Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
Here’s another sure sign that autumn is moving in: apples. Branches on local trees are sagging enticingly and the orbs are taking on color.
I harvested the top right apple Sunday from our two year-old tree. The tree has four types of apples grafted onto its trunk. This red gravenstein was the first apple so far that hasn’t caused a cheek-sucking pucker.
I made a fateful decision one day when I went to Pan d’Amore to pick up a loaf of their seedy bread. I was hungry. They had an innocent, diminutive breadstick that looked like just the ticket. Slightly chewy with a surface covered with crunchy, blistered cheese. It should come with a warning. It’s so totally addictive one makes up excuses to drop by, like an unintended loaf of bread.
Sometime this month they’re moving down Washington Street to the corner at Sequim Avenue. That’s further to go for an impulse. I hope that helps. Otherwise I’m in real trouble.
A week or two ago the local newspaper sent out a reporter who asked people, “What’s your favorite thing at the county fair?” If I recollect right, every single one answered, “The food!”
You can smell a brass band of cooking aromas as soon as you enter the fairgrounds: grilled meats, sweet whatevers, popcorn, and fried anything. The fair guide listed a vendor called “Fried Everything” … and everything on the menu was, from twinkies to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I don’t know if this is the Fried Everything stand, but they definitely had a robust offering – and what they didn’t have you could find at other vendors just steps away.
There are lots of food choices at the fair. We kept our distance from the deep fryers, but that doesn’t mean we managed to stay entirely virtuous.
It’s been a great year for native saskatoons or western serviceberry (amelanchier alnifolia). The berries grow on trees of varying sizes in the Dungeness Recreation Area and they’re ripe this month. They’re a favorite of cedar waxwings and small flocks converge on the trees for feasts.
One of our neighbors snacks on these berries and we started grazing, too. Until this year, we were the only humans we saw eating them. This month we met a Cherokee woman who was gathering the berries for a pie and a day or so later encountered an Eastern European couple who insisted they were a type of wild blueberry. In fact, it’s a member of the rose family.
I’ve begun to harvest this year’s garlic crop, starting with the Juan de Fuca Wonder from Blythe Barbo and her Barbolian Fields garlic: great big heads, almost the size of apples. And the shot above shows what they looked like above ground. These are scapes, the wondrous stalks that garlic sends up as it grows. I think they are sort of otherworldly and fascinating as they bend and curl. Eventually they straighten and face skyward. Scapes can be sautéed and can be used as flavoring. They have a mild garlic flavor.
This is what they look like if they start to “bloom.” There are tiny bulblets inside that can be cultivated like seed to grow more garlic, though it’s faster to plant cloves from a head.
It remains to be seen how my garlic does as it dries. We had a rainstorm that thoroughly wetted the ground right around the time I intended to harvest – not good. I waited for the ground to dry out. . . I’m not sure if it was quite dry enough. We’ll see.
I’m growing kale this year. Because I got my usual late start, I skipped seeds and planted a six pack of little baby kales. I knew it would be more than we are likely to eat but hey, kale’s good for you. You know, it’s one of those superfoods, chock full of the nutrients lacking in all the foods we really love. It also loves it here. It’s growing like it means to turn into a heritage plant. Like a tree.
We’re eating it sautéed, steamed, braised on spaghetti, mounded under fish or chicken. Kale salad, kale chips. Cooked and tossed with balsamic vinegar or salad dressing. Neighbors are beginning to hide when they see me coming. (I think the wheelbarrow of kale leaves must be a tipoff.) Want some?
Last week we camped at a beautiful, historic state park – Fort Flagler, on Marrowstone Island. Surrounded by other campers and a hearty dose of nature, we didn’t expect to encounter this roving van of serendipity as we walked to the beach: Bill’s Snow Cones.
He couldn’t be accused of cutting a low profile amongst the RVs, trailers, and tents.
Bill is a self-appointed snow cone goodwill ambassador. He goes where his mood and his tricked out Volkswagen van take him and he cheers the people he meets, one snow cone at a time. Gratis. Two free cherry snow cones and a raft of snow cone stories later, we walked away happy. Thank you, Bill.