lummi island wine tasting april 21 ’23
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday, April 21
PLEASE NOTE: The wine shop will be closed until the end of ferry drydock, and reopening Friday, May 26. Friday bread pickup will continue from 4-5:30 pm, and “emergency” wine purchases can be arranged with Janice at those times.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Multi Grain Levain – – Made with a sourdough culture and 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 polenta add great flavor and crunch. And just a little honey for some sweetness. A great all around bread that is full of flavor – $5/loaf
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 to make for a nice tender crumb and a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Traditional Croissants – Made with both a sourdough levain and a prefermented dough – aka “old dough”– where a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast is fermented overnight. The final dough is then made with more flour, butter, milk and sugar, laminated with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional french croissants. –2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Restaurant of the Week: Elizabeth Station
Okay, okay, this is where we usually showcase one of the wines we are pouring this week. But as it turns out we had to go to town yesterday for a bunch of errands (including a beauty shop grooming for Ulee) and had a little time to grab some lunch. Our thoughts turned to Elizabeth Station, next to the old Aftermath Club at the corner of Broadway and Holly in Bellingham.
Though we had not been there for some years, last weekend a wine shop visitor who had been there recently was totally WOW’ed by their pizzas. Since we had to go right by it to get from downtown B’ham back out to the ferry dock, we stopped by to check it out.
They still have a vast selection of 1000 beers from everywhere, with 22 on tap. But the main business is Pizza. And as our wine shop guest had reported, this place takes “pizza” to a whole new level of subtlety, quality, and flavor. Think of it as “the magic of turning ‘pizza’ into ‘Gourmet Dining!’
A brief phone interview with manager/chef Tam Nguyen revealed the simple secret: an ongoing quest to source the best possible ingredients from regional artisan farms, mills, and cheese producers. The quest began when visitors and sales fell rapidly as Covid spread. That led a new vision: to make great pizza that people could order by phone and bring home with a six-pack of one of their wide selection of great beers and minimal contact. The magic was in tying that idea to a growing network of regional sources of the very best ingredients. That commitment makes an impressive difference. So no, all pizza is not created equal. Yum!
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting:
Phantom Chardonnay ’20 California $15
Entices with its rich layers of green apple and pear that lead into spicy flavors of freshly baked apple pie, while barrel fermentation imparts a creamy, luscious mouthfeel finishing with sweet notes of vanilla and melted caramel.
Monte Tondo Veneto Corvina ’20 Italy $12
Organically farmed; bright nose of fresh cherries and black pepper; fresh and lively palate of cherry, dark chocolate and spice, with supple, well-integrated tannins and a smooth, seductive, slightly spicy finish.
Tre Donne Langhe Nebbiolo ’18 Italy
Dark mauve in color ; nose of red berries, tobacco, and chocolate opens to a balanced palate marked by soft, structured tannins that pair well with well-seasoned dishes, tasty sauces, and roasted or grilled meats.
Economics of the Heart: Price Elasticity of Demand
painting by Nancy Ging
Some bits of Economic Jargon are actually pretty useful concepts. Here in our little island paradise we have been beset for several months with the prospect of a major ferry fare increase. Our community has presented many questions and arguments against many aspects of the proposal, and we have seen some minor adjustments to soften the proposals a bit. Nevertheless, next week the County Council is scheduled to vote on the proposal which, though we have riddled it with holes, and though we have had some teasing indications that our arguments may be getting a little traction, the matter still seems to be on schedule for logic-defying passage in the coming week.
In the midst of all of this, a fairly simple economic concept which is fairly central to the matter continues to be ignored: price elasticity of demand. (read more)
We all operate on some kind of budget, so when the price of something we regularly buy goes up, we try to use less of it or substitute something else for it that will serve the same purpose. If it’s something we must have (gas for the car, say), then in the short run we will pay the higher price while we shop around for a lower one. In the longer term we might carpool, take the bus, or walk to save money. In the case of ferry fares, daily commuters pretty much have to pay the higher fare, at least for a while or until they can move away.
Raising a price brings in more $ per purchase but lowers the quantity purchased. If demand is perfectly elastic, raising your price will reduce your sales to zero. If it is perfectly inelastic, everyone will have to pay the new price until they can find an alternative. In between there will be gains from higher prices and losses from fewer sales. In the case of our ferry, major (300%!) fare increases from 2007-2011 increased revenue for a year or two until many commuters moved away and were replaced by retirees and telecommuters, whose far more elastic demand lets them ride a little less and stay on budget.
In that sense those major fare increases a dozen years ago “poisoned the well” for future fare hikes by pushing away so many commuters. It is anyone’s guess what will happen next week, but we can be pretty confident that demand now is far more elastic than ten years ago and that a major fare increase will bring disappointing revenue changes for the County.
For all these reasons a number of residents are supporting a much smaller fare increase (10% or so), along with a summer surcharge on cash fares, and monitoring of results as a limited experiment on whether it could raise revenue a bit with manageable impact on the community.
lummi island wine tasting april 14 ’23
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pain au Levain – Made with a 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. A great all around bread – $5/loaf $5/loaf
Cinnamon Raisin Rye– Made with a poolish of bread and fresh milled rye flour that is fermented overnight. The final dough is mixed the next day 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 to flavor this hearty rustic loaf. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – These are made with a rich sweet roll dough that is 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. And boy are they delicious!! – 2/$5.
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Shatter Grenache Côtes Catalanes ’19 France $19
The wine is made from grenache grown in vineyards located near Maury in the Roussillon region of Southwest France by California winemaker Joel Gott.
As it turns out, we were lost for a bit in this very area about ten years ago. We were staying in Lagrasse, at the northern edge of the Corbieres wine region, and drove south through the rugged landscape where centuries ago the heretic Cathars fortified themselves in remote mountain fortresses to practice their particular form of Catholicism. It’s a long, sad, and brutal story.
As we moved into Roussillon, we found ourselves on a narrow dirt road winding through farmland when the road took a sudden dip onto a Very Narrow one-lane “bridge,” close to the water and with no guard rails, and from our vantage point no clear sense of where it went after that.
Eventually we got up the nerve to cross it, and within a half mile came to a major highway along the boundary between Corbieres and Roussillon very close to Maury.
The area is known for its nutrient-poor schist soil which forces vines to grow deep to find nutrients, evoking concentrated flavors. The name Shatter and the bottle photo are an homage to the shattered schist soil. All in all, pretty tasty!
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting:
Pascual Toso Chardonnay ’16 Argentina $14
Aromas of ripe green apple, pineapple and mango; full, fresh palate with bright acidity, finishing with a slight toasty hint on a smooth, lingering finish.
Robert Ramsay Mason’s Red ’16 Washington $17
Easy-drinking cinsault-dominant Rhone blend; subtle nose of black cherry paste with a hint of cinnamon spice that expands on the palate to a soft anise finish.
Shatter Grenache Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes ’19 France $19
From Old Vines in Roussillon’s black schist soil; nose of dark fruit with a hint of espresso; velvety texture with black currant, spice and cured meat flavors with a touch of coffee; firm structure, supple tannins, excellent acidity and overall balance.
Economics of the Heart: Economics, Finance, and Usury
There is a lot of public confusion about economics. So let’s clarify a few things. First, economics has nothing to do with either “money” or “finance.”
Economics is about value, something completely intangible. You can’t hold it in your hand. You can’t see it. You can only feel it, because it’s about you and your values, not about stuff. We are constantly making decisions about what we want to eat or drink, or where to go, or what to do next. Every decision has an economic component– what to do for the next five minutes, what to wear, where to go, what to eat…and the inevitable calculation of how much effort it will take, how likely it will be successful, and whether it will be “worth it.” So there it is: we are constantly making choices about how to spend our time and energy, and economics is the study of how and why we make the choices we make.
Being human is to have constantly arising physical needs like air, food, water, and shelter, and social needs for safety, affection, attention, and approval. When hungry we need to eat, when tired we need to sleep, when lonely we need companionship. The cycle is continuous. Beginning some 2 million years ago, our hunter-gatherer humanoid ancestors worked hard, often in groups, to survive. Their economics was practical and tribal. They endured both scarcity and plenty, were sometimes happy, sometimes sad. They learned about sharing and hording, cooperation and competition, belonging and isolation.
Neanderthals appeared about a million years ago, homo sapiens around 300,000 years ago, and “modern humans” quite recently, about 70,000 years ago, laying out the foundation for both the wonder and the horrors of our relationship with each other and with our planet. Tribes became villages, hunting became farming, and “civilization” has only been around for last ten thousand years or so. By the time the Bible appeared, there was already a word for usury, and charging interest, especially excessive interest, was considered sinful or immoral.
Over the last hundred years the intersecting paths of civilization, trade, banking, and the diabolical “personhood” of corporations have renamed usury as the more palatable and less pejorative “finance.” Nowadays everyone is in debt to faceless institutional lenders for something: mortgages, credit cards, car loans, student loans, insurance. Wealth continues to concentrate into fewer and fewer hands, and more and more things that were once collectively owned “public goods” have been privatized, made proprietary, and sold back to us at a profit as we wait on the phone for hours in another “Doom Loop” waiting to speak to a real “Customer Service” rep about our phone service, internet service, medical bill, or airline cancellation.
Just think of it as “the Business School gift that just keeps on taking.”
lummi island wine tasting april 7, ’23
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
courtesy www.savoringitaly.com
Colomba di Pasqua or “Easter Dove”: A traditional Italian Easter cake made with a slievito madre, a sourdough levain fed every 4 hours at a warm temperature to make it more sweet than sour. This cake-like bread also contains flour, eggs, sugar and butter, candied orange peel topped with a crunchy almond and hazelnut glaze and pearl sugar before baking. The dough is baked in a dove shaped baking form as a symbol of the Easter dove. $5/loaf
Italian Breakfast Bread – A delicious lightly sweet bread great any time of day. Made with bread flour eggs, yogurt, a little sugar and vanilla as well as dried cranberries, golden raisins, and fresh and candied lemon peel. Perfect for breakfast toast or maybe for Easter morning French Toast! – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Hot Cross Buns – An enriched dough (butter, sugar, eggs and just a hint of whole wheat). full of spices, including cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger as well as currants and candied lemon and orange peel. Topped with a flavorful paste and glazed these are a delicious traditional treat to celebrate spring. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Seghesio Zinfandel ’19 California $23
The Seghesio family has been growing zinfandel grapes in Sonoma since 1895, some five generations ago, most likely starting with cuttings from closely related primitivo vines brought from southern Italy. Zinfandel from the region has built a reputation for big, fruit-forward red wines that coat the palate and fill the senses with their plush flavors and aromas. Over the decades the winery has developed numerous single-vineyard labels, each with its own special characteristics and sometimes hefty prices.
As is the case for many top wineries, “deselected” portions of the harvest that are not selected for the single-vineyard bottlings are blended to make this annual blend, which is predictably delicious and enticing in its own way. From year to year it reliably delivers a delicious zinfandel at a modest price…and elicits an appreciative “mmmm” after the first sip….! read more…
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting:
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’20 France $14
Delicious blend of grenache blanc and roussanne; fragrant and perfumed with a light, grilled-lemon note over ripe melon,with a lingering palate of rich white peach.
Kiona Lemberger ’20 Washington $14
Perfumed aromas with traces of orange zest and flower, with notes of blueberry; an agreeable palate that pairs particularly well with spicy foods!
Seghesio Zinfandel ’19 California $23
Aromas of deep dark fruits lead to a juicy, vibrant palate with notes of black cherry, black raspberry, fig, baking spice and fresh plum, and layered fruit flavors, finishing with supple, textured tannins and a lingering, complex finish.
Economics of the Heart: Comity and Common Purpose
Over the years we have often started this blog with a quote from economist Joan Robinson that so often seems to capture the essence of our world: “Every economic system requires a set of values, a set of rules, and a willingness in the people to carry them out.” And here is today’s lesson on the challenge of comity in the face of diverging values.
Today’s exploration is a bit of a lament on the current strained sense of comity in our little island community. Let’s begin with an old song that most of you under 75 probably never heard of, simply called MTA (click link for video). It was written in 1949 and made a famous by the Kingston Trio around 1960. As you will hear in the introduction, it is a ballad bemoaning a subway fare increase by Boston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, bettah known back theaya in Beantown as simply “the MTA.“
Right here, right now on our not-so-idyllic-at-the-moment island, we are dealing with our own County’s controversial ferry fare increase proposal. Those of us who have studied the rationale offered for the increase do not believe the County has made a sufficiently convincing case for any fare increase at all, and a substantial proportion of the island population agrees with that view.
Nevertheless, the issue has been a political challenge right here in our own community, right here on the County Ferry Committee this writer sits on. Let’s just say that about 4.5 of the 7 members of the committee ( 5 from the island, 2 from mainland) believe that their primary responsibility is to serve the interests of the County Ferry Dept (authority figures…?), and we of the other 2.5 read our charge as an advisory committee to represent to the County Council the broad interests of the entire County, including especially our island.
Which brings us to the elusive path to comity. Of course there are times when we have disagreements with our friends. That’s when everyone’s built-up stock of comity should kick in, and kindness and reason prevail. Sadly, the “four and a half” seem to see their primary responsibility as in service to ferry management, not to the broader economic interests of the County as a whole.
At root there is something visceral and deep in our individual DNA and in the unconscious beliefs we all developed about our selves and the world from childhood experiences that makes some of us accede without question to perceived Authority, while others of us will refuse to do so without being convinced that the “authority” knows wtf they are talking about.
In any case, it is deeply troubling to find world views to be so sensitive to unconscious beliefs about autonomy and authority, and to find oneself at odds with the incomprehensible mindsets of people you thought you knew. 🙁
lummi island wine tasting march 31 ’23
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday
NO Bread Pickup This Week…it’s Annual Roadside Pickup!
Each year around the first weekend of April is the annual Roadside Cleanup. Volunteers gather at the Grange around 0930 and have a little time to socialize and enjoy one of the pastries Janice makes for the event.
Then crews form, climb into pickups, ride to their assigned stretch of road, and walk both sides to pick up any litter that has accumulated during the year before returning to base to unload, show off most amazing junk found, and enjoy the well-earned hot dogs!
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Juggernaut Russian River Pinot Noir ’20 Sonoma $17
Notes: Cool breezes and damp fog build character in this Russian River pinot noir; graceful and vigorous, aromas of white flowers, vanilla bean, and waffle cone open to persistent flavors of dark cherry and red berries with spicy floral notes.
The Bogle winery– group of wineries these days– is a stone’s throw west of the Sacramento River, and about equidistant from Sacramento and Lodi. Bogle is a big outfit, with 2000 acres of vineyards and a family of wine labels, and local roots tracing back to a Civil War vet and his nephew who moved to the area in the 1870’s and planted orchards which they lost during the Depression and became tenant farmers in nearby Clarksville.
After WWII a family member was able to buy a small holding in the same area, and for twenty years did well growing market crops like wheat and corn. The family planted their first vineyards in the late 60’s, and sold the fruit to existing wineries as the vines matured. Their first wine under the family name was released in the late 70’s.
These days they have a handful of labels: Bogle, Twenty Acres, Phantom, Juggernaut, Tanist, Dark Watchers. The “Juggernaut” series has eye-catching, creative, elaborate, and Scary labels. The cab has a very elaborate and scary lion. (watch it develop..!)
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting:
Juggernaut Chardonnay ’21 Sonoma $17
Aromas of apple, Asian pear and lemon meringue open to flavors of stone fruit, honeysuckle and yellow plum made rich and lingering using barrel fermentation and sur lie aging; finishes with notes of vanilla bean, and butter cream with hints of baking spices and clove.
Argento Malbec ’20 Argentina $12
From organically grown grapes; deep purple hue; inviting aromas of red berries and flowers, and flavors of plum and sweet blackberry; finishes with ripe, balanced tannins– way over-delivers for its modest price.
Juggernaut Russian River Pinot Noir ’20 Sonoma
Cool breezes and damp fog build character in this Russian River pinot noir; graceful and vigorous, aromas of white flowers, vanilla bean, and waffle cone open to persistent flavors of dark cherry and red berries with spicy floral notes.
Economics of the Heart: Blood From Stones
courtesy www.silverenchantments.com
There are many well-known and well-used metaphors for it: getting blood out of a stone; robbing Peter to pay Paul; easier said than done; have your cake and eat it— the list goes on and on. All these phrases are acknowledgements of the basic economic reality of living beings: we must continually extract resources from and return waste to the same interdependent– and finite –– environment, and that requires that we all agree to a common set of shared values and a set of rules for resource allocation and behavior.
Some things can be shared, others not so much. Who gets how much of what? How is it decided? In a world of scarcity everything has elements of mine, yours, ours, and theirs that are the stuff of conflict and compromise, politics and power. This is the actual, physical, moment to moment challenge of our shared economic reality: to come up with a sustainable set of rules that we can all endorse, believe in, and support.
Trust in and commitment to a shared set values and rules is a necessary condition for the ongoing mutual trust and comity that hold an economic system together. We have seen many signs over the past decade that commitments to democracy, freedom, and fairness have been eroding both globally and within our own country. These serious political divisions are creating and maintaining stress and tension we can all feel, regardless of our politics.
Locally, though, we expect things to work differently. We feel a sense of belonging here on our little island, in our nearby mainland communities, and even our State. It’s a very good place to be, and we have grown used to a sense of mutual support and rapport with our local government agents and agencies.
So it has been challenging recently to find ourselves clashing with recent County efforts to redefine its relationship to our community from a sense of partnership to one of scapegoating and punishment. The situation is challenging in that many elements of our 60-yr old ferry and supporting infrastructure are are at the end of their useful lives and require continuing investment to keep them operational for another four or five years until a planned new vessel enters service.
Under current statute, such extraordinary expenses certainly do not qualify as the “regular and routine” maintenance expenses of which 55% must be paid for from ferry fare revenues. The statute is a compact between ferry users and the rest of the County; users pay 55% of the “regular and routine” expenses, and the County pays 45% of ops expenses (of which half are subsidized by the State) and all of capital costs, which get written off as depreciation.
But in recent months all of that has changed. The County now proposes to drop the current statute entirely and redefine operating costs as “any expense that isn’t specifically defined as a “capital expense,” in the same breath as they define “repairs” as anything they say it is. (no, we are not making this up!) It’s a breach of faith and trust and an unacceptable shifting of additional financial burden away from the 240,000 county residents to the 1000 island residents.
Basic fare economics tells us that people respond to large fare increases by making fewer trips, moving away, working more from home, or otherwise economizing on ferry travel, even moving to the mainland. Those demographic changes not only have a negative effect on our community diversity; they also will lower overall fare revenue because the people who make the most trips will leave and be replaced by more retirees and telecommuters who can ride the ferry once a week or less.
This latest proposal qualifies as a great example of an economic “Dumb Cycle:”
REVENUE DROPS –> RAISE FARES –>
RAISE FARES –> RIDERSHIP FALLS –>
RIDERSHIP FALLS –> REVENUE DROPS –> around and around and around….
2072 Granger Way