A Dash of Salt Spring Island

When we first got off the ferry in Fulford Harbor, we curved down a little road on the way to the main town on the island, Ganges. The first person we encountered was a little Quebequois guy on the side of the road selling lobster mushrooms. Huge bins of bright orange mushrooms were stacked all around him, and he knelt beside a little Sterno where he had a saute pan sizzling with butter, garlic and mushroom. His lunch, and taste samples ensured a sale...

Okanagan Days

We finally have summer—the days are dry and even what you might call hot. I’m off on my friend Danielle’s annual birthday wine tasting trip—two years ago we went to Willamette Valley, and last year we went to Chelan. This year, the four of us ladies, of various ages and positions in life, agreed wholeheartedly on B.C.’s Okanagan region, just north of central Washington.

Old-school organic in a new-school recyclable bag-in-a-box

Bill Powers has been growing grapes here since 1977, and has been organic almost that long. He says he was putting all these chemicals on the vines, and his boys were doing the work. He didn’t want the kids to do it, so he was doing it and not liking having to use these chemicals – so on a trip to California, he talked to some hippie grapegrowers who were farming organically, and they encouraged him to do the same, and so he did...

Thunder Shows, or When You are Lost at Sea, Wine is Where You Find it

What is your favorite boat wine? Come to find out, this wine WAS the perfect thing to drink with the scent of boat exhaust, salt air and fish in our nostrils, as it is produced all along the Ligurian Coast and served in the fish restaurants of Genoa—an area that probably looks very similar to the salty, mast-packed shores of Lake Union. Citrus complements salt - that lesson was learned here, with a little exotic mushroomy funk thrown in that I will remember for my next fish fry.