Cascade Harvest also hosts a video contest:

How many of you are incorporating local foods in your family’s meal, and what are you making?

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Please send me your favorite original recipe or adaptation via e-mail at adice@kitsapsun.com. It can be anything from sides to desserts. Food columnist Ann Vogel and I will choose the winner. I’ll also share your recipes on the Food Life blog.

I look forward to seeing what great things people in Kitsap are eating for the holidays!

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Bremerton has a second bakery again, the 15th Street Bakery in the space formerly occupied by Luigi’s bakery. It opened earlier this week, thanks to Hi-Lo’s 15th Street Cafe owners Heidi and Lowell Yoxsimer, who have been working on the spot since this summer.

They have breads and pastries from the looks of the photos they posted to their Facebook page.

When they talked to The Bremelogger in September, they said they were getting specialty request, such as gluten-free or sugar-free.

If any of you have tried it out yet, let everyone know about it.

Oh, and in case you were curious, Bremerton’s other baker (besides the ones at the big grocery stores) is McGavin’s Bakery on Callow Avenue. It’s the “home of the pink champagne cake” (a personal favorite) and Larry & Kristi’s Bakery in Manette.

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They’re opening a little later than what was expected when I wrote about them in September. They apparently were waiting for  approvals from the City of Bremerton and the County Health Department, which they now have. They now have to finish installing equipment and purchase a business license.

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They compiled holiday recipes from viewers around the state (including a dozen or more Kitsap cooks) and invited some of them on to cook, including Kim Berto of Poulsbo who made Halibut Cakes with Tarragon Sauce and Bill Osowski of Poulsbo, who mad a Baked Stuffed Shrimp.

Most of the recipes they’ve been showing are from home cooks, and look fairly easy to make. Mostly the programming has made me jealous of George Ray, whose only job, it seems, is to taste the food and exclaim how wonderful it is. I. Want. That. Job.

It inspired a few “why didn’t I think of that” moments and a wholde lot of hungry stares.

And yes, it drove me to make a pledge.

For a $65 or more membership, you can get the book and the warm fuzzies for supporting public television.

Now that’s some tasty marketing.

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They’re not talking cookbooks. On the library’s site, they describe an edible book as something that “can look like a book, be a pun on a title, refer to a character, or just have something to do with books — as long as it’s edible.” Check out some of the photos on their site with such things as the “Lard of the Rings” with, you guessed it, lard (and onion rings).

The fesitval runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Sat. Oct. 24 in the main meeting room of the library at, 1270 Madison Ave N. Cost is a $5 donation to benefit Bainbridge Public Library and they ask that you bring a can of food for Helpline House.

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A couple weekends ago, I started my first solid attempt at food preservation. I’ve frozen foods before and dried herbs, but this year marks the very first time I’ve canned anything and otherwise preserved foods in earnest.

Part of my new effort had to do with the secondhand gift of a deep-chest freezer. Part of it had to do with the proliferation of food-preservation blog posts and stories and canning supplies that greeted me at nearly every grocery store I went to. It just seemed like the “in” thing to do this season. It’s probably more a matter of me actually noticing it this year than any surge in popularity. It’s not like I’m seeing friends’ cupboards with the kind of collection in the World War II-era canning photo I attached to this post. If  you thought that was mine, you think WAAAY too much of me. It’s from the Library of Congress.

But I did do and plan on doing more of my fair first-timer’s share of canning. Coming up on the Food Life will be a review of a canning guide I received, some peachy canning and, if I can eek out a little time this weekend, some apple and/or pear works.

But first, I thought I’d share a few of the lessons and rules I learned from my so-far one weekend adventure in canning:

Rule No. 1: Make sure you have EVERYTHING handy, all your tools, all your ingredients. Everything. Which leads me to:

Rule No. 2: A wooden spoon and tongs are not a good substitute for a jar grabber tool. Which leads me to:

Rule No. 3: If you’re going to wear long sleeves while cooking, don’t wear polyester. If you slosh scalding water on your arm, it’s going to keep the heat in. My bare skin fared better. And just in case you didn’t know: treat a scald burn by running it under cool water and cover with a clean cloth. If you blister, seek medical attention (which I didn’t need, just thought I’d throw that PSA in there).

Some other yeah-I-should know-that lessons I was reminded of:

• Fruit is sticky.
• Fruit flies are fond of sticky fruit (say that 5 times fast!).
• If your jam looks more like syrup than jam when you think it’s done cooking, it’s not going to get that much thicker when you seal it in a can.
• If the recipe tells you to wait a week before eating your canned goods, take its advice.
• Read the whole recipe before you go shopping. Every word.
• Don’t try to do multiple recipes you’ve never tried before all at once to save time. Really think about your workflow first and leave time for emergency corrections.

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Chanterelle

I was greeted at work today with a wonderful gift from my co-worker Chris Henry: freshly foraged chanterelles.

I’ve only ever tried some dried ones from a grocery store, which I’m told is nothing like having them fresh. The fresh ones are meaty and earthy. Well, that’s what I’m told, and I’ll be finding out for myself soon.

Chris suggested I sautee them with a little oil and garlic or put them in stew, which will be where I’ll head first. In the next couple days, I’ll be looking up some recipes (and I’d love suggestions, hint, hint …). First stop: a story Chris wrote a couple years ago on wild mushroom hunting featuring these lovely fungi. It includes recipes for a mushroom potato soup (which may be the second thing I try), stir-fried chanterelles with Bok Choy and Fettucine Alfredo with chanterelle .

It’s apparently prime season for mushroom hunting, which I hope to learn more about soon. Where I’ll start: the Kitsap Peninsula Mycological Society. They have a wild mushroom show coming up Sunday, Oct. 25 from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Silverdale Community Center. They’ll have tastings, displays and identification. Admission is free, but donations are polite.

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A few highlights from my food reading this week:

Hot Dog Of The Week: Seattle Style

I learned this week that Seattle has its own style of hot dog. I’ve had it and love it, but never knew cream cheese and grilled onions on a dog make it uniquely Seattle.

Props for Local Beverage Makers

Bainbridge Vineyards and Winery received several awards at the state fair, says the Bainbridge Conversation blog. This comes a week after Silverdale’s Silver city took home two gold and a bronze medal at the Great American beer festival.

Sound Bites owners dip into regional flavor

This week, I learned from The News Tribune in Tacoma that there’s a semi-local (Puyallup)sauce, hummus and chimichurri maker called Sound Bites Sauce and Spread Co. They apparently use regional and local ingredients. The big drawback, though is that it seems the closest local retailer to sell it is Harbor Greens in Gig Harbor. It’s mostly sold in Pierce and King Counties.

Events:

Tonight

If you can make it out to Seattle by 6:30, Food Network food geek Alton Brown will be out at Third Place books, 17171 Bothell Way, shilling his new book, Good Eats: The Early Years, about some of his crazy stunts and background from 10 years on the “Good Eats” show.

All weekend:

I’d also encourage folks to take advantage of the waning days of the local farmers markets. Port Orchard and Kingston have their last market Saturday. Suquamish and Bremerton finish on Oct. 14 and Poulsbo and Bainbridge are done Oct. 17 , though a winter market on Bainbridge Island will start in November.

Up in Port Angeles, The 8th annual Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m Sunday. Events during the festival include a Grab-A-Crab derby where you can catch a crab (you don’t need a permit for this one), music, activities for kids and tribal cultural demonstrations and activities and art. The big draw, though, is why this gets included in a food blog roundup: a giant crab feed with fresh Dungeness crab served with coleslaw and corn

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This summer, I had the joy of watching the little seeds and starts I plopped into my little edible garden stretch and blossom. As a new vegetable gardener, I expected that not everything would go as planned. A “cabbage” grew up to be a giant Brussels sprout that took over a corner of the garden, shading out a few things planted a little to closely. Some purple radishes never really plumped past a skinny root, carrot seeds never quite figured out that summer had come. I had squash blossoms aplenty, but little in the way of actual squash.

But oh, the tomatoes. A couple plants snaked their way through the garden, bloomed and were produced prolifically. Also on the garden’s plus side were basil, sage and lettuce that added fresh flourishes to summer meals.

And with some of the little that remains, I recently made my favorite summer meal.

Caprese salad is a somewhat new-found taste. Though I may have had it before, the first time I remember it clearly  was eating it at a North Kitsap fire station. I’d been invited to a meal there, and among the other great dishes was caprese salad. (Side note: I learned from being a crime and public safety reporter was that firefighters make some darn fine meals, so if you ever see a chance for such a meal, jump at it.) Though wary at first, from the first bite I was in love. The combination of basil, tomatoes, olive oil and Balsamic vinegar was a simply beautiful bit of summer in my mouth.

So, in honor of the waning days of summer, this is what I made. I drizzled olive oil and dropped 12-year-old Balsamic and shook some coarse salt and freshly ground pepper over it all.

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