service indigenous folks, right?" Migizi said. "But anybody who walks through those doors, if they need something, we provide it." Migizi said she is still seeing life-or-death situations two weeks after the storm concluded. Recently, an elderly man has been using the electricity available at Miigwech to charge his wife's glucose monitor. "That's a life or death situation with his wife. I mean, those are the types of situations that people need to know about," Migizi said. She feels like her community up north — indigenous and nonindigenous alike — has been left behind. While power has been restored to suburban centers like Petoskey, rural residents at the top of the mitten continue to struggle without power. "You can definitely see the haves and have-nots of this situation," Migizi said. "Because when I drive into — to me personally — when I drive into Petoskey, it's like nothing ever happened and people are just cleaning their yards. Meanwhile, my neighbors are still without heat, water, and electricity." Montez said the same: "Everything was directed back to Petoskey, but it was the rural people who were most affected, and yet we had the least support out here." Migizi said everyone is affected, from rural residents to visitors who have summer homes up north. She worries that seasonal travelers may be shocked to see the idyllic landscape ravaged by widespead ecological damage. On Monday, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources told MLive that nearly 1 million acres of state forests have been damaged. "The Anishinaabe part of me is like, this is a bigger ecological issue that I don't think people are realizing," Migizi said. "Those folks coming up at the end of May, thinking that they can just open up their cottage, are in for a rude awakening." DNR Cleanup map: Thousands still without power in Michigan. Officials share resource links, cleanup map Outside of Montez's Emmet County home, a tree laid toppled on a powerline feeding into her house. She first reported the damaged line two or three days after returning home. Then, she reported it again. After a few days without the line being serviced, she reported it again. "I have this really damaged line that I've reported three times over 10 days at that point, and there's power coming to our meter, but our line is damaged," Montez said. Without a response from Great Lakes Energy, she called an electrician. "And the electrician was like, 'This is so dangerous, you guys. You know, this is how house fires start. You guys are in danger,'" Montez recalled. It was only after the electrician sent a "strongly worded email" to Great Lakes Energy that the fire hazard was fixed. "At that point, we were 10 days into it, they sent someone out immediately," Montez said. "But it had been 10 days and I had reported it three times; no one had bothered to come disconnect this really dangerous line." Migizi said stories like Montez' are common in her community. Support from the county and the state has been hard to come by, and the communication has been difficult to understand. "And it's bad enough that people are without power and their homes are destroyed, but then the people that are supposed to be helping them don't even know what's going on," Migizi said. Great Lakes Energy's online outage map indicates there are still nearly 2,000 people without power in their service area — with a majority of outages in Otsego, Charlevoix, Montmorency and Emmet counties. Outages are down substantially from reports last week, which indicated 1,700 homes were without power in Emmet County on Friday. In a video address posted to YouTube Thursday, President and CEO of Great Lakes Energy Shaun Lamp said he expected service to be restored to a majority of customers soon. "The damage caused by this storm is unprecedented. Please understand with damage of this scale what we share today may change," Lamp said. "The situation is shifting hour by hour as new damage continues to be uncovered as we work in the more remote areas." Great Lakes Energy did not respond to Free Press requests for comment. As power trickles back to rural communities up North, Migizi is frustrated with the strain the storm has put on her community, but she is willing to do what it takes to help people get by. Donations of any kind — either in the form of gas cards so people can stay warm in their car or simple necessities, like menstrual products — can be sent online through a Help Link or in person. They are necessary and appreciated, Migizi said. "It may seem silly, but I'll take hard donations at this point if it means we can get it into the hands of our community," Migizi said. Serving her community through a crisis is all in the name, she said. "Miigwech (Incorporated) is called Miigwech because it literally means 'I have what I need,'" Migizi said. "And then in modern times, it means 'thank you.' There's a reason that we're called Miigwech, and anybody that comes through that door, I'm hoping that they're leaving saying Miigwech because at least they have what they need." Contact Liam Rappleye: LRappleye@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Northern Michigan residents still without power weeks after ice storm
