Corn chips calling

An end cap at Whole Foods called to me today: “Look! Corn chips! You can make chili-Frito pie!” Apparently, that was what their marketers were thinking too, as they conveniently flanked the bags of organic yellow chips with cans of chili, mild on the left, hot on the right. Lucky for me, I have some Trader Joe’s vegetarian chili in the larder. I also had to double back to the cheese section (tasting fresh mozzarella balls and goat milk gouda as we passed) to pick up some jack cheese to grate over the whole mess.

As I grate the local Beecher’s Just Jack, I reflect on what Michael Pollan might think of this quasi-food. I haven’t quite finished his latest book, but have the basic gist. (I set it aside to read Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus, which I stayed up too late to finish last night.) The meal barely meets Michael’s basic criteria, and though I’m positive my great-grandma didn’t put it on the table, I bet my grandmother may well have done so: she was, after all, a Californian.

Chili-Frito pie is comfort food, and in its mainstream incarnation, wildly irresponsible, from its GMO corn chips fried in hydrogenated oils, down to the petroleum- and water-intensive beef by-products mass canned in a featureless cannery somewhere many miles away, and topped with an rBST-laden cheese food. Our version is a moderate improvement, but still quite processed. Organic (and thus non-GMO) corn has been ground into masa for the chips, non-GMO soy made into tofu for the chili. We won’t overeat: two cans for four people, two of whom are growing boys, is about right. Mostly plants: a vegetarian chili manages fine on this count, and the local cheese stands alone (high-ho the Derry-o, the cheese stands alone) as the lone animal product. There’s a salad on the table too, which adds some well-needed leaves to the mix. Have you noticed that the spinach gets sweeter as the days get longer?

My menu choices bring up an interesting conundrum that Michael, for all his good intentions, does not grasp, I think because he is not a mom. The reason I was at Whole Foods instead of the co-op or the farmer’s market is because I was between violin lesson and the Post Office and parent-teacher conferences, and I knew we were out of milk and bread and salad. Whole Foods was conveniently situated (between the Post Office and home), and conveniently situated also applies to the end cap display with what is now our supper. Stopping by the store gave us a chance to have lunch at home (leftovers). Yes, I could have made this a better dinner by making the chili myself from local grass-fed beef (or making fresh tofu from the soymilk I make myself), but then I wouldn’t be writing this; I’d still be in the kitchen. And convenience food would have been on the menu for lunch. Instead of supper.