The Taste of Early Summer on Whidbey

A jungle of Ronde de Nice squash blossoms and their developing squashlets

Nothing is as ephemeral or as potetially banal as summer squash.  As a teenage cook, working in not-so-fine-dining restaurants on this island I cooked a lot of zucchini every summer.  I think the chef I worked for chose zucchini as our perpetual “vegetable of the day” because it was inexpensive and easy to cook.  Trucked in from California, it was sort of fresh, and by that I mean it wasn’t frozen and it wasn’t canned.  And we certainly didn’t show it a lot of love:  We would make up a mixture of sauteed red onion, canned tomato and “Italian seasoning” and saute it all up together.  Zucchini came to represent to me the thing you put on a plate because you had a space to fill, the thing that you gave to your guest because you hadn’t thought about it very hard or because you didn’t know what else to do or because  you thought it was good enough.

I hated zucchini by the time I was 18.

Read Full Post »

The Wiley Dungeness: Post Season Recap

Monday September 7^th, as the sun was setting and darkness descending on the Sound, I pulled up my last crab pot of the summer season.  At 8:09 p.m. the season ended in most of Puget Sound, and I have to say that I am pretty sad about it.  It was a good season for my family, with plentiful amounts of crab on the table every weekend and some extra to share with friends, too.  This piece is a retrospective on the season, detailing what I have learned and revealing some of my secrets.  It is also intended to give you a basic overview of how to crab in Puget Sound and allow you to learn from my mistakes.

Read Full Post »

Tide Pools of Fort Casey

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of a field trip our class took when I was in the fourth grade.  We went to the beach near Fort Casey on the west side of Whidbey Island during a very low tide to explore the tide pools the low water revealed.  I have the images from those pools deeply and indelibly etched in my mind: the octopus that one of the teachers discovered, the sea cucumbers, the crabs.  It is as clear to me today as it was 30 years ago.

Read Full Post »