Food

Walk into most American restaurants and near the top of the appetizer menu you'll find the cheese plate, a tantalizing assortment of cheese served with fruit and bread. But at more restaurants, including a few in Spokane, the cheese course is moving to the back end of the meal. The post-dinner cheese course is a longstanding European tradition. The 18th century French foodie Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once wrote, "Dessert without cheese is a one-eyed beauty." Clotilde Dusoulier puts it this way – in a 2005 article for NPR.org, the food writer who created the Chocolate and Zucchini blog (chocolateandzucchini.com) calls the after-dinner cheese course "the purest way to savor and celebrate milk's gifts to the table."

Six years ago George Calvert was a stressed-out workaholic living on little more than hamburgers and french fries when he was diagnosed with Meniere's disease. Thirty years of running his own business had taken its toll, and working long hours on a diet of mostly fast food had left Calvert with the seemingly incurable inner-ear disorder and an irregular heartbeat to boot. "George's inner-ear problem was probably caused by stress from the job," said Calvert's wife, Judy. "There was a time for awhile when he would just fall down from it – he literally couldn't stand up."