lummi island wine tasting jan15 ’21
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Bread This Week
Pain au Levain – “Levain” is more familiat to Americans as sourdough. It’s made with a nice mix of bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours. After building the sourdough over several days and then mixing the final dough the dough gets a long cool overnight ferment in the refrigerator. This really allows the flavor to develop in this bread. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Cinnamon Raisin – Made with a poolish of bread and fresh milled whole rye flour fermented overnight before the final dough is mixed with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rolled oats. Unlike a sugary cinnamon roll, this is a hearty rustic loaf with the cinnamon is mixed throughout the dough. Great for breakfast toast, even better for french toast. – $5/loaf
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A rich pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled out, spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Maryhill Winemaker’s Red ’16
Over the last decade Washington’s Maryhill Winery has been making more and more, and better and better wines. The winery is located at a “wide spot in the road” in the town of the same name on the Columbia River near Goldendale. The town has a fascinating history. Perched high on the north bank of the Columbia, the winery provides visitors with a panoramic view of the Columbia Gorge. Quite spectacular.
The winery produces some fifty different wines from vineyards across Eastern Washington. Therefore, like most large wineries, there is a lot of fruit left over after the best fruit is selected for flagship wines, the next best for its second tier, and so forth. Each year the leftover red juice is blended in many different combinations to find the best blend for that year’s juice, and put into the Winemaker’s Red. Similarly, the leftover white juice is blended into that year’s Winemaker’s White.
All of that results in wines that are tasty and inexpensive. And since we are devoted advocates of wines that offer a lot of quality per dollar, we often stock this wine.
We will be offering complimentary tastings of this wine during Bread Pickup!
Maryhill Winemaker’s Red ’16 Washington $13
Wine Emergencies…Who Ya Gonna Call?
While Covid continues to limit our movements and associations, we will continue to help you keep your wine shelves topped up. We know how it is…one minute your wine shelves are reassuringly stocked, and the very next day you reach for something and OMD, where did it all go?? It happens to all of us during these undifferentiated days and weeks of semi-quarantine.
But fear not, mis amigos! When a wine emergency strikes YOUR wine pantry, just click on the Order Wine link in the header above to browse our list of currently available wines with tasting notes and prices. When you have made your selections you can phone us with your order or email us using the Contact Us link above. We will confirm your order and make arrangements for pickup/delivery at your convenience. EZ-PZ!
Mar a Lago Update: Tea Party Grieves Loss of Mad Hatter
In 2011 A Pew Research study based on the 2010 mid-term national election showed that Tea Party supporters made up 41% of the electorate, and 86% of them voted for Republican House candidates in that year’s election. The study found that those who self-identified as Tea Party supporters not only had substantially more conservative views on taxation, government spending, and corporation rights than other Republicans, but also had more conservative views on abortion, immigration, and gun rights. It was a growing political force, dating back to Gingrich.
In 2018, Lawrence Rosenthal wrote a lengthy and absorbing piece for the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley called
Trump, The Tea Party, The Republicans, and the Other. The article clarifies and unifies a number of seemingly disparate trends we have all observed over the past four years…and which relate in a very real way to the finding noted above in 2010.
We all remember when Trump became a viable candidate in the Republican debates and began surging ahead in the polls. It was his promise to build The Wall that would keep out “those Mexican rapists and murderers” who were swarming across our Open Borders by the tens of thousands. This position was not something he made up. Rather, he learned it was the Tea Party’s No. 1 issue by listening to right-wing talk radio and hearing Tea Party Nation’s Judson Phllips say, “…amnesty is the defining issue. There is no middle ground. There cannot be any form of amnesty. We need a president who will put the interests of Americans first.”
And that was that. Trump is not without skills. He has been a professional con man his entire life. He was in his element. Everything after that was easy: he had the Tea Party, the new majority of Republican voters, in his pocket. In fact there was a report during his ascension in the polls when numerous supporters were interviewed. Curiously, they all dismissed everything he said except for one or two phrases that convinced them that He Understood their particular kind of pain. This kind of emotional salesmanship is the hallmark of a true psychopath, who unconsciously knows when to use the lure of carrot and threat of stick to elicit the desired behavior.
Later in the article Rosenthal discusses how, philosophically, the broader context of the Tea Party illustrates Nietzsche’s view of the interplay between Resentment (anger toward members of the Superior classes), and Contempt, its opposite (disdain for members of Inferior classes.). Very broadly speaking, this point of view suddenly sheds a new light on the last ten years (or more) of American politics, one which has really come into sharp focus in the past few months and days. Numerous liberal late night talk show hosts regularly taunt their attitudes to the point that “The Tea Party Right is acutely aware of, and deeply resents, an attitude in the liberal world that regards them as the backward, almost premodern, fraction of American society.” Ouch!
It is a terrible thing to feel inferior, and it is a terrible thing to make another feel inferior. It is (by definition) the mark of Gentlefolk do neither. Could it be that the root of all human discontent derives from such a simple thing as feeling inferior or making another feel so? Is that why Tea Party Republicans are always so Angry? Why at Congressional hearings they are incapable of talking in declarative sentences? Why they seem incapable of speaking without raising their voices, without sarcasm, without exaggerated disrespect? Why people invade the Capitol with willingness to kill and destroy?
Two thoughts:
- It is always a bad idea to confuse people by acting angry when you feel hurt, because people respond to what they see. Show me anger, I will be defensive, show me hurt, I will be supportive. It’s not complicated. Just ask for what you need; don’t confuse people.
- An old Kung Fu episode ended with Caine lamenting to an angry young man he has befriended, “My friend…what a difficult path you have chosen.”
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