lummi island wine tasting july 12-13 ’24
Hours, July 12-13 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
racoon in the cherry tree…
Friday Bread This Week
Pain au Levain – Made with a nice mix of bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours. After building the sourdough and mixing the final dough it 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 rye flour that is fermented overnight before the final dough is mixed with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat as well as rolled oats. Some honey for sweetness, a little milk for a tender crumb and loaded with raisins and a healthy dose of cinnamon. This is not a rich sweet bread with a swirl of cinnamon sugar, instead the cinnamon is mixed into the dough and flavors the entire bread. It is a hearty rustic loaf. Great for breakfast toast, even better for French Toast – $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 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 at least a week before visiting!
This week’s wine tasting
Bodega Garzon Albarino Riserva ’22 Uruguay $18
Left on fine lees in stainless-steel tanks for 3 to 6 months, developing fruity aromas of peach and citrus, fresh minerality, marked acidity, and a long and rounded finish.
Marchetti Rosso Conero ’21 Italy $22
Rich and inviting aromas of flowers, plums, brown spices, and hillside brush. On the palate, round notes of cherries, blackberries, cocoa and spice. Culminates in a satisfying, lengthy finish.
Sineann Pisa Terrace Pinot Noir ’16 Washington/NewZealand $30
Made in NZ’s Otago region by Sineann winemaker Peter Rosback; full and ripe, with great structure, good natural acidity and subtle, lingering intensity; plum and black cherry flavors are framed by soft tannins and notes of baking spices, dried herbs and fresh earth.
Wine of the Week: Sineann Pisa Terrace Pinot Noir ’16 $30
Sineann is one of our favorite wineries, and this pinot noir that their late owner/winemaker Peter Rosbach made for several years in New Zealand is one of our favorite favorites..!
Economics of the Heart: Project 2025 Hits the Newstands
By User The Artifex from flickr – https://www.flickr.com/photos/artnow/184299047/in/set-72157594191072075/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8851823
For far too long America’s mainstream media (NYT, WaPo, many more, and of course Fox) have squandered so much time on “The Contest” that news coverage of the 2024 Presidential campaign has been squandered on constant criticism of the President’s age, with purposeful minimization of the value and importance of the many economic accomplishments of his Administration. At the same time they have covered every rally, tweet, lie, idiocy, and lunacy of the Tweetster with irresponsible reticence on the existential threat posed by his relentless Ignorance about Everything Imaginable.
Now at last the mainstream press is starting to hear the rising alarm about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which offers a thousand pages of detailed plans to destroy everything this country has stood for for 250 years. It poses an existential threat to the Entire World by ending Constitutional government in our country, leaving NATO, abandoning Ukraine, and aligning politically with Russia, China, Austria, North Korea and their ilk.
So it is with long overdue and still tentative relief to see that today’s NYT has (finally!) published a major article from the Editorial Board declaring in plain language that he-who-may-only-been-spoken-of-here-with-derision as “the Tweetster, is UNFIT TO LEAD. (Which we have been saying on this blog since February, 2018.)
A rapidly growing public Firestorm is growing, unleashed by the much-hyped release of “Project 2025,“ the Heritage Foundation’s latest policy recommendations for the next Republican administration. Earlier versions of these reports played major roles not only in getting Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II into the White House, but also in providing their Administrations with detailed draft legislation carefully designed to replace moderate and liberal policy with billionaire- and dictator- friendly policies. (see video summary )
More and more people are now getting it that if these guys get control of our government again, everything we believed in and fought for about those words “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” will disappear into a dark, merciless, dystopian Hell.
As we mentioned last week, California Congressman Jared Huffman has launched the Stop Project 2025 Task Force, with an accelerated timetable for researching, analyzing, and sharing data with Congress and the public on the grave dangers of Project 2025 and working to counter them. Hopefully today’s article from the Times means that the word is getting out, and people are getting informed and energized by these grave threats. Indeed, in just the last few days “Project 2025” has gotten more online hits than “Taylor Swift” and “NFL 2024 schedule” combined!
This is serious, existential stuff, with everything our country stands for at stake. We should be as afraid of the Tweetster loyalists (many of whom were in his administration) as we would be of Tolkien’s Nazgûl ring-wraiths, (image above) the Essence of Evil, devoid of compassion, obsessed with Ego and Power.
lummi island wine tasting july 5-6 ’24
Hours, June 28-29 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Last night in late twilight we noticed this eagle high in a fir tree about 100 ft away, further shadowed by a thicket of branches. It was without a doubt the biggest eagle any of us had ever seen! Ulee saw it, too, and just stared without barking.
They DO have a Presence…!
Friday Bread This Week
Barley, Whole Wheat, & Rye Levain – a levain bread where the sourdough culture is built over several days and allowed to ferment before the final dough is mixed. Made with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat, barley and rye flours. – $5/loaf
Rye w/ Currants, Pumpkin Seeds & Cracked Coriander – a bread that I haven’t made on a regular basis. Made with a starter fed with rye instead of wheat flour, the final dough includes bread flour and freshly milled rye flour, some molasses for sweetness and pumpkin seeds, currants and cracked coriander seed make for an interesting flavor profile – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Pain aux Raisin – made with the same laminated dough as croissants. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with a mix of golden raisins and dried cranberries that have been soaked in sugar syrup. Rolled up and sliced before baking. – 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 at least a week before visiting!
This week’s wine tasting
Jacob Williams Viognier ’22 WA $32
Melon, pineapple, & confectionary notes on the nose. Green tropical fruits on the palate – a little bit of pineapple and mango. Smooth and rich texture throughout.
Monte Tondo Veneto Corvina ’20 Italy $12
Organically farmed; bright nose of fresh cherries and black pepper; fresh, light, and lively palate of cherry, dark chocolate and spice, with supple, well-integrated tannins and a smooth, seductive, slightly spicy finish. Our go-to red wine for summer lunch on the deck!
Cote 125 Corbieres Rouge ’19 France $15
Classic Corbieres blend of carignan, grenache, syrah, cinsault; rich and concentrated with blueberry and strawberry aromas and flavors, with notes of spices and black pepper, good balance, and a long, smooth finish.
Wine of the Week: Jacob Williams Viognier ’23 WA $32
For some reason a lot of people never get around to tasting viognier, a white French varietal most prevalent in the Northern Rhone region of France. It is now grown across the world, including here in Washington. Styles range from bright, light, and crisp with mouth-watering acidity to voluptuous, nuanced, and lingering. In many places, including Washington, a few percent of viognier is added to red wines, particularly syrah.
Viognier carries an aura of refined elegance compared to, say, chardonnay. You can dress up chardonnay with extended periods in new oak, time on the lees, and other methods, and it can be wonderful. But there is a reason why wine critic Karen Macneil, in her “Wine Bible,” describes viognier as “the most drippingly sensuous white wine.”
Our experience with the viognier at Jacob Williams when we first visited a couple of years ago was definitely in that category. The latest vintage might need a little more time in the bottle, but it is already showing better than many!
Economics of the Heart: The War for Everything Has Begun
Heritage Foundation President celebrates the death of Liberty with Supreme Court AI image from Davinci
The Real Insurrection against our democracy has been afoot for several decades now, with lots of preparation from the the John Birch Society, the legalization of lying talk-radio slanderers (Limbaugh and ilk made it ubiquitous 24/7), and of course Fox news, which only tells lies, usually beginning early morning with the Lie of the Day, repeated over and over and over for 24 hrs. The other Big Player is the Heritage Foundation, as discussed in detail in this in-depth interview by Lulu Garcia-Navarro with new Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts. Check it out…this man’s words radiate Evil like a Tolkien wraith, steaming with existential Menace. Make no mistake: these guys intend to control everyone and everything, with cold, business-school trained concern only for the bottom line and vast indifference for collateral casualties.
A recent BBC post offers a readable summary of the implications of Project 2025. Its goals are to take away or restrict every Constitutional freedom that we Americans have enjoyed, treasured, and defended for over 200 years. No, we are not making this up; ending democracy is the new Republican platform.
The recent Supreme Court removal of all legal constraints on Presidential “official acts” opens the door for a dictatorial Presidency with no rules at all, a Fascist state where citizens have no legal rights, no protection from politically applied arrests and punishments, while the President remains completely above scrutiny. Project 2025 is designed to guarantee the Far Right to gain and hold complete power, end elections for good as it implements its profoundly dystopian vision.
Therefore, given the ongoing leakage of hope on the left, it is a relief to read Joyce Vance’s most recent post in her daily “Civil Discourse” post, describing in detail her conversation with California Congressman Jared Huffman, founder of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force. The project has an accelerated timetable for researching, analyzing, and sharing data with Congress and the public on the hidden dangers of Project goals and methods, and work to counter them. It’s a late start, but shows promise.
That, together with the peculiar realization that our current President now has all the powers of the “Unitary Executive” the Supreme Court just awarded to “the former guy,” is a flickering glimmer of hope in our unfolding existential battle to preserve democracy. Surely Uncle Joe now has the authority to steal the election himself and lock up the other guy, yes..? I mean, isn’t that what the Justices want him to do…???
lummi island wine tasting june 28-29, ’24
Hours, June 28-29 ’24
Fridays 4-6 pm Saturdays 3-5 pm
Friday Bread This Week
Multi Grain Levain – Made with a sourdough culture and using a flavorful mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A nice mixture of flax, sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds and some oatmeal add great flavor and crunch. And just a little honey for some sweetness. – $5/loaf
Polenta Levain – Also made with a levain, known as sourdough, in which the sourdough starter is fed and built up over several days, then mixed with bread flour and polenta in the final dough mix. This bread is a nice rustic loaf with great corn flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Gibassiers – A traditional french pastry recipe from southern France. Made with a delicious sweet dough full of milk, butter, eggs and olive oil, with orange flower water, candied orange peel and anise seed. After baking they are brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with more sugar. – 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 at least a week before visiting!
This week’s wine tasting
Jacob Williams Chardonnay ’22 WA $32
Whole cluster pressed, barrel fermented on lees and stirred regularly during aging; fruity aromas of cantaloupe and Bartlett pears; lively on the palate with notes of lemon citrus, vanilla,and chalk.
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!
Rocks of Bawn Shafts and Furrows Red ’20 WA $18
88% Merlot from Frenchman Hills Vineyard (south-facing & high elevation); 12 % Merlot from Southwind Vineyard in Walla Walla (full-bodied and rich); 6% Cab Sauv from Red Mountain & Horse Heaven Hills; 4% Cab Franc and a spicy 2% Malbec from the iconic Red Willow Vineyard in Yakima Valley.
Economics of the Heart: Only You Can Save Us, Obi Juan Merchan!
Sometime in the last couple of days it occurred to me that our country and our world entered a strange and deeply disturbing sur-reality when the Tweetster came down that escalator, one no one could have made up. We have spent most of the last decade imprisoned in a disturbing, Monty Pythonesque, never-ending Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Like Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone of our youth, our world was hijacked by one insane man with an addiction for constant attention. In all that time there has been no place you can go to escape the incessant tweets and lies, the self-aggandizement. The toxicity of the Tweetster.
Right at this moment the “debate” between him and Uncle Joe is being broadcast in the other room. It is unbearable. Everything the man says is not just a lie; it’s an insane lie. NOTHING he says is true…NOTHING, not a whit, not even a single word. Ever. No wonder the Republicans are all crazy, and no wonder our entire world is poised on the brink of destruction.
The growing feeling in a lot of our guts is that EVERYTHING depends on whether or not Judge Merchan sends the Tweetster to jail. My personal desired outcome is that 1) he gets a month in jail for each of the counts of which he has been convicted, and 2) that he is barred from public speaking for the entire period. No tweets, no interviews, no TV, no film, no radio…you know, like anyone else in forced confinement.
It’s not because I want him or anyone else to suffer. It’s because all the rest of us on the planet need a break, and because in the terrifying event that he should somehow get back in the White House it will mean the End of the World. Yes, seriously, the end of human life in this little corner of the Universe for sure, and probably most species bigger than a pea.
Because he is now the tool of a much larger conspiracy to destroy our democracy completely, including tearing up the Constitution, ending elections at every level, and turning our democracy into a dystopian Fascist state controlled entirely by and for radical white Christian men with Bibles and MBA’s. They don’t know and don’t care about climate change, environmental protection, fairness, justice, or science.
Yes, I am very pessimistic. Which is why Judge Merchan may be the only person in the world who can save the Future. Not to, you know, put any pressure on him…
Yes, it’s times like these that bring friends together for spirited chats in the friendly atmosphere of a neighborhood wine shop!
lummi island wine tasting June 21-22 ’24 summer solstice
Hours, June 21-22 ’24
Fridays 4-6 pm Saturdays 3-5 pm
Credit: György Soponyai/Royal Museums Greenwich/Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021
Summer Solstice 2024 is happening as we write on Thursday, June 20. This is the moment when the sun is momentarily directly above the Tropic of Cancer, the highest latitude it achieves each year, and the longest day of the year between the moment of sunrise and the moment of sunset.
Some cultures also call this Midsummer, halfway between the Spring and Fall Equinox. The dotted lines show the paths of the sun on the solstices and equinox.
This year is particularly interesting because it is the earliest solstice since 1796, when George Washington was President of the brand-new USA. For a comprehensive and quite interesting explanation of the elusive nature of measuring calendar days, check this out at Bigthink.com.
Friday Bread This Week
Multi Grain Levain – Made with a sourdough culture and using a flavorful mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A nice mixture of flax, sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds and some oatmeal add great flavor and crunch. And just a little honey for some sweetness. – $5/loaf
Polenta Levain – Also made with a levain, known as sourdough, in which the sourdough starter is fed and built up over several days, then mixed with bread flour and polenta in the final dough mix. This bread is a nice rustic loaf with great corn flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Gibassiers – A traditional french pastry recipe from southern France. Made with a delicious sweet dough full of milk, butter, eggs and olive oil, with orange flower water, candied orange peel and anise seed. After baking they are brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with more sugar. – 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 at least a week before visiting!
This week’s wine tasting
La Vielle Ferme Rosé ’22 France $11
Classic and tasty blend of grenache, syrah, and cinsault from northern Provence; fruity, dry, crisp, delicious, and smooth, all at a bargain price!
La Vielle Ferme Rouge ’22 France $11
Great drinkability, with seductive bouquet of red fruit, spices, and cherries, well balanced palate full of delicacy, freshness, and very soft tannins.
Hess Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon ’21 California $26
Intense aromas of bright red cherry and raspberry, followed by notes of cedar and black pepper accompanied by layers of juicy, full raspberry notes, smooth tannins, and lingering finish of chocolate and roasted espresso.”
Economics of the Heart: Supreme Court Vs. The Constitution
davinci – generated image
It is now plain to see just how effective Leonard Leo and Republicans have been over the last several decades in transforming America from a nation of laws into an autocratic Christian State. These successes correlate closely with the loading of the Supreme Court with Catholics and far-right Protestants over the past twenty years.
These are the wonderful people who abandoned protection of everyone’s Constitutional rights for the whims of ultra-rich, ultra-self-entitled billionaires. These are the Men (and woman) in Black who brought us Citizens United (changing “one person, one vote” to “one dollar, one vote”); Hobby Lobby (legalizing prejudicial discrimination against selected subgroups of customers), and Dobbs (reversing the long-established precedent of a woman’s Right to make private choices about her own body.)
Our present situation is the result of what we might call Supreme Court gerrymandering by Leonard Leo and his forced-birth police, who seem to have taken control of every Red State government. Creepy stuff, reminiscent of Star Trek’s Borg phrase, “Resistance is Futile,” which serves to instill a sense of fear and hopelessness in their adversaries.
This self-centered unwillingness to negotiate proclaims that fighting back is not only futile but also a waste of effort and resources, and underscores the Borg’s relentless, ruthless nature and unwavering objective of assimilating all individuality into their hive collective. This is exactly the same tyrannical mindset that led Mitch McConnell to break from many decades of precedent by refusing to bring Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Senate floor after Scalia’s passing for being “too close to a election” (nearly a year), but brought Barrett’s nomination to the floor mere days before an election.
For most of our lives we elders have held the Supreme Court in high esteem, relatively faithful and conscientious arbiters of the nuances of a Constitution we all respect and to which many of us have sworn oaths to protect and defend. But now the Court has become deeply entwined with the politics of Leonard Leo, the Christian Right, and increasingly authoritarian Maga Republicans.
These issues led to an assessment by the Harvard Law Review of the need for reforms in general and two arguments for reform in particular because first, some of the Court’s recent decisions have been substantively so wrong that some intervention is needed to undo them and avert similar decisions in the future; and second, existing formal arguments for Court reform identify a set of changes, consistent with widely held political values, that would answer that need.
The arguments are heavy going for the non-lawyer, but well worth a read. They center on three perspectives for reform:
- Disempowerment: Whether or not judicial supremacy empowers the Court to undermine or entirely invalidate legislative and agency action as inconsistent with the Constitution.
- Procedural Reform: Whether the process for selecting Justices causes the Court’s decisions to be influenced by the wrong factors, such as partisan affiliation, political philosophy, or religious beliefs; and
- Political Power: Whether the growing sense of alarm about the degradation of the nomination and selection process has raised a sufficient sense of alarm and dissatisfaction about the Court’s recent actions to require reforms.
2072 Granger Way