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lummi island wine tasting feb 3 ’23
Hours this weekend: Open 3:30- 5:30 pm Friday Only
Our current plan is to be open Fridays only through February.
Covid (and a bunch of other winter bugs) is still around, more contagious than ever, but far less threatening for the vaccinated.
We all have our own comfort zones; these days we all have to manage the space around us in our own way. Just be mindful of the risks, thanks.
Friday Bread This Week
Black Pepper Walnut- Made with a nice mix of bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with a distinct peppery bite. Excellent paired with all sorts of meats and cheese…and wine, of course! – $5/loaf
Sesame Semolina –Begins with a sponge that pre-ferments some of the flour, water & yeast before mixing the final dough. Made with semolina and bread flour and a soaker of cornmeal, millet, sesame seeds, a little olive oil to round out the flavor and tenderize the crumb then rolled in more sesame seeds before baking. Lots of great flavors! – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Individual Cinnamon Rolls! –Made with a rich sweet roll dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Then rolled up and sliced into individual rolls for baking. And boy are they delicious! – 2/$5.
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Tre Donne Roero Arneis ’20 Italy $27
photo courtesy asiaimportnews.com
The revered Italian wine region of Piedmont (i.e., ‘foot of the mountain’) lies in the NW corner of Italy, in the foothills of the French and Swiss Alps to the west and north. The geography makes for the serendipitous combination of warm days and cool nights that make perfect conditions for wine grapes. The Roero region is just north of the iconic Barolo and Barbaresco regions, which produce some of Italy’s most prestigious wines.
White wines from Roero must contain at least 95% Arneis, and reds must contain at least 95% Nebbiolo. With roots diving deep into layers of tufo clay, the 35-year-old vines at Tre Donne yield a wide array of complex aromas and flavors for a nuanced, medium-bodied Arneis with lovely notes of pear, apricot, and white blossoms.
Economics of the Heart: Groundhogs and Cross-Quarter Days
We take a time-out from serious stuff this week to pay homage to what our culture calls Groundhog Day, what some cultures call the First Day of Spring, and what calendar geeks call “cross-quarter” days. We are all familiar with the the two equinoxes and the two solstices that mark the official transitions from one season to another as the Earth’s annual orbit and tilted axis continually move the noonday sun from being overhead at the Tropic of Cancer to being overhead at the Equator to being overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn, on and on, the richness of changing seasons.
There is also an ancient tradition of celebrating the “cross-quarter days” that fall halfway between these major events. February 2, falling midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, has historically been called Candlemas, Imbolc, Oimelc, Brigit, Brigid’s Day, Bride’s Day, Brigantia, or Gŵyl y Canhwyllau. In the picture at left it is labeled “1st” in small red letters.
Every society across the planet depended on the growing season to prepare for the winter to follow. There were deities to be invoked for good fortune, and continual preparation for planting, tending, harvesting, and storing enough for winter– lots of toiling tortoises, fewer hapless hares. Our culture usually refers to this one as “Groundhog Day,” but cross-quarter days have had both cosmic and cultural significance from prehistoric times, across continents and across cultures. In many ancient cultures the cross-quarter days marked the actual transitions between seasons (e.g., making Groundhog Day the official “First Day of Spring,” six weeks before the vernal Equinox.
Seasonal changes were key economic factors in agrarian and gathering societies, and many had “celebrations of light” on Candlemas to mark the lengthening of days and the coming of Spring. In Gaelic tradition, the goddess Cailleach teased the mortals with a sunny day when her intention was to make the next six weeks colder and wetter, and a dreary day if Spring was to come early. (Like, what is the story with these mean-spirited deities…?) Another tradition suggests that in Biblical times since mothers were not allowed in public until six weeks after delivery, Candlemas would have been Mary’s first public outing and temple visit with her baby boy.
And then there is an old song sung on Candlemas that lays out the Groundhog’s mission:
“If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.”
Of course, as we all know, whether the Groundhog sees its shadow or not, there are STILL six weeks until Spring Equinox. Until the last couple of years, here in the PNW Groundhog Day has indeed marked the appearance of buds and flowers, longer days, and milder temperatures, sudden hailstorms followed by warming sunlight and gusty winds. We already see some buds on the Indian plum, pussy willows, and other shrubs. But like all the seasons now, underlying conditions have changed, and we have seen more frequent mid-February snowstorms, unheard of until recently.
And either way, officially there are six more weeks of “Winter” regardless of Groundhog shadows!
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Tre Donne Roero Arneis ’20 Italy $20
Pale golden yellow; soft aromas of orange blossom, honeysuckle, nectarine, and lemon verbena; flavors of pear, peach, quince, and green apple; enduring minerality and balanced acidity.
Bieler Cote du Rhone ‘la Jassine’ ’20 $15
Brooding aromas of raspberry, black cherry, garrigue, chocolate and tobacco which build and concentrate on the palate; hilltop fruit delivers a rich mouthfeel with soft, round tannins on the finish.
Marchetti Villa Bonomi Conero Riserva ’19 Italy $27
100% Sangiovese from Montepulciano, aged 16 mos. in barriques and 12 mos. in bottle; shows intense floral bouquet, intense, nuanced flavors; ripe, pleasing tannins, and satisfying finish.
lummi island wine tasting nov 4-5 ’22
Hours this weekend: 4-6pm both Friday and Saturday
Though Covid protocols have relaxed somewhat, the season of outside seating seems to be pretty much over. So as we move inside, let’s be mindful of distance between us and subdue any tendencies toward those, um, exclamatory expectorants that can come with getting a little too boisterous. Thanks!
Friday Bread Pickup This Week 4-5:30 pm
Four Seed Buttermilk – This bread includes all the elements of whole wheat, but does so separately by adding cracked wheat and bran in to the bread flour instead of milling whole wheat berries. It also has buttermilk and oil which will make for a tender bread as well as adding a little tang. Finally it is finished with with a bit of honey and sunflower pumpkin and sesame seeds and some toasted millet – $5/loaf
Fig Anise – One of the more popular breads in the rotation. Made with a sponge that is fermented overnight, then the final dough is mixed with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. Honey, dried figs and anise bring in all the flavors of the mediterranean. – $5/loaf
mmm, and pastry this week…
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled and spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls that are placed in baking forms for baking and then brushed with sugar syrup after baking. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Photos
On the occasion of Pat’s birthday we trekked to Portland (Sherwood, to be precise) to celebrate it with son and grandson. We had a great dinner at Mason, a tiny Italian restaurant with amazing food and wine. Absolutely terrific dinner, superbly accompanied by a bottle of 2003 Quilceda Creek cab (Parker gave it 100 pts, and we have to concur!)
Also a view of Wednesday sunset at Padilla Bay reflected in our back window, and a subtle yin-yang shape in — where else– the bottom of a wine glass!
Nana Pat’s Birthday dinner
Padilla Bay reflections
yin yang wine glass…!
Economics of the Heart: Our ‘Sword of Damocles’ Moment
A
n ancient Greek story tells of a tyrannical King (Dionysius) who was feared and obeyed but also hated. His inability to imagine another way of ruling made him quite paranoid (although in his case they probably were out to get him!) and caused him to take extraordinary measures to protect himself from treachery.
When Damocles, one of his loyal followers, complimented him on how happy and contented his wealth, power, and position must make him, he grew irritated, because he was neither. To give Damocles a sense of his everyday burden, he indulged him in luxuries of food, drink, and comfort, which young Damocles very much enjoyed…until he became aware that above his head dangled a great sword, hanging by a single horsehair which might break at any moment to kill or maim him. Thus did he learn, and does the parable teach, how living under constant threat of injury takes a toll.
Next week’s election has us all in a Sword of Damocles moment. Our country and to some degree the entire world are at present divided into irreconcilable political camps of Authoritarians vs. Humanists. Authoritarians believe the natural order of human society is for One Tough Guy and his loyal lieutenants to control how power and wealth are allocated, and that objective Truth is whatever the Leader pronounces it to be. Humanists believe that all human beings share the same needs for safety, affection, attention, approval, and equal opportunity to live healthy and satisfying lives, and that Truth is that which can be verified by observation, repetition, and analysis.
For 250 years our nation has struggled toward inclusion, fairness, justice, and equal opportunities of all citizens to share in a common prosperity. But over the past 50 years, authoritarians have been at work to sabotage this long American effort with their own visions of white male supremacy and its associated religions. In today’s world it has become perfectly clear that Republicans have abandoned democracy in favor of authoritarianism; today’s Republicans would repeal the Bill of Rights in a heartbeat.
We see behind us in our nation a stained tapestry of deals, trades, treachery, lies, murders, ambition, and the unbridled vanity we call “politics.” We see in front of us a particularly virulent form of the political disease, wherein a massive subculture has been created over the past forty years which is completely unwilling or unable to distinguish fact from fiction or truth from lies, and which sees the Constitution as a constraint, not a sacred commitment.
So. For another week or so we will sip our tea (or wine!) with an uneasy eye to the precarious Sword over our heads while our collective lemming culture decides whether to sigh in relief and go home to a nice warm fire or throw ourselves collectively over a cliff into a cold and raging sea. Fingers crossed!
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Marchetti Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico ’19 Italy $14
Verdicchio/ Malvasia blend using only free-run juice; pale straw color with green overtones; intense bouquet of citrus, lemon zest, and floral notes,with complex fruity character, and crisp, well-balanced palate.
Saviah The Jack Syrah ’18 Washington $15
85% Syrah, 10% Grenache, 5% Mourvèdre; Appealing aromas and flavors of red and black fruit, violets, olives, anise, and meat, with a velvety, pleasing texture.
La Quercia Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva Colline Teramine ’17 Italy $26
From 50-yr-old vines; rich, full-bodied and rustic in expression, with rich notes of cocoa, rhubarb, blackberry, and herbs; long, lingering finish of juicy black cherry, with a silky/velvety mouthfeel.
lummi island wine tasting april 29 ’22
May Schedule
We will be OPEN for wine tasting and sales this Friday and Saturday from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome!
NOTE: We will be CLOSED during Ferry drydock, reopening May 27-28 for Memorial Day weekend. We regret any inconvenience.
Bread Pickup This Week
Four Seed Buttermilk – This bread includes all the elements of whole wheat, but does so separately by adding cracked wheat and bran in to the bread flour instead of milling whole wheat berries. It also has buttermilk and oil which will make for a tender bread as well as adding a little tang. Finally it is finished with with a bit of honey and sunflower pumpkin and sesame seeds and some toasted millet – $5/loaf
Fig Anise – One of the more popular breads in the rotation. Made with a sponge that is fermented overnight, then the final dough is mixed with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. Honey, dried figs and anise bring in all the flavors of the mediterranean. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Black Sesame & Candied Lemon Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with fresh lemon zest and candied lemon and as if that wasn’t enough, topped with a black sesame streusel before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like. I can only make a limited number so be sure to get your order in early. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. The week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
This Week’s $5 Tasting
Sea Sun Chardonnay ’20 California $19
Bright nose of mango, butterscotch, apple, and pineapple; round and creamy texture, with notes of lemon curd and a spicy, toasty quality, with hints of cinnamon and lemon curd.
Maryhill Winemaker’s Red ’19 Washington $13
Ripe black fruit notes and a hint of fresh flowers are well backed by leather and cedar wood. Maple bar and black fruit of currant and blackberry appear on entry, with a mid-palate of rich tannins and a smooth finish.
Marchetti Villa Bonomi Conero Riserva ’17 Italy $27
100% Sangiovese from Montepulciano, aged 16 mos. in barriques and 12 mos. in bottle; shows intense floral bouquet, intense, nuanced flavors; ripe, pleasing tannins, and satisfying finish.
The Economics of the Heart: Economics and Engineering
Back a few careers ago I would occasionally be in a conversation with a student about choosing a major. Traditionally such a conversation invariably got tied to “What kind of work do you want to do?” But my feeling was always more like, “What kind of people do you admire and want to be like?” Go hang out with some biologists, or engineers, or artists, or whatever. What do they talk about? What do they care about? What do they value? What do you value?
Every discipline has its own world view, highlighting and exploring certain kinds of relationships among things and people, ignoring or discounting others. If we could crawl inside someone else’s head, as in the strange film “Being John Malkovich, we would experience a completely different world, with its own language, vocabulary, points of view, procedures, rules, and nuances.
By training I learned to think like an engineer and like an economist. And at the moment, as a new member of LIFAC (Lummi Island Ferry Advisory Committee), I am seeing some tension between these two ways of thinking in our ferry design and acquisition process. Engineers think about things like materials, energy requirements, redundancy, reliability, maintenance, power, longevity, efficiency. Economists think about things like value, satisfaction, costs, benefits, scale, tradeoffs, and yes, efficiency.
So efficiency is a common thread. In engineering it is getting the most work from a BTU of energy. In economics it is getting the greatest net benefit from each unit of a resource. At present we are at about Year 4 in planning for a replacement ferry for our 60 yr-old Whatcom Chief. The engineers have from the beginning steered us toward a 34-car vessel to replace our old 16-car vessel that regularly crams on up to 20 cars. This is how engineers think: “two backups for every alternate system.” There is some merit to that approach.
On one of the many “other hands,” we now live in a completely different world than humans have ever experienced. Because of climate change, all we know about the future is that it has no precedent in our history; it will NOT be like the past; and our prospects for even basic survival will keep getting worse faster and faster every day until we get our collective energy use back to pre-industrial levels.
My inner engineer and inner economist have been conferring about this for a few years now. At present the data are saying there are a lot of economic arguments for why a smaller vessel (22-26 cars) would yield the greatest net benefits.
You can read one of them here.
lummi island wine tasting april 2 ’22
Covid Rules
We are again OPEN for wine tasting and sales this Saturday (4/2) from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome!
Bread Returns!
Rosemary Olive Oil – Bread flour and freshly milled white whole wheat for additional flavor and texture. Fresh rosemary from the garden and olive oil to make for a nice tender crumb and a nice crisp crust. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Multi Grain- Starts with a preferment of flour, water, salt & yeast. This allows a portion of the dough to begin the enzymatic activity and gluten development overnight in a cool environment. The next day it is mixed with bread, fresh milled whole wheat, rye, polenta cornmeal, flax, sunflower and sesame seeds for a nice bit of crunch and some extra flavor. – $5/loaf
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – Made with a rich sweet roll dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Then rolled up and sliced into individual rolls for baking. And boy are they delicious! – 2/$5.
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. The week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Mailing List Issues: The Saga Continues!
Still trying to get our mailing app to work (failed again last week) and due to that uncertainty, we are taking the precaution of emailing the link directly to our mailing list as well as trying to activate the RSS feeder.
Best case scenario is that you will receive the actual blog in one email, and a link to it in another at about the same time. Any other outcome means something didn’t work as it should. There are a lot of balls in the air right now, so please bear with us, thanks!
This Week’s $5 Tasting
Lunetta Prosecco Italy $14
Pale straw color with greenish reflections, and fine perlage; fragrant, with enticing aromas of apple and peach; refreshing, dry, and harmonious, with crisp fruit flavors and a clean finish.
La Quercia Montepulciano ’17 Italy $13
100% organic Montepulciano D’abruzzo; opens with aromas of sour cherry with a hint of new leather; ripe fruity palate exhibits juicy blackberry, raspberry and a hint of anise; easy drinking with soft tannins.
Shatter Grenache Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes ’19 France $19
From Old Vines in Roussillon’s black schist soil; nose of dark fruit with a hint of espresso; velvety texture with black currant, spice and cured meat flavors with a touch of coffee; firm structure, supple tannins, excellent acidity and overall balance.
The Economics of the Heart: Entitlement and Cruelty
Everyone knows the beginning scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when primitive humanoid apes appear to have learned violence toward their own kind from the mysterious Monolith. The message of that scene, and to some degree the whole movie, seemed to be that this penchant for violence represented some kind of “progress” for the human race that ultimately led to space travel and communication with the Infinite. Really?…it’s some kind of Progress??
Throughout our history we humans have demonstrated a penchant for predatory tribal warfare over access to various desires and necessities: food, water, social status, mating, wealth, security, land, and political power, and the present is no different.
We Americans have certainly played our part in this dominance nonsense throughout our history. We have fought the English, Native Americans, Barbary Pirates, Mexico, Spain, Ourselves in the Civil War, Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even invaded Grenada, for heaven’s sake! We have military bases all over the world. We are the only country ever to use atomic weapons, with horrific results. So we can recognize a certain cognitive dissonance in ourselves as we hold our breath and long for the fighting, wholesale murder, wanton destruction, and suffering to stop in Ukraine and across the world. We see the rise in tyrannical regimes in countries across the world, from Russia to China to Syria, Turkey, Iran, Venezuela, Hungary, Afghanistan, and more, and it feels deeply threatening.
Putin is bad enough with his unrelenting cruelty. But even more heart-breaking and gut-wrenching has been the mass desertion of the American Republican Party away from Constitutional values of inclusion and equal protection under law, and toward an authoritarian state with sharply limited individual freedoms for political opponents. Many Republican-controlled states have adopted actual punishments for those who do not subscribe wholeheartedly to their hypocritical, white, racist, selfish, entitled-by-birth, narcissistic, angry, and intolerant assertions of Entitlement to rule.
We keep glancing at our watches waiting for arrests, trials, and convictions for the hubris-fueled conspirators of the narrowly evaded attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. Will justice prevail? Will our collective democratic values re-emerge in the electorate before next fall’s elections? Or will this global trend toward tyranny prevail?
There is some good news, though…Wine helps in times like these!
2072 Granger Way