Tillamook

Today we woke up in the state forest and had a quick breakfast of acorn bread topped with assorted goodies—almond butter with flax seed from the dumpster, honey from Denise’s farm, blueberry jam and apple butter made from rescued and foraged fruit that I canned prior to our departure.  Being a lover of factory tours and learning how everyday products are made, we decided to visit the Tillamook cheese factory.  It’s a farmer-owned coop, and they’re famous for their colorful and flavorful block-style cheeses.  We weren’t expecting to be impressed, but a tour sounded like fun.  On our way in, I noticed most of the people exiting were chowing down on ice cream cones, so despite the rainy weather Andre suggested we buy one.  It’s a treat to buy food, so we vote with our dollars carefully.  I noticed the painted murals on the walls depicting gallons of the various flavors, labeled clearly with the words “natural and artificially flavored” in large font.  Hmm… the bright hues—greens, yellows, oranges—not found in nature gave us another tip that I might not want to vote for this one.  We asked whether they had any all natural varieties, and the young man behind the counter handed us a very large binder full of nutritional information for each flavor they made.  I was surprised to see the list of ingredients, although I suppose I shouldn’t have been so naïve.  FDA regulated colors, corn syrup, artificial flavorings, preservatives… ice cream is cream, eggs, sugar, and fruit or spices.  Why the laundry list of ingredients I couldn’t pronounce from a farmer owned coop?  We skipped the ice cream and took the self-guided tour.  Again, more disappointment.  I knew we weren’t visiting an artisan farm, but to see the waste inside the factory was really disheartening.  Plastic bits of wrapper covered the floor that assembly line robots and people (it was hard to distinguish between the two) worked on.  We learned that cows can drink up to 50 gallons of water per day.  We also ate more free samples of cheese than either of us would have preferred. Foraging makes us hungry, especially for junk food.  Evolution kicks in and salt and sugar become our goal.  It wasn’t like we gorged ourselves, but the cheese wasn’t so good—even just a couple of bites would have been enough of this rubber-like product.  They even slap extra slices onto the blocks to make weight and the slices just fuse to the block when it gets heat wrapped—it’s not cheese, it’s jello.  It’s what American’s like.  It’s what we’re used to.  Like white bread and jelly that contains more sugar and pectin than real fruit.  It’s what’s cheap.  It’s also pretty tasty, especially when you don’t think of it as cheese but rather a cheese-like product.

After our tour, we drove to a nearby forest and asked the rangers where we could find some old growth forest.  We ended up camping out in the Suislaw National Forest just outside Hebo.  After over an hour of searching for mushrooms, to no avail, we hopped in the car to look for a nice spot to sleep out.  On the drive, I spotted something white in a tree stump and yelled for Andre to pull over.  My wish from earlier came true—a huge cauliflower mushroom weighing in at 2 pounds.  It was enough to make us decide to camp here for the night, looking forward to searching the hills tomorrow, hopefully less our rain gear.  We celebrated with Mexican fiesta night.  I made a big pot of black beans and chili peppers, sautéed a pan of squash with onions and greens, chopped red cabbage and spiced it with apple cider vinegar, and topped our corn tacos with freshly made salsa and farm fresh eggs (from the dumpster).  Andre made vodka soaked marshmallow flambé treats topped with dulce de leche from Argentina (a gift from Rich) for dessert, which he served on graham crackers left over from our camping trip with my brother back in St. Louis.  We couldn’t do them on the fire, since we were stuck in the bus—it’s raining again, and again, and again.  We’re both looking forward to some sunshine!