Eating locally grown produce in Olympia

We have been toying with the idea of buying all of our produce from local farmers and yesterday I submitted an order to Helsing Junction Farms  for membership (or a “share”).  Beginning around June 19th, and for 18 subsequent weeks, we will be picking up at a local drop site a selection of produce.  From what the describe on their web site they seem to offer a good variety of organic fruits and vegetables so I am excited for our first delivery and to see what comes to us over the summer and early fall. They are not only local to Western Washington but are in Rochester and so even more “local” than others, although there are a couple more in Thurston County.

What I may do if I have the time is to inventory what comes in the box and compare it to what Ralph’s Thriftway is selling those same items for to if there is a big difference.  The convenience of having it put together is an obvious advantage although you lose your ability to choose only those items you want. But, I see it as a good opportunity to eat some items, getting creative with their preperation, that I may not have tried.

The thought of strictly adhering to eating what is in season, and doing so from only what is available to us locally, is tempting with spring, summer and early fall being the easiest time to do this, of course.  I will have to do some investigating on how to accomplish that in the winter.  Now if I could just get the Smith Brothers rep to call me back and find a good local source of meat (a little research I am sure will reveal to me plenty of options) we will be covered.

Sticky hands at the Cheesecake Factory

Ahhh, my anniversary. The wife has been gone a month and arrived back today. Good timing.  My sons are happy to see their mom. The plane is two hours late, lunch has been missed by all. We’re starving but a drive through doesn’t seem right for the occasion. I know, let’s support the local economy by visiting a family-owned restaurant serving traditional recipes passed down numerous generations. That’s right, the Cheesecake factory. My mouth was watering as they handed me the pager and told me our table would be ready in 20 minutes. Great now I have more time to read the ads in the menu.

I’ve got to give a big up to “the Factory” because the service was amazing. I am not kidding. We had gone for the Thai Lettuce Wraps and Avocado Egg Rolls which are always delicious but our service was a thing of beauty.  We must have looked hungry because our server offered to bring us more bread because she said coincidentally that “we looked hungry”.  Not impressed? Just wait.  After my son ordered the slider hamburger appetizer for his meal (the order actually taken by someone else) she came back to us to make sure that we wanted all the condiments on that because sometimes kids don’t like that.  In fact, that was just the case.  Our other son orders an apple cider and is upset because he didn’t know it doesn’t come with refills. She offered to replace it afterwards with unlimited soda. After consuming our lettuce wraps I am sitting in the booth waiting for my wife to return from the restroom and she walks buy and noticed me looking at my fingers oddly. I wasn’t even conscious of this but she asked if my hands were sticky. Why, yes they were. She goes back and brings me a wet warm towel nicely folded on a plate and warns me to wait a second as it may be too hot. My wife returns and as we are about ready to leave, she asks if we want refills on our ice-tea in a travel cup for the road.

I don’t know what kind of training they give their employees but it’s clearly working.  We have gone to our fair share of restaurants in and around Puget Sound and this was the most attentive I have received in a while. When the staff anticipates your needs is when they are getting it completely right. I was expecting dependability and walked away more than satisfied.

Does this qualify as a carpool?

I drove up to Garagiste in Seattle yesterday to pick up the remaining 10 bottles from my year’s worth of purchases.  For some reason come shipping season they never seem to send them to me.  They only ship twice a year, maybe more, but either way they don’t send what I bought. There is probably something I am missing in how they do things but I have not bothered to find out, so I don’t blame them, at all. I do like the company, but I realized that whilst I can wait for shipments from other wine stores coming from other states, I don’t really like waiting over a year for what I ordered to arrive. They send out these great emails that tempt me to impulse buy right then, but then waiting so long takes the fun out of it for me. If I was buying large quantities of these small production wines it would make sense and the wait would be worth it, because if I could afford to buy that much then I probably have a cellar full of items to tide me over.  I have also realized that because I don’t have much to spend some of what I have purchased is available through other places for a little bit more. So, saving $2 on one bottle doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when there is only 10 of them.

What did I buy?

• 3 bottles1990 Clos Baudoin (moelleux) 
• 1 2005 Saggi (Washington)
• 1 2006 Souhaut St. Epine (Northern Rhone)
• 1 2005 Bagatelle Manoir de la Tete (Loire)
• 1 1994 Schloss Schonborn Kabinett (Germany)
• 1 1994 Schloss Schonborn Spatlese (Germany)
• 1 2005 Virely-Rougeot (Burgundy)
• 1 2003 Presbytere (Bordeaux)
   

I am excited about most of them for different reasons; the Souhaut being an “underground” producer using natural yeasts and old-fashioned methods; the spatlese because I don’t drink much riesling over 10 years old and I’d like to see how it holds up; the Presbytere because they make it using the same methods as the 19th century; the Saggi because it’s from Washington and a collaboration between Italian Folonari’s and Long Shadows; the Clos Baudoin because I love Sauternes and this has been compared to it.  The rest I hope to enjoy but for no special reason.

With the addition of these I now have 40 bottles in my cellar! I know it’s not much by comparison to a vast majority of cellartracker users, but it has good variety and I am proud of it. 

Downtown Olympia Could Actually Be Cool

At Kiwanis yesterday the Olympia 2012  folks shared their vision for improving the downtown area.  Their goal is to see a vibrant location for dining, shopping, people-watching, living, playing.  It seems I am not the only one that feels it could be so much more than it is now, which is basically a very small collection of good stores and restaurants, but otherwise a ghost-town come 5:30 PM except for several bars and tattoo parlors that bring in customers in the evening time.  Every Arts Walk I see the scores of people walking the streets and think that this could be the case every weekend if there was something interesting to bring people in. 

So I joined their group and I urge everyone to do the same.  One big point they made was that by joining you are not supporting everything proposal they come up with blindly. They are gathering a mailing list together to let people know when they have a proposal so you can read it and decide for yourself if you want to take action (such as going to city council meetings, etc.).  It’s being spearheaded by a cross-section of people from different backgrounds (political and otherwise, not that this matters to me one way or another) with no commercial interests, although they would allow anyone that did to be a part of the change.

Let me say there are stores I like downtown- Olympic Wine Merchant, Archibald Sisters, Batdorf, Fishbowl, to name some. I remember when the city council came to Kiwanis and I asked if they would ever consider encouraging established businesses (a refrained from using the word “chain” as the ultimate dirty word here)  to come in. They said “no-way”, that they can do that on the west side or in Lacey. I was further chided after the meeting by individuals who said I “should really go downtown more because they have some good stores.” That wasn’t my point!  I am there several times a week, but I don’t go there to have fun or spend leisure time and I am not the only one, because stores and restaurants are going out of business (Cielo Blue, a recent victim). If I was a business owner I wouldn’t mind an Urban Outfitters or other such place right next door to me.  I would prefer all locally owned businesses, of course.

Dowtown could be so cool. I know people already think it is now, but it is not my vision of it and I am glad to hear I am not the only one. I had a coworker say she did not want “my kind of people” downtown anyway so she didn’t want it to change.  I don’t know what she meant by my kind of people  (I guess that meant over the age of 26 with wife and 2 small kids) and I chose to ignore that bigotted remark, but my friends, my family and I would all spend more time and money down there if it was vibrant place in the evenings and weekends; live music more often, outdoor cafes, a nice theater showing better movies (no, not Hollywood blockbusters, but something along the lines of a Laemle) are all things I would love to see- but of course this is all just my opinion. Everyone is open to share and fight for theirs if the proposals the Oly2012 group come up with matches up.