Normally I am a major cheese booster. The [Seattle Cheese Festival](http://www.seattlecheesefestival.com/) is coming up, and I’m going to be hanging out in Artisanal Alley, scarfing down as much as they’ll allow.

Cheese is so powerful, however, that when you cook with it, it can snuff out other flavors. This is why Italian cookbooks are always warning against the overuse of Parmesan. There’s a series of water conservation bus ads in Seattle, one of which says: OVERWATERING DROWNS PLANTS. The Parmesan principle is similar. Naturally, I disregard this principle all the time, and so does Iris, who has recently learned how to grate her own Parmesan onto her pasta. I encourage this, because it’s the only nonmelted cheese she likes.

Dinner on Monday really brought home how a carpet of cheese can sweep flavor under the rug. We often make chicken enchiladas with red chile sauce, the classic American kind with lots of chili powder and cheddar. We all love them, but on Monday, inspired by Rick Bayless’s awesome book Mexican Everyday, I made a completely different kind of enchilada. These were *enchiladas verdes*, made with tomatillo sauce and filled with spinach, mushrooms, red onions, and (because I had some left over from the endive adventure) Westphalian ham. Instead of rolling the enchiladas and baking them, these enchiladas are dipped in sauce, rolled, further sauced, and served immediately on heated plates. Bayless calls for some crumbles of *queso seco*, but I didn’t have any, so I just left off the cheese and garnished with some raw red onion.

These are the best enchiladas I’ve ever had. (Maybe tied with the green chile chicken enchiladas at Barbacoa.) Even beyond the fact that anything with tomatillos is good, these were a brilliant synthesis of flavors, and we all gobbled them.

Today I was down at Pike Place Market in search of ramps (I found them), and I stopped at the Mexican grocery and bought some *queso seco*. I’ll never learn.

I’ve made no secret of my love of the farmers market and of local food in general. So when I went to see Michael Pollan read on Friday night and he said pretty much the same thing, why did it make me uneasy? It’s probably because of the chocolate factory.

Pollan is the author of The Botany of Desire and the new book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. _The Botany of Desire_ is a great book about how plants have used humans–not consciously, of course–to propagate the plant genes by stumbling upon features that humans find highly desirable. (One of the plants Pollan explores is _Cannabis sativa_, and he does hands-on research in Amsterdam.)

His new book, which I haven’t read yet, explores three aspects of the food chain: the industrial, organic, and hunter-gatherer. An excerpt, about Pollan going boar hunting, appeared recently in the New York Times Magazine (it’s now in the TimesSelect ghetto).

As I understood Pollan’s gist, he would have us abandon industrial food production in favor of small organic farms and cooking with whole foods. I’m sure that’s an oversimplification, but that’s how it sounded.

The problems with industrial food have been so often recounted that there’s no need for me to repeat them here, but just to take a stab at it: soil erosion, eutrophication of water, factory farm animals living in misery and squalor, dangerous reliance on monocultures, antibiotic resistance, vegetables devoid of vitamins and minerals, and bland food.

All of these problems are absolutely real. I have a degree in ecology, and I consider myself an environmentalist. Where I part ways with Pollan–well, let’s get back to the chocolate factory.

In the current (May) issue of Seattle Magazine, I have an article about [Theo Chocolate](http://www.theochocolate.com/), a new chocolate factory in Fremont. A new chocolate factory is not a common thing. There are less than two dozen chocolate factories in the US, and most of them are operated by huge conglomerates like Hershey and Nestle. Theo is aiming to be the greenest chocolate producer around–all of their beans are organic and fair trade. Also, they painted their machinery green. It’s pretty awesome. I got free samples. (Sadly, the article isn’t online, but I’ll put it up as soon as my contract allows.)

If you go to an artisan bakery, you’ll see people forming loaves by hand, maintaining buckets of sourdough starter, and basically doing things exactly how they were done five hundred years ago, but with larger ovens and electric mixers. Chocolate isn’t like that. Making chocolate bars is a truly industrial process. (It’s possible to do it by hand, but it’s absurdly labor-intensive. Scharffen-Berger has a handmade three-ounce bar that sells for $8.) Sure, Theo is my local chocolate factory, so in that sense it’s local food, but the beans come from half a dozen tropical countries around the globe. Even if they were making the chocolate by hand, they’d be relying on the shipping industry.

> Likewise, I wish Pollan would stick his neck out and be more prescriptive about how we might realistically address our national eating disorder. We can’t all go off the grid like Salatin, nor can we just wish away 200 years of industrialization. So what to do? Is the ever-growing organic-food industry already on the right path? Or is more radical action needed?

That’s what the New York Times Book Review said, and it’s my critique of Pollan’s talk in a nutshell. On the one hand, you have a Valrhona Le Noir Amer 71% bar. On the other, high-fructose corn syrup. Both are products of the industrial food chain. If I have to give up the Valrhona to get rid of the HFCS, well, forget it.

My hunch is that Pollan’s critique begins with aesthetics. There’s nothing wrong with aesthetics–I believe beautiful and delicious things have value for no other reason than their beautiful deliciousness. But everyone wants to bolster their aesthetic argument with something meatier. A pasture full of contented cows is beautiful. Organic heirloom tomatoes are delicious. A McDonald’s drive-thru is ugly, and supermarket tomatoes are nasty. It’s very easy to jump from there to saying that McDonald’s and supermarket tomatoes are not only unwholesome but (the most damning word of the moment) *unsustainable*.

Maybe they are. But I don’t think you can win this way. I don’t shop at the farmers market because the farmers are nice. I shop at the farmers market because *that’s where the best food is*. And I usually stop at the supermarket on the same trip.

That’s the direction I think we’re headed in: not a wholesale abandonment of industrial food, but more and more a mixture of industrial and artisanal, local and global food. I think it’s at least theoretically possible to put those things in healthy balance.

Of course, that could be the Valrhona bar talking.

This week in my food writing class I brought in ten potential trail mix ingredients and had the students divide into teams and create their own trail mix, then write a recipe. I deliberately brought along some weird-ass ingredients, mostly from Trader Joe’s.

The students kindly gave me permission to share their recipes. Here’s what they came up with. Oh, avellanas are apparently Chilean hazelnuts. They’re seriously crunchy.

**EXOTIC NOSH**
by Rose and Aisha

*When backpacking in your neighborhood or an exotic land, this mix will revitalize your chi! Young coconut can be replaced with shredded (dried) coconut!*

1/4 cup almonds
3/4 cup peanuts
1/2 cup young coconut chunks
1/4 cup tamari cashews

Combine ingredients in bowl and hand mix. Note: Make in a Ziploc bag for easy shaking access.

**TRAIL MIX FOR MASOCHISTS AND THOSE WITHOUT TASTE BUDS:
An adventurous recipe**
by Dave, Nick, and Adrian

*This recipe is not quite as bad as the title suggests. This recipe tends to include many spicy ingredients such as wasabi peas. Serve to people who you know.*

2 palmfuls wasabi peas
1 handful rice crackers
5 of the spicy crackers (white ones)
3 tablespoons peanuts (salted or other)
1 tablespoon almonds

Combine in bowl and hand toss.

**POOL-MIX**
by Chloë and Myell

*It tastes good, has a sweet, salty, and spicy taste. Good to eat while watching a movie.*

1/4 avellanas (or substitute hazelnuts)
3/4 cup coconut
1/8 cup yogurt raisins (or substitute chocolate covered raisins)
1/4 cup peanuts
1/8 cashews
1/4 cup almonds
1 teaspoon salt-chile mangoes

1. Mix items except for mangoes in plastic bowl.

2. Dice mangoes into small pieces.

3. Mix mangoes and other mixture together.

On Monday I was downtown shopping for a new yo-yo (I’m not really any good with a yo-yo, but I wanted to impress Iris with my three yo-yo tricks). I was planning on lunch at Takohachi, which I’ve been meaning to post about for ages, but on the way there I passed by [Tat’s Delicatessen](http://www.tatsdeli.com/) (WARNING: web site has audio).

I’d walked by Tat’s before, but always at the wrong time. There are a few Philly cheesesteak places in town, and I’d been to a couple of them and thought they were fine. The cheesesteak has to be one of the most likable foods there is–I mean, it’s hot meat and cheese on a roll. The sandwich I got, though, totally blew away any cheesesteak I’ve had before (I’ve never had one in Philadelphia). It was fantastically juicy, with a roll that was just crispy enough to hold together, and the salt level was right. It had some pickled hot peppers and fresh sweet peppers, and onions, and white American cheese. Next time I’ll go all the way and get Cheez Whiz.

Now, Tat’s has been reviewed by various local media, including the Times and P-I, so I’m not breaking any news here. In fact, I’m probably the last person in town to try it. I always feel silly when I try to talk up a place like that, as if I were saying, “You’ve got to try this restaurant I discovered–it’s called Canlis!”

Recently, though I had an experience that put this in perspective. I was listening to [KEXP](http://www.kexp.org/), and I heard this song that totally grabbed me. It had loud guitars, a great singalong chorus, and vocals that were kind of familiar. I waited for the DJ to announce it, and, well, it was the new Morrissey single.

So I bought the record. Why not? Turns out Morrissey is as easy to like as a cheesesteak.

**Tat’s Delicatessen**
115 Occidental Ave S
Seattle WA 98104
(206) 264-8287
Mon-Fri: 7am-4pm

My friend Stacy was looking at the Upcoming Dinners, and she asked me whether we eat any vegetables. (She didn’t mean it as an accusation.) I said, first of all, that I wasn’t always mentioning vegetable sides, but there’s more to the story than that.

This year, we’ll be eating tons of vegetables from May 14 to November 19, and very few vegetables the rest of the year. Those are the opening and closing dates of our neighborhood farmers market. It’s not that I’m dogmatic about local ingredients–since I love to cook Thai food, how could I be? But for all the usual reasons, the produce at the farmers market inspires me to take it home in a way supermarket produce never does. It challenges me.

In the winter, we eat broccoli, kale, potatoes, and frozen brussels sprouts and peas. That’s about it. The other night I did a chicken stir-fry with bok choy, and Iris loved the stems. But yes, there are many nights when we eat a main dish with with some canned tomatoes in it, and that’s our vegetable for the evening. (Not that there’s anything wrong with canned tomatoes.)

I’m not sure what a nutritionist would say about a diet that includes far more than the recommended amount of vegetables for half the year and far less for the rest. Laurie pointed out that this is just how people ate in the good old days before refrigeration and long-distance trucking. Of course, is the good old days, people were always getting pellagra, beriberi, scurvy, shingles, the consumption, and rickets.

Man, I can’t wait until May 14, if for no other reason than to cure this touch of scurvy.