2010 Kitsap County Fair canning
entries. Photo by Meegan Reid
WSU Kitsap Extension once again is offering a series of food
preservation classes so you can take a taste of that very short
summer into winter.
This time, all classes are from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sundays at the
Silverdale YMCA, and you can
register online. Cost is $95 for all four classes or $35 per
class.
Classes start Oct. 9 with a look at Sassy Salsas. Guess what
you’ll be making.
Next up, on Oct. 16 is “In a Pickle” in which they’ll discuss
the process of fermentation and brining pickles. Participants will
make and take home a quick-make pickle.
On Oct. 23, you can learn how to safely use a pressure cooker to
can low acid foods like vegetables, seafood and meats. In class,
participants will can low-acid vegetables.
Oct. 30 is a look at the variety of ways to preserve apples from
canning it to making pie filling, dehydrating, and making sauces
and ciders. Participants will take home a jar of apple sauce.
If you’ve ever seen those impressively pretty plates of
Scandanavian cookies and wanted to learn to make your own, now’s
your chance.Oslo Lodge, Sons of Norway in Bremerton will host
three, free cookie baking workshops.I heard about it somewhat late
(in today’s paper), so the first one, in which the group baked
Spritz cookies beginning at 9 a.m. today will probably be tough to
make in time (about 15 minutes as of this posting).
The next two, however, are coming Sept. 26 and Oct. 3, also
starting at 9.
On Sept. 26, they’ll bake Sanbakkel (pictured), which is A
tender almond cookie baked in tiny tins.
On Oct. 3, it’s Krumkake, airy cookies baked on a special hot
iron with decorative etching and rolled into a cone.
Registration is required. Call 360-373-1503 or 360-377-7356.
The classes are at the lodge on Warren Avenue, at the north end
of Olympic College’s parking lot near the bridge.
For this week’s food news roundup, I thought I’d serve up a few
ideas for food-inspired day trips this weekend.
Lavender on the Tongue
As part of this year’s Sequim Lavender festivals, a new one
called Lavender Farm Faire has been added, an it includes a
culinary
program with food, crafts and cooking demonstrations at
Carrie Blake Park (click for a Google map). The festival
started Friday, but goes through Sunday.
Five cooking demonstrations will happen Sunday, though Sunshine
Lavender and Herb Farm will host several a day today and Saturday.
Among what’s cooking will be a four-course meal made by Cedarbook
Lavender and Herb Farm with a spring green and asparagus salad with
cranberry lavender vinaigrette, roasted red potatoes with Herbs de
Provence (with lavender, of course), grilled flank steak with
lavender pepper marinade and sautéed pears with lavender honey.
Farms also will offer lavender-laced (and non-lavender) foods
throughout the fair. The wine and beer garden also will offer a
taste of Olympic Cellars’ lavender infused wine Mélange Nouveau.
Purple Haze restaurant will have a variety of food and lavender
cocktails (margaritas and cosmopolitans).
Across the water on the other side of Kitsap this weekend is the
annual Bite of
Seattle at the Seattle Center.
For those who’ve in the past grown tired of going and getting
filled up on only one giant plate of taste (or bursting at the
seems when you try to top off two plates with a
Shishkaberry), this year’s festival requires participating
restaurants to have actual bite-sized portions for $3.75, the
Seattle Weekly reports.
Over at the Fisher Building, local celebrity chefs will offer
near-hourly demonstrations for
The Bite Cooks portion of the festival. And in the Alki
courtyard, for $10, you can get into
The Alley, hosted by Tom Douglas for tastes from both
established and new Seattle restaurants. Most proceeds from the
Alley benefit Food Lifeline, so you can feed your soul a little as
well.
Strawberry Festival
Vashon Island is home to a festival more than a century old
(though it apparently has had several names over the years). The
Strawberry
Festival has a variety of vendors, like those you’d see at a
variety of small-town festivals, including booths with strawberry
shortcakes, smoothies, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. The
weekend festival also includes what I’ve decided should be a
requisite at any festival, an early morning pancake breakfast (with
strawberries!). A shuttle leaves every 30 minutes from the ferry
terminal. It’s $1 each way.
Pike Place Chef Demos
On Sunday, Pike Place Market hosts another of its
Sunday chef demonstrations with Burce Naftalay of Le Gourmand
at noon and Seth Caswell of emmer & rye at 2 p.m. Next Sunday is
the second annual “Master of the Market” cooking competition.
Note on next weekend
The brewer
lineup for Bremerton’s Summer Brewfest on July 23 was announced
this week. The event will include 24 breweries, including Kitsap’s
half dozen commercial breweries.
The same day (or maybe before) also is supposed to mark the
opening of Bremerton’s Toro
Lounge on Pacific Avenue.
And lastly, as I just mentioned earlier this afternoon, Sunday
will be the inaugural
Sunday farmers market in Bremerton.
Just a note
I apparently missed this when it went online in late May, but
Bremerton’s Blackberry fest apparently got
a nod from New York Magazine, which compiled a list of 50 food
destinations in 50 states. They recommended the blackberry slugs
and had this to say in general, “devotees can head to a three-day
orgy of blackberry consumption: the Bremerton Blackberry Festival,
held along the boardwalk in downtown Bremerton — a smallish Navy
town southwest of Bainbridge Island on Puget Sound.” I pity the
poor New Yorkers who’ll take the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge
and drive 50 minutes to Bremerton. Hopefully someone at the
terminal will point them the right way.
The restaurant action, it seems, is on Bainbridge Island.
Recently chef and food writer Greg Atkinson announced that he would
open a restaurant on the island. Kitsap Sun’s reporter Rachel
Pritchett
talked with him about it for a story on Monday. By Wednesday,
news had surfaced that Hitchcock, whose locally focused fine dining
fare has been lauded by area food critics, may expand into the
space next door,
according to Bainbridge Conversation’s Tristan Baurick.
At Poulsbo’s farmers market on Saturday, Chef Tomas Nevarez,
owner of the in-home chef instruction company Simmer Down will
demonstrate creating a meal with locally harvested foods.
At Bainbridge Farmers Market, fstopcafé will offer a coffee
roasting demonstration and tea tastings and a talk on tea.
Other Northwest News
Seattle Beerfest
started Friday. The annual, often crowded, convention for beer
geeks at Seattle Center promises 130 brews on tap. It opens at noon
Saturday and Sunday. Cost is $25
I missed this last week, but apparently of note is that
Seattle’s food scene is better than Portland’s,
according to Sunset Magazine, which pitted top cities against
each other. Hmmm, I envision a Portlandia episode in the
making.
And now, I’m cutting this short so I can get to …
Fourth of July
Northwest weather guru
Cliff Mass predicts that the holiday will get off to a cloudy
start, but will sun up by the afternoon with temperatures in the
mid-70s. That means, of course, prime grilling
weather. Every food magazine out there has grilling guides
and suggestions.
Personally, I’m not a fan of making all the food red, white and
blue (that’s what decorations are for), but there are some more
subtle colored-food touches such as red, white and blue potatoes as
suggested by Bainbridge Farmers Market, or maybe a little
blueberry, raspberry cobbler.
Coincidentally, as the Sea Life blog’s Jeff Adams
reminded readers, this weekend also is open to crabbing season
and “crabs are as Northwest’erican as espresso and apple pie,” he
said. You can grill crab, though some suggest that (after cleaning
it, of course) that you lightly wrap it in foil. Crab can be easy
to overcook, so be gentle.
From the Food Life recipe archives (which I realize is a bit
anemic), I can suggest
Peruvian kebabs with roasted yellow pepper sauce, perhaps
accompanied by
grilled corn on the cob and for dessert,
grilled nectarines with berry sauce, though blueberries may
make a more seasonally friendly accompaniment than
blackberries.
Also of note from the fine food publications out there, Saveur
magazine this year offered a
grilling guide that included a half dozen barbecue sauce
recipes from Dr. Pepper sauce to Carolina gold, briskets and hush
puppy or pickled sides (holy wow, why aren’t I eating right now?!).
Southern Living boasts the
“ultimate” grilling guide. And for those who want fewer
calories, Cooking Light also has a Fourth
of July recipe compilation.
As always, fell free to share any other suggestions you have for
celebratory eating on the Fourth! Hope you all eat (and/or drink)
well and stay safe!
This week, the big food news locally seems to be that some grocery
store opened in Silverdale Friday. Trader something. It gave
even Seattle-focused Bainbridge Islanders something
to talk about regarding the main peninsula besides Costco.
To Market, To Market
Elsewhere in the local food world, Bainbridge farmers market
heralded the arrival of the season’s first, fresh island
strawberries! The market starts at 9 a.m. Saturday, and in years
past, those berries cleared out fast.
At the Poulsbo market Saturday, “Bug Chef” (yep, it’s what you
think it is) David George
Gordon will be signing his new book “The Secret World of Slugs
and Snails: Life in the Very Slow Lane” at 10 a.m. and 11:30
a.m.
Brews
For those looking to venture outside Kitsap for Excitement this
weekend (or looking for somewhere to take dad), Kenmore is hosting
the Washington Brewers
Festival, which features 60 brewers purring 200 beers Saturday
and Sunday.
As part of it’s continuing series of food classes, Washington
State University Kitsap Extension will host a class on fermenting.
(Think sauerkraut.)
Here’s their press release on the class:
BREMERTON – Experienced and novice food preservationists will
learn all aspects of fermenting foods at the Friendly Fermentation
class to be held at the Silverdale Community Center on Saturday,
June 18th, 2011.
WSU Kitsap Small Farms Team is pleased to host nutritionist and
fermentation diva, Trish Carty for this afternoon workshop.
Friendly Fermentation will de-mystify home fermentation, while
simplifying the process and enforcing the health benefits of
lacto-fermented foods. The class will cover a brief historical view
on fermenting, detail the process involved, and discuss materials
to get you started. We will have several hands-on demonstrations to
show just how simple fermentation is!
In her book, Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon writes, “The
proliferation of lactobacilli in fermented vegetables enhances
their digestibility and increases vitamin levels. These beneficial
organisms produce numerous helpful enzymes as well as antibiotic
and anti-carcinogenic substances. Their main by-product, lactic
acid, not only keeps vegetables and fruits in a state of perfect
preservation but also promotes the growth of healthy flora
throughout the intestine.”
Friendly Fermentation will be held on Saturday, June 18th,
1:00pm – 4:00pm at the Silverdale Community Center, 9729 Silverdale
Way NW, Silverdale, WA 98383. Cost for the class is $35/person or
$50/ family. As always, 4-H and FFA youth are free. To register
visit the WSU Kitsap
Extension website at http://kitsap.wsu.edu/. For more
information about Friendly Fermentation contact Shannon Harkness at
360-337-7026 or shannon.harkness@wsu.edu.
About the WSU Kitsap Extension Small Farms Team:
The Small Farms Team provides educational programs and
research-based information for Kitsap
farmers, consumers, decision-makers, and others involved in local
food systems. Learn more at:
http://kitsap.wsu.edu/. WSU Extension programs and employment are
available to all without
discrimination. Evidence of noncompliance may be reported to your
local WSU Extension office.
People who walked around downtown Poulsbo during Viking Fest
last weekend may have noticed a new store on Front Street. Crimson Cove, which has been
selling smoked salmon, smoked cheeses, nuts and other goods at area
farmers markets during the past few years has opened a
storefront.
Mark and Jody DeSalvo began selling smoked goods in 2007. They
use alder and apple woods to smoke their goods from a building in
Kingston.
The store, next to Sluy’s Bakery, has the same salmon and the
variety of cheeses from blue to swiss that they’ve sold at farmers
and other area markets as well as smoked salts, nuts, dips,
crackers and salsas so boaters at Poulsbo marina can take back
enough snacks for a day on the water. Plus, they have samples.
THE SUN IS OUT! With such a murky May, that’s something to
shout about. And to celebrate. I’ve already got iced barley tea in
the making in anticipation of warmer weather yet.
Both Poulsbo and Port Townsend farmers markets are canceled on
Saturday, but in their stead will be the festivals that pack West
Sound communities during Memorial Day Weekend. You may not be able
to get the same fresh veggies, but there will be parades and
pancake breakfasts. And if you’re a really
industrious Kitsapper (and festival nut), you may be able to
squeeze in a foot ferry ride to Port Orchard after Bremerton’s
Armed Forces
Day Parade (10 a.m.) before you head over to Viking Fest’s (2 p.m.). How
you can also fit in Port Townsend Rhody Fest’s
(1 p.m.) is beyond me.
Seattle
Green Fest runs Saturday and Sunday at Qwest Field Event
Center. While it’s focused mostly on green businesses and the like,
booths will have organic vegetarian dishes, organic beer and wine
and a chocolate and sustainable coffee pairing talk at noon on
Sunday.
The Small Potatoes blog has posts again after taking a little
(like bouncing baby little) hiatus. She returns with
this post on feeding the new little locavore with tips on
equipment and food.
$5 Market Lunch
Over at the Kitsap Cuisine
blog, Brandy had a chance to check out the new market lunch
offered on Saturdays at Bay Street Bistro in Port Orchard. Here’s
part of what she says of it in her
post: “The idea is, you can come in on your own and have a
low-cost plate of something wonderful, or better yet, come in with
friends and order several plates to share in the Mediterranean
style. … I thought this was a great way to get a feel for chef’s
style.” Looks like I have something to try out on Saturday.
End of the World
At 6 p.m. Saturday, the world as we know it is
slated to end, according to Harold Camping, head of the
Christian network Family Radio. What does this have to do with
food? Well, one clever LA Times blogger has decided (and
blogged) that such an event calls for musing on last meals.
Hers includes margaritas, tempura-battered fried chicken and red
velvet cake. My last day of meals would likely include duck breast
in cherry sauce from La Fermata, popcorn with lots of Ajinomoto
(essentially pure MSG because who cares at that point?) my
grandma’s yakisoba, iced and sweetened matcha and one last, full
pint of chocolate peanut butter ice cream. How about yours?
Fish Hype
The year’s first shipment of Copper River salmon made its way to
Seattle Tuesday to much (though brief) ado
from the local TV stations. don’t get me wrong, the fish is good.
But I think some of the breathless hype and a fair amount of the
cost has just a little to do with marketing. King fillets are,
however,
a little cheaper at about $30 to $50 a pound at Pike Place
market this year because of a better run.
Chocolate Scientist
Theo chocolate factory in Fremont apparently has a chocolate
scientist,
according to The Stranger’s Charles Mudede. Andy McShea
apparently has been working to make pure chocolate into more than
candy bars. He’s been making beverages and pudding with nothing
else added. He tells The Stranger, “By looking at the material, and
understanding its properties, we can do fun things with it.”
That’s all for this week. I’d have read more food news, but
frankly, I’m too busy closing my eyes and setting my face toward
the sun! Have a great weekend!
Steven Gardner
reports for Saturday’s paper that the Bremerton Bar & Grill is
slated to open April 18.
It, like its brethren Neighborhood Grills
establishments, will offer for dinner steaks, fish and chicken
dishes with prices ranging from $13 for burger plates to $17 for a
surf and turf, based on a look through the site’s menus. For
lunch, offerings include the same burgers, sandwiches and salads on
the dinner menu for a slightly cheaper price on some items (about a
$1 off on sandwiches).
For nice days, the restaurant will have outdoor seating that
faces the park.
When opened, it will be the second new restaurant to open in
Bremerton this year. The other, Orion in Manette, opened in
February. I’ll have more details on that one for an upcoming
edition of of the paper and this blog.
While most of the
classes and workshops at the West Sound Small Farms Expo are
focused on food growers, a series of four are focus on food making
and food systems. Other classes focus on marketing, livestock and
horticulture.
The expo is Saturday March 5 and runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cost
is $55 and lunch is provided. More info is available on WSU Kitsap
extension’s website. Even better,
Diane Fish and Shannon Harkness are writing a
multiple posts on the expo on the expo on the expo in the
Kitsap Farm to Fork blog.
Kicking off the food system sessions is Amy Pennington, a
Seattle woman who triple times as a gardner, cook and food writer,
and is most recently noted for her book
Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and
Seasonal Kitchen. She’ll talk about keeping a well-stocked
pantry for all-season sustainability. She’s also the lunchtime
keynote speaker, when she’ll talk about urban farming,
sustainability and resourcefulness. She’ll also be there with books
to sign.
The second session is on the Kitsap Food Co-op. The fourth is on
changes coming to Kitsap County’s codes to make the county more
farm-friendly.
But it’s the third food-system session that most piques my
interest: charcuterie. Olympic
College culinary instructor chef Chris Plemmons will take on a
whole hog, describing butchery and meat preservation.
As part of a video class about two years ago, I sat in on an OC
culinary class. The chef stood in front of the class inside a
dining room at a large, stainless steel table with one of those
tilting overhead mirrors so students could watch him cut as he
talked. Students were then randomly assigned cuts to perform.
The video I shot that day did not make it out of class because
it wasn’t for the faint of heart, those of us who are far more used
to seeing pork chops only on white Styrofoam trays covered in
plastic wrap. Regardless, it was one of the more interesting food
demonstrations I’ve seen. It also made me appreciate a wider
variety of cuts and feel guilty about only buying bacon and pork
loin from that pig.
Whether farmer or foodie, I’d love to hear your take on the expo
if you go.
