lummi island wine tasting may 23-24 ’25
Summer Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 4-6 pm
Friday Bread This Week
Breton – Incorporates the flavors of the french Brittany region. Bread flour and fresh milled buckwheat and rye make for interesting flavor and the salt is set gris -the grey salt from the region that brings more mineral flavors to this bread. – $5/loaf
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient grain that is a wheat. It has a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and has gluten but it isn’t as strong as the gluten in modern wheat. This bread is made with a culture that is used to create a levain before the final dough is mixed with traditional bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and fresh milled whole rye. It is a great all around bread – $5/loaf
…and pastry this week…
Brioche Tarts au Sucre – otherwise known as brioche sugar tarts. A rich brioche dough full of eggs and butter is rolled into a round tart and topped with more eggs, cream, butter and sugar. As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in early!– 2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list.
This week’s wine tasting
Domaine de l’Amauve La Daurèle, Côtes du Rhône Villages Séguret ’23 France $21
Grenache blanc, clairette, viognier, & ugni blanc; expressive nose of white fruits, mirabelle plum, and acacia honey; soft on the palate with lively citrus flavors…yummy and very Food Versatile!
Phantom Red Blend ’20 WA $17
Petite Sirah- Zinfandel blend delivers palate of dark blackberry and boysenberry with pepper notes and on a balanced structure with tantalizing layers of baking spices sandt velvety tannins…a consistent local favorite!
Pascual Toso Reserve Malbec ’21 Argentina $21
Dry, full-bodied and generous; richly layered with aromas and flavors of ripe blackberry, sous bois, and toasty oak, with firm, fine-grained tannins that go well with savory meats and sauces. Pair with savoury herbs, rich or spicy roasts or spicy dishes. A long-time local favorite!
Seguret view
Economics of the Heart: Things are not as they seem…nor are they otherwise…
In a recent article, opinion writer David Frum began a recent broadcast with a nuanced response to a question from a young family friend, who wondered why, “if working-class wages have been in decline for 40 years, especially for men, why would anyone sympathize with the idea of free trade? Why wouldn’t they back Trump’s tariffs, given the pressure they’re under?” Frum’s rambling response providedes some interesting food for thought.
At root in the wording of the question is accepting the presumption that the real buying power of the average American worker’s wages actually has been declining since WWII, and Frum’s meandering response makes the case that from many rational perspectives the average American worker’s real buying power has increased substantially over the lifetimes of us baby boomers in general, and since 1985 in particular.
Over these 80 years the role of government in the economy has become a complex web of taxes, subsidies, and transfer payments in an ever-changing global landscape of trade, technology, innovation, and resource management. The gist of Frum’s argument is that from a lot of perspectives the average family today has better working conditions, living conditions, nutrition, education, safety, medical services and more because of technological advances in science, engineering, and productivity.
Broadly speaking, Frum suggests there is NOT a cogent case to be made that the working classes today are in worse economic shape than in the 50’s or 80’s. Rather, it is the constant and deliberate repetitive insistence of Anger Media all day every day that paints a bleak fictional reality that broad swaths of the population accept as true. Even though their economic circumstances are fine, they are taught to worry that armed immigrants are swarming across our borders to take their stuff and do them harm. Just like the Newspeak of 1984, right-wing media has for many years been a constant barrage of fear-mongering rants.
So why has there been this widespread media noise proclaiming that the nation has become unaffordable, or taken over by vicious illegal immigrants, or “woke” liberals, or gays, or transgenders, or the many other targeted “enemies” of the self-proclaimed morality police? Is it as Bill Clinton used to say with a shrug, “just politics”…? Or is it just exactly what it looks like: nonstop, deliberately generated, purposeful propaganda to convince people that everyone is lying and no one can be trusted.
The consistent day to day business of Republican politics since about 1990 has been to sow chaos and discontent across the nation, continually expanding the “enemies” list to ever more people and institutions and viciously vilifying them on national television and social media, day after day after day. This has been going on since 1987 — nearly 40 years– when the Reagan FCC eliminated the long-enshrined requirement that all public news broadcasts must tell the consensus truth if there is one or all conflicting views if there is not.
Within months of that one regulatory change, right-wing, rural, religious radio and TV began non-stop Republican/Christian, deliberately slanderous, anger-mongering lies directed at discrediting named individuals, political parties, immigrants, and critics, and painting them as vicious enemies intent on murdering you and your family and taking all your stuff. But actually of course, the Project 2025 managers are the ones who want complete control of everyone’s life. They don’t care about your stuff; they care about the control.
There is a deep sadism at work here. Many of the Tweetster’s vastly under-qualified Cabinet members act like adolescent bullies for whom scaring or hurting animals or other people is a turn-on. In that they share the Tweetster’s pleasure in inflicting pain on others and in being feared than on being liked or respected.
Mr. Frum closes with this: “In every way you can measure, America is a better place today than it was 40 years ago. And if it isn’t as much better as we would like, well, the future is open. We can do more to make it better, faster for more people. But it is better. It was better. You have to believe in your country, and you have to not give an inch to those who defame the country in order to maximize their own power and their own cruelty.”
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2072 Granger Way