Happy Friday the 13th — we’re back with more Hot Bones and lots of talismans to keep us all safe. Cville favorites include the fresh air amulet to ward off any unlucky red lights on 29, the composting charm to prevent Bodo’s from running out of bagels right as you arrive, and the renewable power rune to prevent data centers from setting up shop around here.

Also, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk works wonders for reducing unbearable construction traffic.

Hot Bones is a free weekly newsletter that helps you hit the Climate Trifecta: live healthier, save money, and help the planet.

It’s written by me, Charlotte Salley (former Morning Brew, currently at The Cool Down), and the newsletter is based in Charlottesville, VA. I’m grateful you’re here.

If someone forwarded you this email, click here to sign up for next week.

Do one long thumb scroll for more Cville-specific updates like local events, cool houses, and pets to adopt.

🐶 Speaking of pets: Jeanie! This girlie knows that a long walk is great, but driving home with the windows down and your snout out the window is even better (coonhound mix, 5 years old, 60 lbs).

🐱 And a mystery cat named Boo Berry, who will happily walk through your beautifully arranged brunch spread to lay in the perfect sun spot on the kitchen table.

In the early 2000s, the biggest player in the plant-based, non-dairy cheese market was a brand called VeganRella. The early 2000s were also when I discovered I had a severe dairy allergy. So you’d assume that I — along with the roughly 6 million other Americans who are allergic to milk — would be delighted that VeganRella existed. But you probably didn’t have to eat VeganRella.

The company stuck around for nearly two decades but went out with a whimper in 2010, which was not the noise I made when confronted with their alternative cheese specimens. Each block of “cheese” came in heavy plastic packaging, and once you unwrapped it, you realized that plastic was the only thing holding it up structurally. It then became a gooey blob, somehow permanently wet and still always unmeltable.

If you tasted it, you’d be determined to will your way out of your dairy allergy.

Bad vegan cheese meant I gave up on all alternative cheese for a long time. It just wasn’t worth the trouble.

But fast forward to the 2020s, and you’ll see a science-backed miracle has happened. An alt cheese revolution has taken place. God, I love the new stuff.

How has cheese science progressed so fast? Well, for one thing, I’m fairly certain that there’s a new rule where the people who are creating it also have to eat it.

Also, broadly speaking, they’re taking a page out of the traditional cheese-making book and applying those techniques to plant-based milk options. And these alt cheese gurus have also decided that this go round they’ll avoid the starches, fillers, oils, etc that Alt Cheese V1 relied on (these were what made you think you were chewing Silly Putty).

The new vegan innovations are great for many reasons, particularly for me because I can eat the cheese, enjoy it, and not die.

Bonus: Alt cheese reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to dairy cheese, because there aren’t any cows to deal with now (some dairy cheeses can actually have a worse climate impact than chicken or even pork production, according to coverage by the Times).

These days, as you may have noticed, hundreds of vegan cheese options are available at your local grocery store, from cream cheeses and parmesans to bries, fetas, ricottas, cheddars, and, of course, lotsa vegan ’rellas.

It’s been a while since our last Hot Bones experiment, and vegan cheese is up.

Last weekend, G and I went out to my parents in the country, and we brought a few friends. With a critical mass of taste testers right at my fingertips, I figured sampling a few hors d’oeuvres “cheeses” would be easy and fun.

Meet your contestants

→ Treeline’s French-Style Cashew Cheese: Creamy Scallion

→ Nuts for Cheese’s Roasted Red Pepper Creamy Cashew Dip

→ Treeline’s French-Style Cashew Cheese: Caramelized Onion

→ Babybel’s Plant-Based Fiery Hot Snacks

→ Secret Bonus

Unfortunately, what I didn’t realize about running a Hot Bones experiment during cocktail hour is that all these people with smart opinions and good taste would want to talk with each other. They’d want to analyze their days and their impressions and their feelings. They’d want to listen and make jokes. They’d want to communicate with each other. This was super annoying. We needed to focus on the cheese experiment.

Meanwhile, resident dogs Nixie and Frannie were underfoot and either roughhousing with each other or staring at whoever looked like the weakest human who’d be willing to feed them early.

“Nixie, that’s enough,” I’d say as she knocked into my knees again. “Frannie, that’s enough. Break it up.”

“I’m going to put these wine glasses in the center of the table,” my friend Hannah said. “The dog tails.”

Nixie somehow now had Frannie’s head halfway in her mouth, and Frannie was delighted. The wine glasses were inches away.

“Ugh, this is a disaster,” I whispered into my glass.

Finally, I sequestered the dogs in a corner, spread cashew cheese on crackers, and handed them out to the group for a first round test.

And then someone else walked in the door — followed by a chorus of barks to wake the VeganRella ghosts — and we were back to square one.

After an hour of this agony, I cornered G and got a lightning round of cheese opinions. And that’s why being married is the best.

Here’s the breakdown.

Treeline’s French-Style Cashew Cheese: Creamy Scallion

Nuts for Cheese’s Roasted Red Pepper Creamy Cashew Dip

Babybel’s Plant-Based Fiery Hot Snacks

Treeline French-Style Cashew Cheese: Caramelized Onion

Flash test done, we moved on to regular cheese (humans) and kibble (dogs).

I felt like G and I salvaged the charcuterie board cheese experiment as best we could, but something still didn’t feel right. I needed at least one more cheese to round out this wheel. And I needed to do it alone, quietly.

So a few days ago, I stopped by Botanical on the mall, which sells a few different types of Rebel Cheese. I bought the cave aged brie, drove home, and put some crackers on a plate to finish this quest once and for all.

💰 Cost: 19 dollars! I’ve never spent so much on cheese before. Feels great to be an expensive girlie.

🧑‍🍳 Made with: Omg, cashews

🧨 Hot takes: Tangy but not too spicy or salty. Good! The color is a little too corporate eraser, but is cheese ever a particularly pleasant color?

➕ Unfortunately, this solo experiment quickly made me realize I lost my cheese-tasting muscles years ago, so I have little to provide in the way of comparisons to “the real thing.” I think it tasted like regular brie? The rind was just as off-putting as I find it looks on regular brie, if that helps at all.

The good news, though, is that I could judge this on taste alone, rather than be distracted with a comparison mindset. Next time I want to blow through $20 without blinking, I’m going to try the tomato herb version.

And if you’ve tried other vegan cheeses worthy of someone’s next cocktail appetizer, hit reply to share. If you say VeganRella, though, we’re going to have a problem.

Last week’s edition was all about the magic of beekeeping, and it was a really fun one to write. I did struggle, though, to find the right angle, because the main thing I took away from my bee research was just how much there is to know about bees.

It’d be impossible to tell you everything I now love about Bee World. Consequently, I didn’t tease out the contradiction between bee keeping and bee conservation, which a Hot Bones reader pointed out to me on the side last weekend.

Beekeepers take care of honey bees, mainly Apis mellifera, a variety that’s actually not native to North America. These honey bees aren’t great at sharing their toys, which means the actual native bees (which are better at pollinating native plants) are getting nudged out.

In fact, Allison Wickman, our bee lady and founder of Siller Pollinator Co, was quick to mention that “beginning beekeeping isn’t necessarily the most effective way to ‘save the bees.’”

→ Instead, planting native flowers (or any flowers instead of a uniform grass lawn) is the No. 1 way to help, she said.

→ Another habitat restoration suggestion: Resisting the almost primal Type A urge to rake your entire backyard this fall. Leaving leaf piles helps provide nesting sites for native bees in their egg and larvae stages this winter (most don’t live in hives).

→ Last suggestion: The National Wildlife Federation has thoughts on how to plant pollinator gardens in small spaces like rooftops or apartment balconies.

Don’t let these ideas stop you from quitting corporate America to live a tranquil beekeeper’s life of hums and honey. Just know that there are also really effective ways to help native bees thrive right from your garden.

🎉 Festival of the week: Cville Community Bikes is celebrating its 25th (!) anniversary this Sunday from 6 to 9pm at their shop off Preston (next to Cou Cou Rachou). Come hang and show your support for the org that’s been getting more people on bikes for nearly three decades.

🍷 Meanwhile, earlier that day: There’s a big natural wine fair happening in Richmond, with tastings from over 30 producers. If you’re interested in the minimal intervention winemaking process, or you just like swirling wine in long-stemmed glasses, this could be fun.

🏠 Historic house of the week: 1890s clapboard farmhouse with all your usual fixins, including a massive front porch, wood stove in the living room, and a potting shed, chicken coop, and barn in the back (3 beds, 3 baths in Stanardsville for $489k).

🏡 Cool rental of the week: Historic charmer with teeny tiny third story windows, lots of natural light, hardwood floors, and a yard for Jeanie (5 beds, 2 baths for $2,650/month in Fredericksburg). Walkable to the river, downtown, and Mary Washington.

⚡ If your electric bill shocks you these days: Rally with the C3 team and other concerned Virginians to oppose the NextEra-Dominion merger. The protest starts at 9am outside the SCC building in Richmond, and there’s a free bus from Cville to get there (when you click the Cville option, Sabdbd from C3 will get in touch with you). More info on the proposed merger is here, too.

📚 Long read of the week: Longtime HB readers know I’m a huge Norman Maclean fan, so this article on a proposed data center on the Blackfoot River (where A River Runs Through It takes place) struck a chord. Here’s what the local community did to stop it.

🚴 Big bike sale: Blue Ridge Cyclery is having a giant moving sale at their Hollymead location this Friday through Sunday, as they prep to consolidate operations at their downtown Cville location.

🍇 Speaking of sales: Common Wealth Crush’s 15% off all local wine is live until November 30, with code HOTBONES. Free local dropoff or national shipping should set you up for Tgiving.

🎂 And most important of all this week: A very very happy birthday to the one and only Bird Woman this Sunday!

Have an event or rec you’d like to share? Hiring? Interested in advertising? Share any and all info here.

💼 Cville job of the week: Trails and Natural Lands Technician at Monticello (develop and maintain the Saunders-Monticello Trail among other natural areas, $18.50/hour).

💾 Remote job: Social Audience Producer at the independent climate media org Grist ($80k – $90k). Reach out to Tory Stephens, [email protected].

⛰️ Get out of town job: Senior Communications Specialist at the Colorado River District ($90k – $105k in Glenwood Springs, CO).

🌓 Get out of orbit job: Astronaut at NASA (deadline is December 3, and fair warning, according to USAJobs, extensive travel is required).