Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
If there’s anything I’ve been doing a lot during home quarantine it’s cooking. Some days I’m more enthusiastic than others. But sometimes I miss things, often ethnic cooking, that I know I can’t cook as well as well as someone with skills and seasonings I don’t have.
The other day we got takeout from Sergio’s, a local Mexican restaurant. A chili rellano and enchilada verde with all the trimmings, including homemade chips and salsa. Enough food for two heavenly meals for this cook.
I can think of few things that haven’t been disrupted in one way or another this year. So it’s no surprise how enthusiastic I am to find comfort in natural cycles that haven’t been interrupted. Birds are back for the summer. My garden is producing on cue. And wild summer berries are coming along nicely. Who would expect that ripening blackberries would bring comfort?
It’s very satisfying to go out into the garden and pick vegetables for dinner. This year’s garden is providing plenty. Sugar pea pods, above, thrive in our climate.
Lettuce also grows well here. I’ve been able to share this year’s bounty with others.
We’re growing two kinds of beets. This is a red ace, a classic red beet. We also have candy stripe, a white beet with red stripes. Fresh home grown beets are sweet and delicious; the greens, cooked like chard, are a bonus.
We’re also enjoying kale. This year’s garden additionally includes leeks, red onions, cherry tomatoes, and delicata squash. Scarlet runner beans are coming along nicely, visited regularly by local hummingbirds that like their bright red blossoms.
I was late in discovering this: Nash’s farm store closed a few months ago.
Nash Huber is an organic grower in our area. His produce was available at our farmer’s market and at a tiny building in the Old Dungeness area of Sequim. Eight years ago the farm store opened nearby, offering a broad selection of organic produce along with other grocery products. The location proved too remote to serve enough buyers. Heavy snows last year also caused devastating losses to Nash crops when migrating birds, unable to browse fallow fields normally, wiped out large swaths of produce.
The store closed in February. I obviously was one of the people who didn’t shop at Nash’s since I didn’t discover it was gone until April.
Two things I stocked up on for the pandemic: Potatoes and real bacon bits from Costco. The bacon bits came in a Costco-sized bag, which means “suitable for a huge family with many hungry teenagers.” When I got the bag home, regained sanity, and realized the bag’s enormity, I portioned it out into tiny plastic tubs that I froze…lots of them.
I’m cooking more than usual and bacon bits keep stepping up to the bat. Mac and cheese getting boring? Bacon bits! Scrambled eggs today? Bacon bits! And, of course, with just about any meal from the 15 pounds of potatoes we worked through: mashed, baked, soup, home fries.
The pandemic has changed so many things. Cooking and eating are certainly among them.
This goes under the heading “What I did during the pandemic.” Subtitle: “Potatoes.”
We bought a 15 pound bag of potatoes during one of our early pandemic shopping excursions. This was our version of panic buying. I don’t think I’ve ever bought more than a few pounds of potatoes in my life. Enough for clam chowder or maybe mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. But DH said, “I love potatoes. I could eat potatoes every day.” Well, he pretty much got to.
Twice baked potatoes. Mashed potatoes. More twice baked potatoes. A lot of mashed potatoes. Potato leek soup. And, finally, a big pot of potato-bacon-cheese soup. Those, above, were the last of them.
Then last week I bought seed potatoes for the garden. Wouldn’t you think I’d had enough potatoes?
Through a window, a view of Julia Child’s kitchen, on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Small and homey, it’s hard to imagine an elaborate meal prepped in this space…but she did.
I’m cooking more than usual and a lot of it is comfort food. Chicken and dumplings. Risotto. Pasta. What are you doing for comfort these days?