lummi island wine tasting dec 13 ’24
Wine Tasting hours through December
poster by Kim Obbink
Friday, Dec 13 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
Friday, Dec 20 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
Friday Bread This Week
Buckwheat Rye – Fresh milled buckwheat and rye flours are soaked for several hours without yeast in a method known as an autolyse. As buckwheat has no gluten and rye little, the autolyse allows the grain to start the fermenting process before the final mix, which is then fermented overnight in the refrigerator. The buckwheat/ rye soaker is then mixed with bread flour, salt and yeast and a bit of honey.– $5/loaf
Whole Grain Spelt Sweet Levain – Made with a levain, also known as sourdough, freshly milled whole wheat and whole spelt before mixing with bread flour as well as a nice combination of dried apricots, golden raisins, slivered almonds and both sunflower and flax seeds. Chock full of flavor! $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – Made with a rich sweet roll dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Then rolled up and sliced into individual rolls for baking. – 2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed) will be available for pickup at the wine shop Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s Wine Tasting
courtesy stoller family estate https://www.stollerfamilyestate.com
This holiday season we mark 19 years of this little wine shop with some pretty special wines from Oregon winery Stoller. We had gotten interested in wine in the first place because Pat’s son Don, (then living in Japan) got interested in wine and was taking classes at CIA (the culinary institute, not the spies) in St. Helena, and we went to visit. And tasted a lot of wine. It was driving home in our Eurovan with a bunch of wine boxes that the idea for this place was hatched.
Don moved back to the States round ’09 and spent several years in Napa Valley, taking wine courses at Napa CC and working at a number of highly acclaimed wineries before moving to Oregon and studying fermentation science at OSU. At present he is working at the tasting room at Stoller, in the heart of Oregon wine country, where we visited on our trailer trip last week and picked up some particularly tasty wines for your holiday pleasure:
Stoller Helen’s Pinot Noir ’19 Oregon $50
Elegant nose of heady floral, baking spice, and red fruit, which gives way to secondary notes of earth and black raspberry. The palate is layered and vibrant, which carries red fruit flavors and a ferrous minerality through a long finish.
Stoller Nancy’s Pinot Noir ’19 Oregon $50
Bold, exotic aromatics are lifted with notes of dark fruits, orange blossom, and star anise. The palate is rich and structured from 35% whole cluster fermentation. Fresh flavors of brambly earth, marionberry, and sandalwood carry through a long finish.
Stoller Late Harvest Riesling ’19 Oregon $25
Lovely dessert wine from the original Riesling plantings on the estate; beautiful golden color, aromas and flavors of honeysuckle, golden raisins, and apricot; round and rich on the palate, with bright acidity that carries the sweetness to a crisp, long finish.
Economics of the Heart: 30,573 Lessons from the Lies
During the dim times of the Tweetster’s so-called “presidency” from 2016 to 2020, the Washington Post’s fact-checking team chronicled 30,573 public lies. Like a persistent rainstorm, they started out slowly, but according to WAPO, the lies grew in number and scope over time, averaging about 6 claims a day in the first year, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims/day in the third year — and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 lies, only 14 months (half the time) to reach 20,000, and exceeding the 30,000 mark less than five months later.
Everyone in the entire World now knows that this man Never tells the truth about Anything. The lying, boasting, and baiting is his nonstop schtick, his only identity being the ongoing floor show for his circus crowd. If we have learned anything in these horrible eight years of his wearying presence across media, every day, all day, ad nauseam, it is that it is 100% BS. It’s a repetitive performance that we could not seem to escape. All these years later, our sanity requires that we start ignoring him and paying attention only to policy issues actually on the table that our elected officials can actually affect, particularly Constitutional ones.
We are in this morass largely because enough Americans were apparently stupid enough to believe the 30,573 lies because they heard them over and over on Fox News, Soviet-sponsored chat bots, and social media. Even mainstream press such as NYT and WAPO deliberately damned Democrats to please their billionaire owners.
Our main talking point for today is that the T lies constantly, fomenting new outrages every day to stay on every front page in the world. We cannot live like that anymore! What he says doesn’t matter; what his radical administration does with Project 2025 is of paramount interest, and those battles will likely occupy Congress and the Courts for the foreseeable future.
We need to start living our lives as if the T does not even exist– with the one exception that whenever he accuses one of his “enemies” of planning to do something dastardly, pay attention, because it is his “tell” that HE has already done it.
Our concern now is with actual federal policy decisions, most of which involve Congress. We in the Blue States need to remain fully engaged with our state and Congressional representatives to minimize the actual economic and social damage these fools can wreak. We are in a new civil war, and we all need to show up for it. But at the end of the day, the Tweetster is just the Jack-in-the-Box to distract us from the authoritarian coup that is now underway, apparently for the single purpose of satisfying the perplexing and apparently bottomless Vanity of billionaire egos. He is just there to distract us while their mole men attack our Constitutional foundation.
The Tweetster is the least of it.
Closed Thanksgiving weekend Nov 29-30 ’24
Reminder– Wine Tasting hours through December
- Friday, NOV 29 CLOSED
- Friday, DEC 6 4-6 bread pickup only
- Friday, Dec 13 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
- Friday, Dec 20 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
lummi island wine tasting nov 22-23
Wine Tasting hours through December
- Friday, NOV 22 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
- Friday, NOV 29 CLOSED
- Friday, DEC 6 4-6 bread pickup only
- Friday, Dec 13 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
- Friday, Dec 20 4-6 tasting & bread pickup
Friday Bread This Week
Rosemary Olive Oil – made with bread flour and freshly milled white whole wheat for additional flavor and texture. Fresh rosemary from the garden and olive oil make for a nice tender crumb and crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Flax Seed Currant Ciabatta – Made with an overnight poolish that ferments some of the flour and water before being mixed with bread flour, whole wheat, and rye flours, flax seeds, and dried currants. A lot of water makes for a very slack dough that is just cut into pieces, for a really flavorful artisan loaf – $5/piece
and pastry this week…
Bear Claws! – Made with a danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with a filing made with almond paste, powdered sugar, egg whites and just a bit of cinnamon to round out the flavor. Then, because bears love honey, topped with a honey glaze after baking. –2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed) will be available for pickup at the wine shop Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s Wine Tasting
Schmitt Pinot Blanc ’17 Alsace $19
Creamy-smooth nose of subdued pear notes adds an earthy element on the palate and adds an earthy element toward a dry, smooth finish.
Humble Roots Shiraz – Viognier ’20 Australia $18
Delightful blend of 98% Shiraz and 2% Viognier; shows layers of fleshy plum, oak, and blackberry with earthy hints of incense, ash, cocoa, black currant, and pepper.
Jacob Williams Barbera ’22 Washington $34
Medium body; juicy red fruit up front opens to a savory and herbal mid-palate and earthy finish. Enjoyable now, but sure to get even better as it matures.
Economics of the Heart: Fear is the Mind-killer
For our entire lives we old-timers have enjoyed broad confidence that our nation’s Constitution effectively constrained our government institutions from partisan over-reach, regardless of party control. Over the past 30 years that confidence has been substantially eroded by the impacts of right-wing fake-news media on our government institutions, including the Executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court.
Today we face not only external enemies, but also a broad array of internal enemies which have been spreading nonstop mis- and dis-information across the media spectrum since 1987, when Reagan’s FCC abolished the guiding Broadcast Fairness Doctrine. Introduced in 1949, it required the holders of broadcast licenses to 1) devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, AND 2) to air contrasting views regarding those matters. The repeal of the Fairness doctrine opened the floodgates for 24/7 bombardment of anger-mongering political fictions across the broadcast and social media universe. Many if not all of these platforms are sponsored and maintained by very well-funded domestic and foreign enemies committed to our nation’s destruction.
The most familiar, of course, is Fox News, which has been playing the same shtick for decades now. On any given morning every pundit/host begins with the same (word for word) “lie line of the day” about whomever is the day’s target. Some people get all their “news” from these guys. As discussed in a recent post, these decades of misinformation have led much of today’s electorate to believe unquestioningly in a completely fictitious world where they are being victimized by immigrants, college graduates, vaccinations, “wokeness,” children’s books, other religions, and other idiocy. They have heard it all so often they take it for granted as true.
The last 8 years of 24/7 Tweetster Chaos is the direct result of that ’87 FCC decision to legalize the broadcast of outright lies for political purposes. That one political decision in 1987 has brought us here, today, to the brink of both national and global destruction from a number of directions. The T’s recent nominations of so many glaringly unqualified candidates to head our most important government positions has led Authoritarianism scholar Timothy Snyder to believe those selections are to not to run those important agencies, but to cripple them and give the Administration dictatorial control of the entire government with no oversight from Congress or the Courts…a truly terrifying prospect. Some others suggest they are deliberately outrageous to test the loyalty of Republican lawmakers to their lawless leader.
In Congress we are seeing some resistance to some nominations and what we hope is a growing sense of self-preservation of members to protect their Constitutional turf; but Congressional courage against the T has been hard to find. That is scary because it may be our only possible firewall against the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 plan for dismantling the Constitution altogether. We even saw a brief clip of everyone’s least favorite Senator (Josh Hawley) criticizing the nomination list. One would think that all House and Senate members would want to guard their domains of responsibility from the Project 2025 planned overthrow of democracy. On the other hand, we have seen extraordinary inability of most of them to stand up to him.
Scary times. For now have each other, our own values and commitments, our State Representatives and Senators, and State Governments and Constitutions against a highly stacked deck.
If the Tweetster gets his dictatorship, of course, there will be no further need for a Congress, a Senate, or a Supreme Court.
Many years ago a former student, friend, and world-class mountain climber based one of his “motivational talks” on a tense experience climbing frozen waterfalls somewhere in Alberta. Finding the ice was not in great shape, he kept repeating two words to himself to get across safely: Concentration. Commitment.
There are 400 million of us. We’re in this together.
lummi island wine tasting nov 15-16 ’24
Hours, Nov 15-16 ’24
This photo shows:
— a strange-hatted alien chimp on tippy toes deftly parrying a black Lab...OR
— a couple of water pipes sticking out of the wall in the crawl space..?
Friday Bread This Week
Rosemary Olive Oil – made with bread flour and freshly milled white whole wheat for additional flavor and texture. Fresh rosemary from the garden and olive oil make for a nice tender crumb and crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Multi Grain – Uses an overnight preferment of flour, water, salt & yeast before mixing the final dough to begin the enzymatic activity and gluten development in a cool environment. The next day it is mixed with bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, and rye, with cornmeal, flax, sunflower and sesame seeds for a nice bit of crunch and extra flavor. A great all around bread! – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Rum Raisin Brioche- A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with golden raisins and chunks of almond paste and topped with a chocolate glaze before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like? -$5/loaf
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed) will be available for pickup at the wine shop Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s Wine Tasting
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’21 France $14
Delicious blend of grenache blanc and roussanne; fragrant and perfumed with a light, grilled-lemon note over ripe melon, and a lingering palate of rich white peach.
Riebeek Pinotage ’21 South Africa $14
Cold soaked overnight and fermented on the lees in 80% French and 20% American oak, and blended with unoaked wine to enhance fresh fruity flavors.
Cloudlift Halcyon Cabernet Sauvignon ’18 Washington $36
From Gamache and Elephant Mountain Vineyards; bold aromas of currants, anise, black cherry, and herbs lead to bright raspberry and dark cherry flavors and a bright, lingering finish.
Economics of the Heart: GDP by Presidential Party
FDR photo by David Beach/Flickr/cc
Over the last hundred years or so, there has been an observable pattern in the relationship between Presidential party and changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as shown in the list here . While each era presents its own economic booms, busts, and challenges, a relatively consistent pattern of economic philosophies has followed each party over the last century.
The 20’s were shaped by substantial overconfidence by investors, which led to a disproportionately high stock price/earnings ratio, or what today’s Fed Board might call “over-exhuberance.” Overconfidence had led to overproduction of steel, iron, and durable goods, which caused drops in sales for large manufacturers across the economy, rapidly falling prices, and the implosion of the entire economy.
The crash hit bottom around 1932, when FDR was elected. With the help of some extraordinary people with innovative ideas, his administration introduced a number of game-changing economic stimulus policies based on the ideas of English economist John Maynard Keynes. Metaphorically, Keynes basically said that the economy is a circular flow among consumers, producers, workers, households, and government. Imagine all of these players sitting around a large table, each beginning with equal stacks of coins. At a signal, everyone starts passing coins to the person on their right. They get income from their left, and spend to the right, holding back more or less as they choose, without knowing exactly when the game will end.
After a few minutes it becomes clear that everyone has a different sense of how much or little they want to keep in their pot; some tend to horde, while others just keep passing it through. And the real economy is just like that. The Depression didn’t end until around the end of WWII. The US economy crashed originally because the wealthy had taken so much for themselves that sales crashed. FDR gradually brought it back with vast debt-supported spending both before and during the war effort, both of which kick-started the broader post-war national economy. Manned by GI Bill-educated vets, the postwar fifties was a great time to to be a kid in the US.
But none of that changed the fundamental nature of the players. From the 20’s to today, the Very Rich still feel entitled to vastly disproportionate shares of the pie, at the expense of the masses. Going back to our table, we can see a consistent pattern across the decades. Republican administrations immediately lower taxes on the very wealthy under the false claim that they “create jobs,” even when those jobs pay subsistence wages at best, even today paying workers hundreds or even thousands of times less than the owners or top execs, often not enough to house or feed a family.
The pattern that emerges is that Democratic administrations keep the money going around the circle, stimulating the economy so everyone has enough to get by with dignity. But Republicans pile it up in their money bins to earn interest, taking it out of circulation, lowering worker incomes and spending. Ironically, their compulsive avarice not only leads to widespread suffering; it also decreases their own long-term earnings.
Maybe Republicans think like my old college roommate, who used to say: “There are only so many good deals in the world, so the more people you f**k over, the more good deals are left for you!”
Their first order of business is always to cut their own taxes (Dick Cheney called it “Our Due”), taking $billions out of circulation, lowering demand, sales, employment, tax revenue, output, and employment.
2072 Granger Way