lummi island wine tasting Feb 14 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Feb 14 4-6 pm
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pan de Cioccolate – A delicious chocolate artisan bread that isn’t an enriched sweet pastry dough with lots of eggs, butter and sugar. Rather this bread is a rich chocolate bread made with a levain, bread flour and fresh milled rye flour, honey for sweetness, vanilla and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes fabulous toast, even better french toast – $5/loaf.
Dried Cherries and Pecans – also made with a levain that is mixed the night before final mixing of the dough using a sourdough starter. The final dough is made with the levain, bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and then loaded up with dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese –$5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled and spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls that are placed in baking forms for baking and then brushed with sugar syrup after baking. I’ve heard some people say they hide these to keep them all to themselves. – 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
Cloudlift chardonnay ’22 Washington $28
Scents of honeysuckle, sweet lemon curd, and pear drift out of the glass, with mouth watering acidity carrying flavors of crisp green apple and pear with a burst of lemon zest on the 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.
Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti ’21 Italy $18
Ruby red with violet hue; elegant nose of rich plum and berry with notes of flowers and bark; palate of red cherry and red currants with a savory finish.
Economics of the Heart: Underground Discussions
A lot of us believe that the emerging American civil war is the culmination of decades of deliberate lies from right-wing newspapers, radio, internet, and TV (is there still “tv?”) programming with the single goal of making millions of people believe wholeheartedly in a fake reality. While we can probably trust our local media about local events, our new federal “government” has now abandoned both law and conscience in its apparent mission to create as much pain for as many people as it can. (see last week’s post about the Red Meanies).
One natural outcome of that recent history is that a lot of mainstream media has lost our trust. At the same time, a lot of talented writers and activists have moved their regular columns into backrooms on the web where they get subscribers interested enough in their ideas to pay a modest subscription fee. We are pretty new at this, but here are a few that are consistently informative and thought-provoking as we gear up to protect our democracy.
lummi island wine tasting feb 7 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Feb 7 4-6 pm
….time to Reinvent Elephant Repellent
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pain Meunier –also known as miller’s bread and was developed to honor the miller who mills the wheat. Made with pre-fermented dough it contains all portions of the wheat berry: flour, fresh milled whole wheat, cracked wheat and wheat germ. Always a favorite and a great all around bread. It makes the best toast! – $5/loaf
Sonnenblumenbrot – aka Sunflower Seed Bread; made with a pre-ferment that ferments a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast overnight before mixing the final dough. with freshly milled rye, then loaded up with toasted sunflower seeds and some barley malt syrup for sweetness.. a typical German seed bread- $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Kouign Aman “with : Made ” with a twist” from the same traditional laminated french pastry as croissants, with a levain for sourdough flavor and some pre-fermented dough for strength. Rolled out w/ sugar, black sesame seeds,and ginger, cut into squares and baked in cupcake tins to caramelize sugar and butter for a delicious, crunchy, delightful pastry. – 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
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’22 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.
Marietta Old Vine Red ’22 California $16
Zinfandel-based red blend from Geyserville with lovely bright plum fruit, dark and focused notes of briar and black tea, a perfect balance of big flavor and vibrant sophistication, with medium body, mouth of sweet spice and velvety tannins to pair with almost any meal or occasion.
Natura Carmenere ’22 Chile $14
Attractive bouquet with cherry aromas and hints of chocolate and spice. Big volume taste on the palate with soft round tannins and a firm, well-balanced structure. Good balance between fruit and oak with a long, juicy finish. 100% organically grown grapes.
Economics of the Heart: Attack of the Red Meanies
The Beatles’ zany Yellow Submarine animated film came out in 1968 and was instantly a global hit. The Bad Guys in the film were named after the blue meanies species of psychedelic psilocybin mushroom. (film clip). In the past week the Republican Senate has approved most of Magaman’s breathtakingly unqualified Cabinet appointments; the richest man in the world has dismantled core elements of our national security data protection apparatus; and the new AG’s first order of business is to proclaim the beginning of an illegal purge against all federal employees whose duties during the Biden Administration happened to include work on the Jan 6 investigations.
We have all seen the many interviews and hearings with these appointees, and seen that not a single one is qualified for their specific positions or a high-level security clearance. Meanwhile, Teslaman has already trashed much of our national security apparatus in a hubris-heavy unauthorized raid. Similarly, most of the Maga ‘lawmakers’ (we use the term very loosely) turned two blind eyes to the irresponsible lunacy of the Project 2025 coup now in progress.
The only consistent philosophy behind the current coup is some shared Anger of Unfulfilled Entitlement. We see it in each of the Cabinet nominees and across a wide swath of Republicans in the House since about 2006.
It is not lack of intelligence that disqualifies them; it is their complete lack of Honor. No rationalization they use to justify their current incarnation as deliberate traitors to their oaths absolves them from the damage they mean to inflict on their fellow citizens in particular and on a stable world order in general. It’s been only two weeks and already our allies are backing away from us.
These conspirators will never be content just to get rich and powerful. Just as Musk never seems able to come to rest and savor his accomplishments, their common thread is an unconscious conviction that no matter much they own or control, they will never get the emotional nourishment they need.
The sad irony for them and for all of us is not that they don’t have enough already; it’s that early childhood experiences with parents convinced them they would never get the love they need. In Buddhism there is a mealtime ritual of setting aside seven grains of rice for the Hungry Ghosts, beings who are unable to take in nourishment no matter how much they eat.
So…the Blue Meanies probably didn’t have any conscious reason to be mean. No one has a viable reason to to be mean. But when children despair their loneliness for long enough, the unconscious core belief behind Red Meanie faces is a small child’s hidden expectation that “I will never get the love I need.” And even when they get it they can’t let it in.
So we must of course have compassion for all these meanies. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to stop them in their tracks.
May all beings be free from suffering,
Enjoy the ease of well-being,
Be free from fear and violence,
Be stewards of all living things,
With kindness, compassion, love,
patience, clarity, and wisdom…
lummi island wine tasting jan 31 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Jan 31 4-6 pm
Jan 20 wine shop observation of Martin Luther King Day…
(candle-lit due to temporary power outage…a good time had by all and
a distracting relief from “other matters most devoutly to be eschewed.. 🙂
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Sorry, no Bread This Week… 
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.
Argento Malbec ’20 Argentina $13
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.
Tre Donne D’Arc Langhe Rosso ’22 Italy $20
Blend of oak-aged Barbera, and Pinot Nero with unoaked Dolcetto and Freisa that makes for a lively, fresh wine with rich, moody fruit, bracing purity, and fascinating depth.
Economics of the Heart: La Résistance a commencé…
St Mary’s school Bangor, Me
My mother was a third-generation Irish Catholic, and my father’s parents were Polish immigrants, also Catholic. I went to a Catholic school in Bangor, Maine from “subprimary” through second grade. My teacher the first two years was an attractive, kind, cheerful, and pleasant young nun named Sister Cecilia whom I recall with some affection.
The three-story school building was of very solid stone, with somewhat dim corridors and a little army of habited nuns aging from young and charming to old and crotchety that were kinda witchy and scary. From time to time some kid would do something wrong and get sent upstairs to the principal to get “the Strap”…a spanking with a leather covered steel bar. The kids would come back sobbing. (gulp!)
The windowless stone corridors always had a threatening element of darkness, of hidden rules with grave implications, and cause for some memorable nightmares in which the school was haunted…and the nagging fear that if you died without going to confession you could go to Hell or purgatory and suffer horrible tortures. After all, you’d think, the pictures in the little kids’ catechism showed them with little black sin-dots would grow on their white, sinless hearts every time they said a dirty word or did a million other bad things you didn’t even know were sins. Heavy stuff for a little kid…!
It was therefore a huge relief to start third grade in a modern, light-filled public school with well-educated, kind, interesting teachers of both genders in ordinary clothes. For a 6 yr old it was like being set free from a dark, scary prison. The teachers included many WWII vets and wives, kind and generous with their time. Occasionally they would talk about Bible stories as stories, not “religion.”
My takeaway from those experiences has for a long time been that there has to be a line between religion and politics. The glue that holds people in Maga’s grip is a toxic blend of personal grievances, built on 35 years of deliberate lies from right wing media convincing lazy minds that liberals, gays, Democrats, immigrants, blacks, women, the poor are coming to take their stuff. These Maggites claim to be “Christian,” but instead of aspiring toward kindness, compassion, love, patience, clarity, and wisdom, they preach meanness, malice, cruelty, selfishness, spite, hatefulness, maliciousness, hostility, and violence in the name of the same mythic Jesus (you know, the one that drove out the money-lenders). How does that make sense??
Now only ten days into the new Maggite assault on our Constitutional rights, environment, economy, safety, and long-held national values, we are beginning to see increasingly organized resistance against Project 2025’s corporate-funded, autocracy-aspiring, angry white supremacist aspirations from many State Attorneys General, environmentalists, women, veterans, and everyone else committed to our 250-year old Constitutional government.
It’s gonna be a long battle, but la Résistance is already gearing up, as shown for example in the following recommended articles:
link to Bishop Budde’s NPR interview
link to Olivia Troye note about Kash Patel
lummi island wine tasting jan 24 ’25
Wine Tasting Winter Hours: Fridays 4-6 pm
Jan 20 MLK Day eve gathering (and power outage!)
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Norwegian Klosterhagen Quick Bread: A new bread this week form a small hotel in Bergen, Norway. It uses just baking soda as a leavening agent, and still full of whole grain goodness, with fresh milled whole wheat & rye flour along with the bread flour, molasses, yogurt with lots of raisins, apricots and hazelnuts, and topped with a mix of pumpkin & sunflower seeds. Delicious! $5/loaf.
Whole Wheat Ciabatta – A seldom made bread that uses an Italian biga pre-ferment as well as a levain, also known as sourdough, which are made a day in advance. And, once mixed the dough is fermented overnight in the refrigerator. A long, slow ferment adds a lot of flavor to the final bread. Made with regular bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. A little olive oil for more flavor and a lot of water. With so much water this bread can’t really be shaped, just cut into pieces and baked. A great rustic bread – $5/piece
Bagels! – Always popular, made with a preferment sponge mixed, shaped and refrigerated overnight before being boiled and baked in the traditional manner for a delicious chewy bagel. These come one each with sesame seeds; mixed sesame and poppy seeds; onion and garlic spice, and plain. **Each order is mixed – sorry no choices** – 4/$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
MAN Chenin Blanc ’22 South Africa $14
Using only free-run juice preserves a clean, natural character, refreshing acidity, light, bright flavors of quince, pear, and pineapple, with palate of fresh stonefruit and apple, refreshing acidity & minerality, and a round, soothing mouthfeel.
MAN Vintners Pinotage ’22 South Africa $14
Aromas of dark coffee beans, red berries, nutmeg, and vanilla spice turning to dark berries and smoky plum; rustic yet silky and juicy, with smooth tannins, balanced acidity, and comforting intensity.
Decoy Red ’21 California $21
60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, with splashes of Zinfandel, Syrah, and Cab; aromas of blackberry, dark plum, baking spice and savory herbs; fresh, rich, and savory on the palate with rich,
silky tannins and bright acidity that carries the flavors to a long, lush finish.
Economics of the Heart: Democracy, Humanism, & Economics
The Founders of this country were philosophical humanists. Our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address echo the belief that all human beings have the same ongoing needs for food, water, shelter, community, safety, and well-being. A thousand years of human history teaches us that we are sometimes compassionate and caring, and sometimes selfish, crafty, and ruthless.
Despite the inherent conflict between these polarities, our country has survived pretty well for 250 years, oscillating in an ongoing balancing between these polarities because of the stability of our interlocking 3-tiered political system of executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Our Constitution deliberately steers a neutral path around religion, allowing both freedom of religion and freedom of religion. The growing pressure of the Far Right to make a particular version of Christianity our national religion is a dangerous infringement on our Constitutional freedoms of and from religion as we choose.
Historically the polarization of our two-party political system has maintained a tension between serving the want-mores and the need-enoughs. The Constitution has constrained the resulting oscillation of political influence between these two constituencies and generally maintained a certain balance of “creative tension” in our governance. But since 1980 there has been a long-term, highly organized, slow-motion undermining of our Constitutional system by uberwealthy autocratic interests aspiring to turn the United States into their very own private feudal fiefdom.
The opening act of this latest turnover seems to be a nonstop fireworks act of blowing up our institutions while we watch in horror. You know, like Dubya’s “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad that killed thousands of Iraqis under the guise of finding Iraq’s never-found “weapons of mass destruction.” Bottom line: the current “shock and awe” barrage from Bozo Central is meant to demoralize, and while it certainly is that, it is also a powerful incentive to defend our rights and our collective well-being from the tyranny of autocracy. At the same time, there there are clearly ongoing festering conflicts among the many subsets of unelected Maga players, a growing sense of public outrage, and a quickly rising stack of lawsuits by State Attorney Generals and citizens watchdog groups around the country.
In some ways this is just the usual do-si-do we have come to expect when administrations change party. Traditionally, the Democratic administration fires up the economy, creates jobs and income for ordinary people, who spend it where other ordinary people benefit from it. That keeps the wheels turning for our mutual benefit…as the Biden administration did in a time of global recession from Covid.
In contrast, as now, when the R’s take over, that all goes out the window when, in exchange for huge bribes…um..”campaign contributions”…they drastically lower taxes for major corporate donors, make CEO’s even richer, and will raise prices of everything from prescription drugs to veterans health care to rent and groceries. This will inevitably add trillions to the national debt and tank the overall economy. Which would ordinarily bring in the next Democrat to fix it, and so on. The last fifty years of history tell us we can be pretty sure they WILL loot and crash the economy between now and the 2026 midterms.
On the good news side at the moment, our new WA Attorney General and 21 other state AG’s have filed suit against Maga’s attack on birthright citizenship established in the Constitution. Numerous public interest watchdog groups are also filing suits, and we have yet to see how this Congress is going to operate, beginning with its handing of the circus of WUCN’s ( Wildly Unqualified Cabinet Nominations.) In addition, though we don’t have control of the Senate or the House, the Maga majorities are small, and we have some great lawyers and statesmen on our side.
The economic well-being of our country requires a smoothly ongoing Circular Flow of $$ from households to retailers to producers to resources and back to workers. As a primary consumer of everything, government spending keeps the wheels turning, while Maga’s promised tax cuts to billionaires, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and their ilk will as usual inevitably concentrate wealth even further. As usual, this will lower consumer demand, reduce production and employment, and increase the national debt. This time they seem to be wanting to take an even bigger bite than usual, so keep an eye to weather and your piggy bank in a safe place.
And this is only Day 3…
2072 Granger Way
