"Origin of The Species, Etal"

Flirtatious: "How'd you like to try some of my supplements?"

Real Mood?  Contorted

Prediction: Somebody will try to feed a dairy cow soybeans so that body can claim his cow gives organic soy milk.

For the record you are looking at a manufacturer of Tillamook Cheese.

I don't know why. Maybe it's just because I need to keep my mind busy.  I like to discover where things come from.   Problem is evolution and transportation makes it almost impossible to get a straight answer. It seems nothing is ever what it used to be, or where it used to be. Take plants for instance. Please!

I got interested in this when my friend Jim Weis and I were doing a story on all these yellow flowering plants along the highways. Jim has a botany or biology or earth science or something like that degree. He believes, and I concur at the time, the plants must be mustard.  There was enough of them out there to turn the whole world on to "Grey Poupon."

Well here is sort of the lecture I get from Jim. "You hear a lot of talk about the spread of noxious weeds across large regions of the country. They are called invader species. Most of them come from Europe brought over to the Americas by Lief Erikson and Chris Columbus .  Well they plant some of these things on the East Coast and they take over land that used to host other hardy plants.  Cattle grazing and road building make the dirt weak and penetrable." And its not just the weeds, he tells me. You name the east coast plant and it pretty much hung out with the Horace Greeley "Go West Young Man" crowd. The short course summation might be that "Grey Poupon" may very well have originated in France.

So we are driving around in Oregon and come upon the town of Tillamook. Now isn't there a cheese named Tillamook? I wonder if there is any connection? Duh! The sign says, "Tillamook Cheese Visitor Center, One Mile Ahead." So this is where Tillamook cheese comes from.  We and about 5 thousand other non-Oregonians stop to answer the question, "Where does Tillamook Cheese come from."

Inside the plant there are all these great displays you can't get to. You can't get to them because they are blocked by hoards of tourists. The tourists are lined up to get the free goody bag of cheese samples. Or they are lined up to buy Tillamook Ice Cream in cones. I didn't know it existed. Theydon't sell it in this region of the country. What's up with that?

We can't get to the displays so we wrap up our visit by watching some men in hairnets stir something in this huge metal vat. Earlier one might have assumed it was milk being processed into cheese. Now one has to guess. Is it beingprocessed into cheese?  Or is it being processed into Ice Cream? Since we can't get to the displays we may never answer that question.

But come on. We know this isn't THE source of Tillamook cheese or Ice Cream.  The source is a compilation of the daily giving of nearly four hundred thousand dairy cows we see in this valley. (Yes I counted them. If they trusted me to estimate crowd sizes as a reporter, you can trust me to estimate the number of "Bossies" along side the road.)

I'll be loose with my attribution here. Please don't sue me.  Someone says, "You Are What You Eat."

So I'm assuming these cows are pretty much munchin' on the same invader species to produce the milk that makes Tillamook. So I'm thinkin', as I look at "Bossie's" utter, I've pretty much taken us to the source. But then I look up to see this truck cruise by with a sign I must paraphrase. "Tillamook Cattle Food Supplement."

So now I gotta track down where all the ingredients in the supplement come from? Probably oringally came from that same region in France that grows mustard plants for the Grey Poupon.

Did I tell you that those mustard plants along the highway turned out to be Sweet Clover?  My understanding is one of  the best places to find mustard plants in this country is an agricultural area in Central Oregon.  Is there mustard in Tillamook Cheese? I like mustard on my Tillamook. How about you? In fact I like mustard on just about everything. I really haven't tried it with Ice Cream.  Yet!

I just did a minimal amount of research to find out Tillamook cheese is owned by the dairy farmers themselves. I wonder how many of them speak French? 

I just read the Grey Poupon label. It's distributed by Kraft out of Elgin, Illinois. But Kraft is quick to note it's mustard is based on the original French recipe. Pardon my "French" but what the hell does that mean? These guys probably make their mustard with Sweet Clover.