lummi island wine tasting april 9 ’21
(Some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Bread This Week
Levain w/ Dried Cherries and Pecans – a levain is made the night before final mixing of the dough using a sourdough starter. This allows the fermentation process to start and the gluten to start developing. The final dough for this bread is made with the levain, bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and then loaded up with dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese –– $5/loaf
Pan de Cioccolate – A delicious chocolate artisan bread without lots of eggs, butter and sugar. Rather this is a rich chocolate bread made with a levain, bread flour, fresh milled rye flour, honey, vanilla and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes fabulous toast, even better French toast! – $5/loaf
Morning Buns – Made popular by Tartine Bakery in San Francisco; these are my interpretation. Made with the same laminated dough as croissants. The dough is rolled out, spread with a filling of brown sugar, orange zest, butter and cinnamon. Rolled up and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week (Again!): Flying Trout Grenache
A little over a month ago we brought in a case of this wine, and it has taken this long to get more (five more cases!). The wine was named by and for Ashley Trout, its youthful and daring first winemaker some fifteen years ago. It is made from 100% Columbia Valley grenache, a soft red varietal grown across much of southern France along with syrah and mourvedre, with which it is most often blended. Single varietal grenache is in itself less commonly found.
In 2010 she merged her winery with Tero Estates in Oregon, which built new facilities in Walla Walla (where the border between Washington and Oregon is something of a blurred concept). In 2016 Ms. Trout moved on to other pursuits, while her brand stayed with Tero. Having recently lost its longtime winemaker, Tero is in a gradual process of closing down and is closing out its remaining barrels of Flying Trout.
One can think of grenache as the feminine side of syrah; a little less forward, a little softer, a little more graceful, a little more enchanting. , as it is most often found in blends with syrah and e admit a soft spot for grenache in general, and this is a pretty good one, dark burgundy in color, with aromas and flavors of ripe dark plum and blackberry with lingering notes of clove and cinnamon. This wine offers a lot of value for its modest price of $15.
Finally! Partial Reopening April 16-17!!
We continue to be on track for a trial reopening on both Friday and Saturday, April 16 and 17. from 4-6pm. For this initial opening we will limit attendance inside the wine shop to those who completed their Covid vaccine sequence before April 1.
We will offer a wine tasting selection of three wines for $5, with fee waived if you purchase wine.
Bread pickup will continue on Fridays from 4-5:30 outside the shop. You can take a minute to ooh and aah our new shelter (see photo, left), a definite upgrade in strength and functionality from the previous one we have used since last October.
The Economics of the Heart
We are all familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is usually shown as a pyramid with basic physiological needs for survival and safety at the bottom and higher up more complex social and hierarchical needs, like being seen and heard, appreciated and welcomed. And beyond these, human beings may seek more esoteric satisfactions like self-fulfillment or self-transcendence.
Another way of looking at these needs is contained in the acronym “SAAA,” which stands for Safety, Affection, Attention, and Approval. These represent the primary categories of nourishment that we humans need to thrive as social animals.
Safety is at minimum freedom from hunger, thirst, fear, and violence, becoming at best a state some call “the Ease of Well-being.” Without a sense of safety, there is no chance for rest and renewal, and it is difficult to achieve or even take in nourishment that comes our way.
Affection is a sense of belonging to a group that cares about each other. We crave a neighborhood, a tribe, a family, a community. We need to feel welcomed and accepted. We need to matter to others.
Attention is not just any attention. If all the other primates are jumping up and down and yelling at us, that’s going to hurt. Attention is more a matter of having a role in the community, a sense of value, maybe a kind of respect.
Approval in its most fundamental form is a sense of acceptance of us just as we are, a sort of unconditional love. Hard to imagine and hard to find. No one wants to screw up. Some part of us humans is always keeping score on ourselves and on others. Maybe the best we can do is to welcome and savor approval when it comes, and to give it wholeheartedly as often as possible.
We mention this things to remind us that these are things that everyone needs, over and over, just like food and water. We are all like little sponges, hungry to find these sources of nourishment, and sometimes challenged to be such sources.
In an early song, Leonard Cohen wrote,
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
who said to me, “you must not ask for so much;”
Then a pretty woman standing in her darkened door
cried to me, “hey, why not ask for more?”
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2072 Granger Way
