"Cheeses They Pleases"

What do these names have in common: Sartori, Zola, Hervé Mons? No, they're not surrogates for Rick Santorum, Hermann Cain, or Mike Huckabee, they're candidates for Commander-in-Cheese, a light-hearted promotion by the local Metropolitan Market chain of supermarkets that will convince you that cheese is essential to a functioning democracy.

Ballots in the stores. Details online and on Facebook. Events this past weekend and throughout the coming week. Zola is sponsoring a bike giveaway: prizes for the five best "Odes to Cheese."

I've sent in my entry:

"CHEESES: THEY PLEASES"

Nutty or creamy, tangy or mild
Cheeses they pleases both parent and child

Flavors that rank from the tame to the wild
Cheeses they pleases both parent and child

"Try this one," said mom, and the little girl smiled:
Cheeses they pleases both parent and child

Pretty cheesy, I know.

Look, cheese is a big item for local grocery stores. You can get as fussy (and stuffy) as a wine snob about cheese, and Seattle ranks pretty high on the scale of arcane matters caseinate. Some examples:

• Local boy Kurt Beecher Dammeier's sheeps milk cheddar won best in the US this summer.


• Earlier this year, Murray's Cheese from Noo Yawk cut a deal with Kroger to start building proprietary cheese kiosks in Seattle QFC stores. Though you have to wonder where Murray's VP for Cheese, a young Yale grad named Liz Thorpe, got the idea, printed in The Cheese Chronicles, that the fishmongers at the Pike Place Market are throwing around whole tuna! If she can't tell the difference between a tuna and a salmon, you've got to wonder about every other observation in the book.


• Then there's Whole Foods, which has long had a well-regarded cheese counter. And independent, artisan cheesemongers like Calf & Kid in the Melrose Market and The Cheese Cellar in the shadow of the Space Needle.

Go meet Sarah Kaufmann, who does "cheese sculptures." Or spend an evening with Barrie Lynn, the "cheese impresario."

Cheese, like coffee, like artisan beer and micro-roaster coffee, has become part of Seattle's DNA. So be a good Seattle citizen and vote, already. Early and often.