They are trying to bankrupt me.

Here are the facts. On Wednesday, a new Whole Foods opened in the Denny Triangle neighborhood, or whatever they are calling it these days. Laurie and Iris and I went to check it out yesterday. The bakery is peculiarly devoid of morning rolls and carmelitas, and they’ve deemphasized the produce section in favor of an astonishing amount of prepared foods. (The store serves a large hotel/condo complex; if you live there, you can have stuff delivered.) There are at least four cafes inside: an Asian counter with sushi and bento boxes; a sandwich and hot foods counter; an espresso bar; and the most unusual one, a fish cafe that will grill to order (at no charge) any fish you buy in the seafood department. The fish cafe is called something weird like “Smokefish,” although I think that’s not quite it.

None of these things particularly interest me, but this location does have the typically impressive sausage display, and they sell my favorite kind of herbal tea: Celestial Seasonings Tummy Mint, formerly known as Grandma’s Tummy. It’s a blend of fennel and chamomile. People who are allergic to the daisy family, according to the label, should not drink this tea. And they sell unsweetened chocolate, which none of the other stores in my neighborhood sell, unless you consider Baker’s brand to be chocolate.

The new Whole Foods is a five minute bus ride from home on the number 8. The catch is that the number 8 only runs every half hour. So I’m relatively safe from impetuous trips to the store for things like an $8 chocolate bar.

For now. The problem is, on Tuesday, voters approved King County Proposition 2, which will increase bus service throughout the county. One of the buses set for more frequent service? The number 8.

Even worse, the new tax doesn’t start until June, but as a big sloppy kiss to voters, increased service on certain routes will begin in February, including, well, you know.

I am doomed. Meet me at Smokefiche.

One of my favorite sessions at Worlds of Flavor was the roasting class, featuring roast suckling pig and roast baby lamb.

The lamb was cooked by Marco Antonio García. He gestured at the lamb and insisted that you cannot get lamb so young anywhere in the United States, only in Spain. I asked where the lamb we were eating came from.

“California,” he said through his translator. “But it is the youngest lamb *ever* slaughtered in California.” Moderator Joyce Goldstein was shaking her head and trying not to laugh. The lamb was admittedly delicious.

But the suckling pig was even better. It was cooked by Cándido López Cuerdo of Meson de Candido restaurant in Segovia. As he had demonstrated before the whole assembly, the pig was tender enough to slice with the rim of a dinner plate. It was the most tender and least fatty roast pork I’ve ever had. Thomas Keller was at the session, too. “I’m not shy,” he said, brushing past me to take seconds.

The chef gave out a color brochure for his restaurant, which is a 100-year-old inn. This is the family patriarch and proprietor. I swear this is a picture of a guy living today, not a renaissance painting.

It’s been an Italian sort of day, which means I affected an effortlessly elegant look and bribed a public official.

Okay, it means I ate a bunch of Italian food. For lunch I grabbed a panini from Delaurenti, whose sandwiches are austere in conception and hugely appealing. I had the Misto, with salami, mortadella, Asiago, and Mama Lil’s peppers. There’s another one on long skinny bread with prosciutto di Parma, arugula, and I think Parmigiano. And several more in the same vein. $5.50 and highly recommended.

Then I rushed home to start preparing the *stracotto,* which is nothing more or less than Italian pot roast, made with tomatoes and red wine and often mushrooms. I don’t like stewed mushrooms so I sauteed them separately with fennel and red onion. I plated it up (actually big-bowled it up) as follows:

* polenta
* meat
* ladle of highly reduced sauce
* vegetable saute on top

A delicious mess.

The stracotto recipe I used was from Cook’s Illustrated. There is something funny about the CI pot roast recipe and its variations:

> Once in a while in the test kitchen, we happen on a true “Eureka!” moment, when a chance test result leads to a breakthrough cooking technique. Some days before, we had forgotten to remove one of the roasts from the oven, allowing it to cook an hour longer than intended. Racing to the kitchen with an instant-read thermometer, we found the internal temperature of the roast was still 210 degrees, but the meat had a substantially different appearance and texture. The roast was so tender that it was starting to separate along its muscle lines. A fork poked in to the meat met with no resistance and nearly disappeared into the flesh….

> We “overcooked” several more roasts. Each had the same great texture. The conclusion? Not only do you have to cook stracotto until it reaches 210 degrees internally, but the meat has to remain at that temperature for a full hour. In other words, cook the stracotto until it’s done–and then keep on cooking!

So this breakthrough cooking technique is, uh, cooking the pot roast until it’s very tender. Standing on the shoulders (and bowtie) of Christopher Kimball, have discovered another breakthrough cooking technique. When heating up a slice of bread, allow it to continue heating until it is actually browned on both sides. Alert the media.

The punchline is that “stracotto” is Italian for “overcooked.”

Here’s the good news: Harold McGee has a blog.

Here’s the bad news: if you read, say, Nina Planck’s Good Food, and got the idea that grass-fed beef is some kind of omega-3-laden health food, McGee is here to school you.

> The long-chain omega-3s in grassfed beef are present at around 20 milligrams per 100 grams (about a quarter-pound) of beef. The levels in farmed salmon are around 3 grams per 100 grams of fish: more than a hundredfold higher. Even salmon raised experimentally on vegetable oil for three-quarters of their life (to begin to address the issue of sustainability) have 1 gram of omega-3s per 100 grams fish: 50 times more than grass-fed beef. These are huge differences!

In fact, so big that the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in grass-fed beef is nutritionally negligible. I love a good debunking. Oh, also, farmed salmon has more omega-3s than wild salmon.

McGee is quick to point out that this doesn’t make grass-fed beef bad or farmed salmon good:

> Of course this is just one small piece of a large and complicated picture. There is plenty to be said in favor of grass-fed beef, plenty of problems with salmon aquaculture, and there’s more to a healthy diet than omega-3s.

Hmm, it’s been too long since I’ve had a Skagit River Ranch steak for lunch.

Ever since Blue Willow Tea Room closed a couple of years ago, I’ve been hoping for a new teahouse in my neighborhood. Now I’m sitting in one. Remedy Tea opened yesterday and serves almost 150 teas. Most of these are flavored teas, which don’t really interest me, but I’m drinking a cup of Nilgiri black tea from India, which is great and perfectly brewed, thanks to the timer they put on my tray. There are also desserts from Sue McCown and strong, fast wireless. Four whole blocks from home. And they’re playing Guided by Voices.

You can get tea (all organic) by the cup, small pot, large pot, or leaves to take home. A full menu features sandwiches, salads, and breakfast.

Remedy is kind of hidden half a floor below street level, but it’s plenty light. I’m hoping they catch some Victrola overflow.

**Remedy Teas**
Corner of 15th Ave E and Harrison
Mon-Thu: 7am-10pm
Fri-Sat: 7am-11pm
Sun: TBD