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03/26/13 - Three Shots

We haven't been up to much. Here are three photos of a sunset, some clouds and a fishing lure caught in a tree that we originally thought was some kind of early blooming flower.

A sunset (from our yard)

Some clouds (from along the Strait)

That fishing lure caught in a tree (looking down at Morse Creek)

Keywords: port angeles


02/25/13 - Port Angeles Farmers' Market Update

The Port Angeles Farmers' Market gets a bit quiet in the winter, but it doesn't quite close down. There are always a few regulars and even a few newcomers to keep things interesting. Nash Huber's stand has been anchoring the market by its lonesome, and even they have run out of carrots, though they still have some nice kale, turnips and potatoes.

The Chimacum chicken (and other stuff) stand is gone for the time being, but Dungeness Seaworks is back selling salmon, halibut and ling cod. It's good to see them. We also tried out Jose's Salsa, but not the salsa. We tried a bunch of tamales and some of the chiles rellenos, and we can honestly report that they are quite good. Our favorite tamale was the vegetarian one with spinach, but the pork and chorizo tamales were pretty good too. The chiles rellenos were plumply stuffed with cheese, coated with batter and deep fried. They reheated nicely in the oven, so we've been living on Jose's for a few days now.

We aren't sure who is going to be at the market next Saturday, though we're hoping to see Johnston Farm again, and possible a few other regulars. It's a long way to spring, let alone the growing season, but the farmers' market is still worth a trip downtown.


Nash Huber's stand - a stalwart anchor

A terrible picture of Dungeness Seaworks - It's that low winter light.

An even worse picture of Jose's Salsa - We'll try for a better one.

Chiles rellenos

Assorted tamales

Keywords: farmers' market, nash huber, port angeles, salmon, winter


02/22/13 - Morse Creek West

We often drive out to Morse Creek and park near the old railroad bridge. From there, we walk west towards Port Angeles. It's maybe a mile down to the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, and depending on time and energy, we'll walk for another mile or two towards town. Lately, we haven't been getting as far, but we have been seeing some amazing things.

Indian plum blossoms

Mount Baker framed by dark cloud and water

One of the many eagles

Keywords: morse creek, mount baker, port angeles


01/12/13 - New Farm at the Farmers' Market

This is a sparse time at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. A few regulars have been stalwart: Johnston Farms, the Korean Garlic Lady, and Nash Huber, offering a nice selection of winter vegetables: brussels sprouts, potatoes, squash, collards, kale and the like. Clark Farm has been there offering beef, pork and lamb - a veritable conglomerate, despite their failure to capture the geese in time for Christmas. (Wait until next year.)

However, there was one newcomer, Spring Rain Farm and Orchard was in from Chimacum offering a variety of winter squashes, preserves, eggs, and chickens. The birds are a French breed, so we bought one. It's a large roaster, so stay tuned to this site. We'll be roasting and taste testing soon.

UPDATE - 1/25/13 - We have tasted the bird, simply roasted, and it was delicious.


The new farm at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market

Keywords: farmers' market, farms, garlic lady, johnston farm, nash huber, port angeles, winter


10/04/12 - Johnston Farm at Good To Go

We're big fans of Johnston Farm and make a point of shopping at their stand every Saturday at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. Now Christy has taken her show on the road, so every Wednesday, from 11AM to 2PM, you can buy her great produce at Good To Go. Good To Go, is on Lauridsen Boulevard at Eunice Street, so it's really convenient for us. If you missed the market or just need some fresh produce on a Wednesday, drop by and see what's fresh. You can also drop in to Good To Go and buy your milk, eggs, bread and other goodies.

Johnston Farms Road Show

Keywords: farmers' market, farms, good to go, johnston farm, port angeles, shopping


10/02/12 - Market Mushrooms

This is just a quick Port Angeles Farmers' Market update. The fall mushrooms are coming in at WIld West along with king salmon and black cod. Nash has cauliflower, carrots, arugula and broccoli. Johnston Farms has amazing lettuces, celery, potatoes and lots of little tomatoes. In other words, autumn is a coming in.

Wild West mushrooms

Nash Huber

The Family Farm

Keywords: farmers' market, johnston farm, nash huber, port angeles


06/13/12 - Port Angeles Farmers Market

This has been a cold spring, so the Port Angeles Farmers' Market is still a bit lean, but there have been signs of spring, and, with the solstice coming soon, we are hoping for signs of summer. We've been buying eggs, spinach, arugula, chards of various colors, salmon, halibut, salad greens, potatoes, garlic and asparagus. Yes, Westwind Farm still has asparagus in June. According to the farmers, things are looking up, but already we are buying more and more of our groceries at the market, and we're looking forward to more.

Nash Huber

Westwind Farm

The Korean garlic lady, with greens

Johnston Farm

Kol Simcha with lamb - The Clark family was also there selling their beef and pork.

The Family Farm is back.

Mystery Bay has steamed clams and oysters.

Keywords: clark family, farmers' market, johnston farm, nash huber, oysters, port angeles, salmon, spring, summer, westwind farm, garlic lady


04/28/12 - Spring Comes to the Port Angeles Farmers' Market

It's starting to look like spring at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. Westwind Farm has their first asparagus along with potatoes, winter squash and their wonderful eggs. Johnston Farms is back with fresh coriander, squashes, braising mix, sunchokes, potatoes and other goodies. The Korean garlic lady has her garlic and greens, and Nash Huber's stand is loaded with a broad variety of raabs - flowering kales, cabbages and so on. In other words, the long winter is over.

Johnston Farms

Westwind Farms asparagus - We bought most of these, but there will be more next week.

Nash Huber's stand

Keywords: farmers' market, johnston farm, nash huber, port angeles, spring, westwind farm, garlic lady


03/11/12 - Clark Family Beef Cheeks

One rarely hears about beef cheeks. Everyone knows sirloin steak and filet mignon, and even oxtails and beef tongue have their followers, but beef cheeks seem to be neglected. We recently bought a few beef cheeks from the Clark Family Farm at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market and braised them using a variant on a Gourmet Magazine recipe. Beef cheeks have a rich meaty flavor, and properly prepared they are as tender as silk. We threw in a pack of oxtails we had missed the last time we cooked up a batch of oxtails, but the beef cheeks were the star of this show.

Kind of scary looking
INGREDIENTS
  • 4 tbsp olive oil (or so)
  • 2 lbs (or so) beef cheeks with the fell removed, plus any oxtails you may have flopping around
  • 6 medium carrots, chopped
  • 2 medium onions, chopped
  • 6 celery stalks, peeled and chopped
  • 1 tsp cocoa or chocolate nibs or other unsweetened chocolate
  • 2-3 cups dry red wine
  • 1 large can whole tomatoes (28-32oz)
  • salt and pepper to taste
There's obviously a lot of flexibility here. We like lots of vegetables, so we add lots. You can probably add some garlic as well if you wish. You do want to remove the fell from the beef cheeks if it has one, as well as any extra fat. Also, we are lazy choppers, so we mainly just slice, except for really fat carrots.

NOTE

This is a pretty generic beef recipe. You can cook beef cheeks, oxtails, short ribs and probably other cuts that benefit from long, slow braising this way.

INSTRUCTIONS
  1. Use a pot, with a cover, that you can use on the stove top and in the oven. We use a big old Le Creuset. Heat it up on the stove top with a few tablespoons of oil and brown the meats on all sides. Do this is in a few batches, so you can caramelize the meat a bit. Raise the temperature gently, but you want that Maillard reaction. After browning each batch, put the meat aside.
  2. Preheat the oven to 325F.
  3. Brown the vegetables over slightly lower heat. Don't panic if a brown crust forms on the bottom of your pot. Just use a plastic spatula and it should dissolve with the water beig released by the vegetables.
  4. Put the meat and any juices back in the pot. Add the cocoa powder and the wine and bring to a boil. Let it cook down a bit, but you'll want enough liquid so that the meat is largely submerged. Gourmet says to cook the liquid down to half its volume. We just boiled it for five or ten minutes and declared it ready.
  5. Then add the tomatoes with their liquid, some salt and pepper. Bring to a boil again, then put the pot, covered, in the oven for at least THREE hours. It can't hurt to cook it longer. Braised beef cheeks are not about cooking a pointe.
  6. Let it cool and stash it in the refrigerator overnight, or better yet, for a day or two. Remove any fat, reheat and serve.

Keywords: clark family, farmers' market, port angeles, recipe


01/23/12 - Right In Our Own Backyard

We tend to think of Olympic National Park as being in our own backyard, but when the storms struck and the roads got messy, our backyard got a bit smaller. We decided to strap on our snowshoes and explore anyway. We headed up to Peninsula College and first took the trail down to Ennis Creek. They've fixed it up nicely, and even with all the snow it was passable, especially with the proper foot gear. Then we wandered the campus a bit. Some of our old trails are gone, but there are all those neat new buildings, and, of course, lots of snow.

The gateway to the trail

Snow covered forest

More snow and trees

Some evergreens

Ennis Creek, cold and black

One of the new buildings, with snow

Peninsula College, closed on account of snow

Keywords: port angeles, winter


12/06/11 - A Sure Sign of Christmas

There's one sure sign of Christmas in Port Angeles, the annual Christmas firetruck. We wait for it every year.

Here comes Christmas.

It's brilliant and sparkly and glowing (and a bit blurry).

There goes a great metaphor.

Keywords: christmas, port angeles


11/13/11 - Port Angeles Farmers Market Report

The autumn market is here. There are potatoes, in red, brown and blue, squashes, pumpkins, celery, lacinato kale, garlic, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, baby turnips, bok choy, savoy cabbage and all of our fall favorites. The four stalwarts, Nash Huber, Westwind Farm, Johnston Farm and the Korean garlic lady are all there along with a number of other sellers.

It isn't just vegetables either. You can also buy beef, pork, lamb, cheese, salmon, halibut, steelhead, oysters, bread, and an array of seasonal mushrooms. If you search a bit, you can find a last few tomatoes, arugula, coriander and a few other hold outs, but the cold weather is coming.

Don't miss out on the prime of the harvest. Drop by the Port Angeles Farmers' Market this coming Saturday.








Keywords: autumn, farmers' market, johnston farm, nash huber, oysters, port angeles, salmon, weather, westwind farm, garlic lady


10/27/11 - We've Been Falling Down On The Job

We try and keep up to date on the Port Angeles Farmers' Market, but we've been awfully lazy about it as of late. This isn't because we haven't been shopping at the market. We've been there every Saturday, usually around ten when the market opens, and we've been buying a lot. The vegetables are out in full force, with brussels sprouts, garlic, collard greens and lacinato kale. There are winter squash and arugula and all sorts of wonderful things.

Maybe we just haven't been getting very good pictures. It's tricky taking pictures at the farmers' market. If nothing else, people are shopping for produce, and surely they have priority over a pushy photographer. In any event, here are a few pictures, a few good words, and we'll try to do better.


Nash Huber's stand is probably the easiest to photograph since everything is all bunched up nicely.

The Mystery Bay oyster stand is in operation.

This is what happens when we don't focus carefully. We can blur perfectly good Clark Family Farms beef.

Keywords: clark family, farmers' market, farms, nash huber, port angeles, shopping, winter


10/25/11 - Beads of Rain

The bird netting on our strawberry boxes had collected great glistening beads of rain. Usually, bird netting is pretty ugly, but the autumn rains and morning light made it something special.



Keywords: port angeles, art


09/25/11 - A Farmers' Market Recipe

Autumn has come to the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. The tomatoes are passing, but pumpkins and other squashes are coming in, as are the potatoes, cabbages, chards and kales. We'll try for a more detailed report soon, but for now we'll offer a recipe for banh mi. There was a booth at the market offering samples made using Pan d'Amore sourdough bread and Clark Family beef along with a collection of other market vegetables.
NOTE As usual with our recipes, feel free to experiment.

This is an awful picture we took of the ingredients. We promise to take better pictures for our next market report.
INGREDIENTS FROM THE MARKET
  • 3 cups finely shredded cabbage
  • 1/2 cup finely shredded carrots
  • 1/3 cup thickly sliced green onions (including tops)
  • 2 teaspoons chopped garlic
  • 1/2 pound ground beef or pork, browned w/ salt & pepper to taste
  • 1 thick, light-textured baguette, cut into 4 sections
  • 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves
INGREDIENTS FROM ELSEWHERE
  • 1/2 cup rice vinegar, divided
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
  • 8 teaspoons of garlic chili paste
INSTRUCTIONS
  1. In a bowl, mix cabbage & carrots with 1/4 cup rice vinegar, the salt, and sugar; let stand about 30 minutes.
  2. In a food processor or blender, combine remaining 1/4 cup rice vinegar with green onions, lime juice, ginger, garlic, and five-spice powder. Whirl until smooth
  3. Split baguette sections lengthwise almost all the way through, leaving halves attached at one side. Spread about 1 tsp. chili paste on 1 cut side of each. Add on top, then add cooked pork on cabbage mixture and cilantro leaves.

Keywords: autumn, clark family, farmers' market, port angeles, recipe


08/18/11 - Summer Comes to the Port Angeles Farmers' Market

Let's see, there are all sorts of greens, lettuce, chard, carrots, scallions, broccoli, cauliflower, basil, summer squash, bok choy, cucumbers, cabbages, raspberries, and even tomatoes. Don't forget the oysters, salmon, beef, lamb, bread, rolls, croissants and cheeses. You can do an awful lot of your grocery shopping at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market on Saturdays (10-2) and Wednesdays (2-6). (We're guessing on the hours. The official web site doesn't seem to have them anymore.)

West Wind Farms

The Korean Garlic Lady - with a lot more than garlic and dumplings

Johnston Farm

The market survey, preliminary results

The venerable Nash Huber

Keywords: farmers' market, johnston farm, nash huber, port angeles, shopping, summer, garlic lady


07/02/11 - Farmers' Market Update

Things have been getting much more lively at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. Nash Huber has fava beans, spinach and strawberries. Did he also have that Swiss chard? We aren't sure if we got it from him or Westwind Farm. We're pretty sure Westwind had carrots. Everything is a bit late, but summer is coming in. Ars longa, veggies brevis, so enjoy the season.

Nash Huber's stand

Keywords: farmers' market, nash huber, port angeles, summer, westwind farm


06/09/11 - Port Angeles Farmers' Market Update

The Port Angeles Farmers' Market gets greener by the week. Everyone has salad greens and the baby turnips are tiny, but tasty.

Preston, of Wild West Seafood, has been selling gathered foods: morels, bear claw shoots and wild ginger. We tried the wild ginger, which has no relation to the ginger root one buys at the supermarket, and it did indeed have a gingery taste, but it did not go down well. As with a lot of gathered foods, a lot can depend on preparation. Next time, we'll do a bit more research.

We also dropped by the Good To Go stand and tried some of their croissants. They definitely went down well. The baking at Good To Go just seems to get better and better.


Wild ginger - one of the asarums

Baby turnips at Westwind Farm

Salad greens and eggs

Greens and garlic at Johnston Farm

A high speed photograph of a Good To Go croissant 50 milliseconds before it was eaten. This was a true photographer's challenge.

Keywords: farmers' market, good to go, johnston farm, port angeles, westwind farm


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