lummi island wine tasting oct 9-10 ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
This sunset is from 6 months ago and just like the one a few days ago…
and so the world turns..!
Friday Bread Pickup is Back!
Flax seed currant Ciabatta – Made with a poolish that ferments some of the flour and water overnight before being mixed with the final ingredients which includes a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye flours. Loaded up with flax seeds and dried currants for a delicious bread. This bread is mixed with a lot of water that makes for a very slack dough so it can’t be weighed out and shaped like other bread, it is just cut into pieces. A really flavorful artisan loaf – $5/piece
Black Pepper Walnut- made with a nice mix of flours, bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with just a bit of peppery bite to it. Would go well with all sorts of meats and cheese – $5/loaf
and pastry this week...
Rum Raisin Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with golden raisins and chunks of almond paste and as if that wasn’t enough, topped with a chocolate glaze 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
This week’s wine tasting
Cloudlift Lucy Rosé of Cab Franc ’23 Washington $19
Pale salmon in color, with aromas of fresh nectarine, citrus peel and strawberry; palate is dry, bright, and focused, with lively, mouthwatering citrus and minerality that extend the finish.
Ciffre St. Chinian ’20 France $20
60% grenache, 40% syrah; aromas and flavors of plum, cherry, raspberry jam and cassis coat the palate with hints of clove and cinnamon that add intensity and length.
Tre Donne Langhe Nebbiolo ’18 Italy
Dark mauve in color ; nose of red berries, tobacco, and chocolate opens to a balanced palate marked by soft, structured tannins that pair well with well-seasoned dishes, tasty sauces, and roasted or grilled meats.
Economics of the Heart: The New Ugly American
gee…Putin looks a LOT like Stephen Miller! Coincidence…?
It is difficult to find adequate metaphors for the rapid fall of the United States leadership role in international affairs and respect since the Tweetster came on the political scene ten years ago, after Barack Obama’s second term. You will recall that in 2008 Obama took office from the exiting Dubya just as the excesses of his administration was crashing our national economy into a major recession; Dubya’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had become a disaster that would last for twenty years and seems to have forever changed the uneasy balance of Eurasian international politics and political economy.
Indeed, without those unbelievably short-sighted interventions, based far more on the prospect of making $billions for a handful of American corporations than the socioeconomic development and stability of the region, the nations of the Middle East remain in multi-dimensional conflict with each other and even rule their citizens harshly, particularly women, with rigid rules and punishments including beheading for those that break them.
In a certain sense, this is familiar territory for American so-called “diplomacy.” In particular, our nation’s various forays in Southeast Asia from the late fifties until the fall of South Vietnam to the North were managed in a particularly counterproductive way that was exposed through fiction in The Ugly American, a novel by retired Navy Captain William Lederer, (a fellow USNA grad but 31 yrs earlier) who wrote many books and film scripts over his 95 years.
That book was to specifically written to call attention to a common failure of US occupations of the era to work closely enough with the controlling regime of a country that valuable opportunities to help people thrive using local customs and social structures were missed entirely. Lederer’s strong feelings from his own experiences taught him that much of US occupation ignores ordinary people and their needs and merely adds wealth to local leaders who already control it.
Lederer’s insights provide a useful perspective on our nation’s present challenges in the light of the idiocy and cruelty of its current government. Everybody knows this government is using every ounce of its political power to build the personal wealth of the Trump family by looting hundreds of $billions from our national treasury, the states, the people, and federal workers. At the same time they seem to derive substantial sadistic satisfaction from breaking up immigrant families and imprisoning them under unacceptably cruel and inhumane conditions.
The Tweetster has also have found it entertaining over the past year to attack small boats in open waters with heavy military munitions, murdering hundreds of unknown individuals and claiming they are “drug smugglers,” without ever intercepting/ inspecting/ verifying their claims with actual inspections. These are all correctly called “murders,” and are illegal under international law. Also, probably as a tip of the hat to his buddy Vlad, he invaded a sovereign country (Venezuela), deposed its elected leader, and claimed ownership of its fossil fuel reserves.
That brings us to the ongoing debacle of the ongoing bombings of Iran, the stalemates in the Strait of Hormuz, and subsequent interruption of the international oil trade. All of this idiocy is destroying our nation’s status in the world; killing, wounding, and demoralizing our military, impoverishing our own people, substantially depleting our weapons reserves and national security, alienating us from our traditional allies, and substantially weakening our military response options until stockpiles can be rebuilt.
It all adds up to a Gigantic Indictment of everything the so-called Republican party seems to stand for these days. Who the hell benefits from this nonsense except our international foes?
This coming election is forcing every one of us to examine our present circumstances, come together as Americans, and eliminate the tyrannical forces amassed against our 250 yr old Constitutional government. Every day more people turn against the lying, the greed, the cruelty, and the ongoing self-aggrandizement of an insane, cruel old man who may never have had a kind idea in his entire miserable life.
The emerging truth is that after these past two years, Americans are DONE with this man’s broad ignorance, bottomless Ego, and endless Cruelty. Every day more and more people are looking around as if seeing the decline in our domestic and international situation for the first time, gathering in the streets, and reclaiming our Constitutional democracy “with freedom and justice for all.”
At this moment a gigantic-enough Blue tide is turning our very tired– and very tiring– Maga coup into a state by state reassessment of our collective and individual goals, values, and commitments. Time for a New Deal.
lummi island wine tasting oct 2-3 ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
fall colors are here, and wind is gettin’ colder…
Friday Bread Pickup is Back!
Multi Grain overnight preferment – The initial mix of flour, water, salt, & yeast is fermented overnight to allow a portion of the dough to begin enzymatic activity before mixing with bread flour, whole wheat, rye, cornmeal, and flax, w/ sunflower and sesame seeds added for crunch and extra flavor. – $5/loaf
Rosemary Olive Oil – Made with bread flour and freshly milled white whole wheat; fresh rosemary from the garden and olive oil make for a tender crumb and a great allaround bread – $5/loaf
and pastry this week...
Chocolate Croissants!! – Traditional laminated french pastry made with a bit of sourdough flavor and another pre-ferment to help create the traditional honeycomb interior, then rolled out and shaped with delicious dark chocolate in the center. Quantities are limited so get your order in early so you don’t miss out! – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
Tre Donne Roero Arneis ’23 Italy $21
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.
Greenwing Columbia Valley Cab Sauv ’21 WA $19
Alluring aromas of Bing cherry, rooibos tea, loamy earth with hints of cinnamon, clove, and wild herbs; palate of red currant, raspberry and wild strawberry, fine-grained tannins and bright acidity.
Lancyre Pic St Loup Vielles Vignes ’20 France $18
100 % malbec; unfolds with dark, enchanting notes of blackberry, grilled plum, and jammy raspberry with accents of orange peel, vanilla, and tobacco spice, finishing with balanced structure, plush texture, and a lengthy finish.
Economics of the Heart: The Enemy Within
Everybody wants economic security for themselves and their families. As a nation we pretend we all want that for everyone in our country. However, what we have seen and experienced over the last forty years has been a concerted effort of the Republican party to concentrate wealth (i.e., ownership of income-earning assets) into fewer and fewer hands. while at the same time flooding news and information airwaves with deliberate lies and misrepresentations about climate change, Constitutional responsibilities of elected and civil service federal employees, and 24/7 media insistence that they are the Good Guys. They have been playing that game for so long most people just wince and roll their eyes. Or as Leonard Cohen put it, “everybody knows that the dice are loaded.”
Clearly the single focus of the Republican Party since about 1980 has been to redesign public news media outlets to create a 24/7 Fake News cycle with the single objective of portraying “Democrat voters” as woke, corrupt, fictitious, mean-spirited, trans-gender, non-citizens out to destroy our country. But again and again and again, reality has demonstrated that the ultimate goal of the Republican Party is to concentrate the world’s wealth into the hands of a very small number of joyless trillionaire men at the top of a global society whom everyone else serves at the pleasure and whim of these, their masters.
Either these people don’t believe that the Global Warming that is happening at their behest is exterminating vast regions of habitat, croplands, fisheries, and forests across the planet, or like an ostrich with its head in a hole, really don’t care one way or the other. Nor do they care about the immense suffering their policies seem designed to accelerate, including water shortages, mass starvation (like when they did away with USAID), global warming, higher winds, increasingly destructive floods, storms, fires, and species extinctions— we have already seen enough of the reality of the long list of Horrors by now to know that yes, fifty years after knowing CO2 from fossil fuels was killing the planet, the Oil Giants are still pretending it’s a hoax and all the Republicans are pretending they’re telling the truth as our planet begins to die.
In various forms, most existing autocratic nations across the globe promote a certain brutality of spirit, by which the leaders accumulate vast personal wealth, and the masses do the grunt work and strive to subsist. They take what they want and leave the pack to sort out the rest.
As we have seen in our own country in the last two years, it’s not just about the $Money to these guys. Oh, no no no, monsieur, it is Much more than that.
Indeed, as card-carrying psychopathic sadists, it is, as we see from the obvious glee of the Tweetster whenever he inflicts criticism or anger on someone and gets to watch them suffer physically and emotionally, or when ICE sends a family to a torture prison in a distant country. It is an addictive pleasure that no amount of bombing little boats in the Caribbean, or elementary schools in Iran, or withholding aid from Ukraine just to torment its leader will ever relieve. There is a big dose of sadistic psychopathy in this picture that many watch every day on their Cruel Channel. Regardless of who is is speaking in the always crowded and tastelessly decorated Oval Office, everyone present knows that at any moment they can become the target of his disdain.
In the coming election our duty as Americans is to take majority control of both the House and Senate. It’s a tall order, yes, and almost certainly there will be a lot of squabbling, lawsuits, and court cases. At long last we have a moment where it is at lease theoretically possible to get control of Congress for the Tweetster’s Farewell Ride. Wouldn’t that be lovely…?!
lummi island wine tasting Sept 25-26, ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
hmmmm…might get a bit wet out theah this weekend…
ayuh, might wanna bring youh slickah just in case!
Friday Bread Pickup is Back!
Poolish Ale – the preferment here is a poolish, made with bread flour, a bit of yeast and a nice ale beer for the liquid and fermented overnight. Mixed the next day with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. This makes a great all around bread with a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Buckwheat Walnut & Honey – another flavorful artisan bread made with a poolish, fresh milled buckwheat, and bread flour. Buckwheat has an earthy flavor that in this bread is balanced with a little honey. Some toasted walnuts add a nice crunch, going well with meats and cheeses – $5/loaf
and pastry this week...
Brioche Sugar Tarts – In France this pastry might serve as a goûter (kids’ afternoon snack). The tart is made with a rich brioche dough full of eggs and butter, rolled into a round tart and topped with more eggs, cream, butter and sugar. Great topped with fresh fruit! As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
Garzon Single Vineyard Albarino ’20 Uruguay $34
Medium-bodied white wine with dense texture, rich, elegant aromas, and succulent flavors of pineapple, lemon zest, chamomile, sea salt, stone fruits, and a bright, tangy acidity, pleasing creamy texture, and deep flavors!
Jordanov Vranec ’20 Macedonia $18
Aromas of ripe berries with notes of clove, nutmeg and cardamom; full bodied with ripe dark fruit and hints of herbs and dark chocolate on the well-structured finish.
Angeline Cab Sauv ’24 California $16
Opulent aromas of black currants, morello cherries, savory cedar and mocha with an undercurrent of petrichor. Red fruits are on full display to the taste, with bramblefruit, red plums and fresh strawberries; defined by its round edges and silky tannins.
Economics of the Heart: When Leaders Lose Their Followers
The stage is now being set for the most important American election of our lifetimes. Those of us committed to preserving American democracy are currently engaged in a battle to save it from the card-carrying foreign and domestic enemies committed to destroying it completely (pretty much every Republican in Congress.) From a broad perspective, this battle has been part of American politics for at least a hundred years, pitting the moneyed few against everyone else.
That changed for a while under FDR’s New Deal in the 30’s, which put unemployed people to work on Federal projects building infrastructure, investing in public education, creating Social Security, and stimulating that magical economic “circular flow” by which $$ circulates continuously from wages to purchases from people who grow stuff, make stuff, store stuff, and transport stuff.
We all have ongoing needs for safety, affection, food, water, shelter, and community in amounts sufficient to sustain and enrich our family and community lives. Everyone is in some sense both producer and consumer. We all need more or less the same basic things to stay alive, and we must all find employment to pay for them.
As we have mentioned before, the small class of ultra-rich business and banking guys who were responsible for kicking off the Great Depression/Crash a hundred years ago (not to mention Dubya’s crash of 2008! ) are the same ones who have been setting the stage to, more or less, change it back to the way it was in the booming profit margins of the early 20’s. The rich were very rich indeed, and the poor were stretched thin. And during the Depression, of course, finding even basic shelter and sustenance was elusive, creating substantial populations of homeless men, sometimes going door to door for scraps of food. (so my mother used to tell me)
The still-unfolding Republican “Plan” was set out in great detail by Project 2025 in its 1000-page playbook to replace American democracy with an Authoritarian police state. Our only hope for restoring Democracy and Constitutional law to our country is for enough loyal American voters to replace enough Republican Senators and Representatives in the coming election to give Congressional Democrats an ample majority in both legislative bodies in November!
lummi island wine tasting sept 18-19 ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
ah, a few dear faces from a few years back…
Friday Bread This Week
Sorry…our baker is away again this week…
back to regular schedule next week…!
This week’s wine tasting
Decoy Chardonnay ’23 California $16
Blended from several CA central coast vineyards; aromas of sweet mandarin orange and white peach; juicy and vibrant palate of tropical fruit flavors with a hint of oak from its time in barrel.
Angeline Cab Sauv ’24 California $16
Fruit-forward with aromas of lush cherry, cassis, rich cherry, and plum flavors with hints of vanilla and soft oak that over-deliver for the modest price.
Bodega Garzon Tannat Reserve ’18 Uruguay $16
Opaque deep, dark red; opens with enticing, delicious aromas of very ripe, dark fruit and berries stewed in their own liqueur, with lingering notes of spice, herb, and licorice on the seamless finish.
New Paintings by Anne Gibert
new paintings from Anne Gibert
Last weekend we replaced Anne Gibert paintings that have graced our
walls since Covid made public spaces implement health precautions like
masks and social distancing. Last weekend our walls were all updated
with her more recent collection of local scenery and the many critters that abound around us.
(with apologies for this hasty photo…!)
Economics of the Heart: Too Stupid to Lead or Be Followed
It is hard to comprehend how, in just two years, so much traitorous political effort has gone into reducing our United States from the most powerful nation and economy in the world to a pitiful, second-rate autocracy. In just two years of breathtaking incompetence, stupidity, cruelty, racism, lying, graft, and nonstop outright theft from the American people by a tiny handful of joyless multi-billionaires (now of course including the Tweetster) and a rapidly dwindling audience of Fox-news-addicted morons. The Fake President uses his Fake Cabinet, Fake Supreme Court, Fake Republican Party, and nonstop Fake News to make stupid people believe things are true that are not, and that things that are patently false are true.
The broad direction of all of this is to replace the elected government and Constitution of the United States with an autocratic dictatorship that will control everyone and concentrate national wealth into the pockets of a handful of joyless billionaires.
The metaphoric picture that emerges from this dystopian vision is of an impoverished America where workers earn subsistence wages (the lucky ones) or struggle to find food and shelter in a world without compassion, law, or justice. Somehow this vision is supposed to usher in a time of Christian Glory where a handful of white, billionaire, misogynistic men, acting in the name of their cruel, hateful, scheming version of the historical Jesus, take complete control of the “Seven Mountains” of social/civic/governmental organization: Education, Government, Religion, Family, Business, Media, and Entertainment. Thought and expression not specifically authorized will be monitored, limited, and punished with neither due process nor mercy.
We are now living the forty-years-in-the-works plan behind Project 2025, unleashed on the nation in 1980 by the Heritage Foundation-owned-and-operated “Reagan Presidency” and now launching the implementation phase of its wet-dream Dystopian Vision for America. A handful of white male billionaires will somehow enlist the historical Jesus to be the poster child for its massive replacement of democracy with a jack-booted, misogynist, national Christian militia (ICE is the prototype) with an open license to kill anyone for any reason.
Don’t know about you, but that sure as Hell ain’t my idea of Utopia.
This IS the new Civil War, folks, and the good guys have been losing for 40 years. A search through the ranks of contemporary Republican politicians has yet to find more than a handful who actually support the Constitution. The broad majority serve the Tweetster in deference to his demonstrated power to remove them from Congress by supporting challengers. This isn’t a government, folks; it’s a fookin’ crime family, both literally and figuratively. It would appear that if you took all the Republicans in Congress and boiled them down to their basic elements, you would find not a single ounce of Integrity.
A growing majority of American voters want their country back, and their/our voices are having impact on the national dialogue. The emerging topics of political consequence represent a long list of things American voters hate about this so-called Administration, as in “I’m mad as Hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
It’s not just that the so-called “President” is a self-centered, misogynistic, lying, cruel, mean-spirited man of limited intelligence and a complete inability to tell the truth about anything, to anyone, at any time. His only documented achievements are breaking laws and causing needless suffering to his world-full of Designated Enemies. He has destroyed our economy, our global alliances, our military readiness, and our influence for good in the world.
No one knows how the coming election will turn out. But everybody knows they must vote to restore justice, the rule of law, and every citizen’s right to vote. We know that administration loyalists in Congress and across federal agencies are regularly violating their Constitutional oaths, and doing their best to rig November state elections by illegally preventing voters from registering, voting at all, or having their votes count if they vote Democratic, especially in Red states, where Republican Fraud will be rampant.
Everything is at stake. The good news is that every day more and more citizens see what is at stake and committing to taking our country back for democracy. The bad news is that elections have been heavily gerrymandered in red states and further rigged to make blue votes disappear without getting counted.
We close today with yet another poignant lyric from Leonard Cohen…
And yes it’s come to this,
it’s come to this,
and wasn’t it a long way down…
wasn’t it a strange way down…?
2072 Granger Way