Spring Planting

Its truly spring now...no denying it. Memeorial Day is just around the corner and so is the planting deadline for those of us here in the northern climes. This has always been the weekend that you could be sure the danger of frost has passed. Every once in while we have an amazing spring and are lulled into that false sense of security that inevitably has us running out with the remay in the middle of the night due to a late spring chill. The local greenhouses are brimming over with bedding plants and even though it's a bit early to plant in the ground, its time to buy, because the reality of a small town is there is only so much to go around, if you want the best selection, this means shopping early. Which also means nursing along a bunch of plants until they are hardened off and ready to go in the ground. This isn't so hard at the bakery with it's sea-level elevation, trees are starting to leaf out in the yard and things are well on their way. It's a different story up at Sharon's house, however...1500 ft elevation, I believe there is still some snow on the ground even now! What's with all this planting nonsense you ask? Well, while we know we will never be a Blue Hill at Stone Barns, we do like to grow as many things as we can to use in the kitchen. Herbs planted in the window boxes by the baking tables serve as savory additions to soups and salads. The flowers in the yard are used like crazy to decorate cupcakes, catering trays and even whole wedding cakes. We also have a couple of vigorous rhubarb plants that provide homegrown goodness for rustic tarts all summer long. The local flora is also just about ready to give over it's goodness. Nettles are almost ready to harvest for pesto and the fiddleheads are just popping through, in a week they will be ao ready. On this note, I'd like to tell you about our new favorite food blogger, Hank Shaw takes the role of hunter gatherer to extreme and chronicles it all at his blog: Hunter Angler Gardener Cook . I have a feeling he would be right at home up here!
Lavender and Calendula...both so healing, and delicious!

...except when it doesn't.

We spent alot of time this past winter plotting the upcoming summer. Especially at the end when the blizzards were raging and business unpredictable. The roster of workers started to come together nicely. We have a great group of people who all get along, alot of challenging catering events and the whole crazyness of summer to look forward to. And while every summer has it's curveballs, we were still basking in the hopefulness of spring.
But now, the title of my last post seems oddly out of place, a little more than a week later and life is not springing eternal as we had hoped, in fact just the opposite. Our baker and Bakery BFF, Irene, arrived last thursday from Portland and visited us friday to work out the summer schedule and give hugs all around. A few hours later she called breathless and shaky to say she was flying back to Portland that night to be with her husband, Jake. (who stayed behind to finish school) He was in an accident and they were performing emergency brain surgery. By Saturday afternoon, His family was told he would not recover and just like that, he was gone. We all are stunned and, for Irene, completely confused and devastated. Jake had been in our lives just a few short years, but he won us all over immediately with his love for Irene and a sincere interest in all that she cared about. My kids took to him right away, which says alot, just ask anyone around here who's tried to strike up a casual conversation with Charles, hard to get that boy to talk. But Jake could. He was a teacher and good at it, he was a musician and mighty good at that, too. We all danced in the wind and rain at their wedding last summer and thought to ourselves: These two are perfect for each other!
Well, the universe apparently had other plans.
I know this post doesn't seem to have that much to do with baking or food, but if you look at it closely it does. All the preparation and watchfulness in the world does not insulate us from the occasional reminder that we have no real control over the outcome, all we can do, is our best along the way.

Life springs eternal

The snow is gone...at the lower elevations, anyway and nothing says spring like the sprouts of a Rhubarb in our own yard, these will be pie soon...just you watch. We are busy beyond our capacity...hence my lack of recent posts. I think we are starting to see the summer, and as our staff creates itself, we can begin to compose the roster and get our schedules figured out. Like the rhubarb emerging, we have people making their way to us, it's an organic process, with alot of faith in the universe thrown in! It's looking like a fun crew and a busy summer with the famers market, weddings scheduled almost every weekend (not to mention Sharon and Dale's on the 15th of August, it's going to be the party of the summer, I assure you!) and the never ending cookbook project to keep us occupied. If anyone wants to test recipes for us, check in over at the recipe blog and we'll send some stuff your way! Spring is also big for birthdays around here with Sharon at the end of March, Kate at the beginning of April, then Mel in mid-month and me towards the end. One of the highlights of my day (besides all the fantastic people who came to celebrate at our bonfire!) was Hayley and her burning poi balls, which she used to put on an amazing show once the sun finally went down.

Springtime in Alaska and it's forty below!

Johnny Horton said it best I guess, or at least that's how it's felt here lately. Like winter will never loosen her icy grip. It's one of the things that make working in a nice warm congenial place like the bakery so appealing. The sun streams in, we don't know how cold it is outside (until we have to go get wood for the fire, right Mel? Ryan, your tough, you can handle it!) The Bakes has been bustling away with visitors old and new (so great to see YOU, Caitlin!) and it's all we can do to keep up most days. We are ready to bring on more staff and with the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival coming up, it means summer is just around the corner. So. Not. Ready!

A quick update on Meatless Mondays...they are a huge success, each busier than the last. I recieved a nice comment from the folks over there and they are glad to have us on board...We will continue to inspire throughout the summer, I'm looking forward to much feedback, so far it's been all good!

our first meatless monday a big success!

The Mediterranean Focaccia was a hit:

We opened the morning meatless and with little fanfare...monday mornings in early spring are usually a little quiet as everyone jumps back into the week, so it is the perfect time to introduce something new. We put a sign up on the deli case and announced it on the menu board, and that was about it. The case was stocked with an attractive array of meat-free treats and looked very inviting, it would have been difficult for anyone to not find something that appealed to them. I admit i was a little concerned about how people would react, given that some of our regular clientele can be very idiosyncratic and resistant to change. They come in day after day, ordering basically the same thing each time they visit, for some these habits have been in place for many years. These relationships are very important to us, so we do not enter into big changes lightly, if we didn't really believe with all our hearts we are doing something good for everyone, we surely wouldn't do it. So it was with that spirit we presented the facts and to my glee, we received very few negative responses... my favorite came from an old friend who comes in often with his family; "Carri, first you close in Sundays, and now no meat on mondays...what are you trying to do to me?" It was a good natured ribbing and I'm guessing he'll be back next week.
Making the shift to no meat was fairly painless, we don't have an extremely meat-centric menu but there are a few customer favorites that that we make everyday, replacing those was our biggest challenge. Biscuits and gravy are a breakfast staple so Mel made a savory mushroom herb gravy instead. It was rich with sauteed mushrooms and looked meaty and delicious. The ever popular ham and cheddar savories were replaced by a variety of vegggie and cheese danishes, some with spinach and mozzarella, some with tomatoes and brie. The hot seller of the day was the mediterranean focaccia, which stood in for our standard made with roasted vegetables and smoked turkey. We made it by lightly roasting thin slices of eggplant, red peppers and tomatoes and layering them with pesto, fresh spinach and melted mozzarella cheese. Up next week: Egg Salad baguette sandwiches made with local eggs (thanks Peg and Samantha!) and roasted red and sweet potatoes with melted cheddar cheese with homemade salsa on the side. We'll see you here!

Burn, Baby Burn!

The fire has been pretty sweet lately...after spending most of the winter skimping by on wet alder and a bit of birch we finally got a good wood groove goin'! My husband found a batch of white birch from the valley which showed up about the same time as the spruce being sold by my kids school as a fundraiser, along with some nice alder poles from our woodsmith, Sandy Stuart, we are back on track...and then some! We are now firing only once a day, starting around 3 pm and hitting the 750 degree mark around 6 pm when we close it up. by the next morning, it's hot enough for bagels and breads and whatever Abbey or Sharon throw it's way...by afternoon it's still hot enough for cookies, cakes or whatever else is on the baking list...that is, until it's time to start the process all over again!

A Midweek Cater

This week Homer Council on the Arts is hosting their statewide meeting. We were honored to be asked to feed them on their first night. We began with and an antipasti collection including: oven roasted crimini mushrooms marinated in rice vinegar, soy sauce and honey, oven roasted artichoke hearts with lemon and olive oil, smoked oysters on a bed of pickled red cabbage and a savory white bean puree.

Also a simple Caprese Bruschetta, it doesn't get any better this far north than fresh basil, tomato and mozzarella...all on toasted ciabatta.

a fresh green salad dressed with a slightly sweet and tangy balsamic vinaigrette.

As a main course we served a very rich Eggplant Rolantini...the thinly sliced egglplant is dredged in flour and a seasoned egg mixture and then roasted on sheetpans. They are then rolled up with mushrooms, leeks, spinach and mozzarella and laced with housemade marinara.


And for those meat lovers, a pork tenderloin, braised in red wine and dried cherries...oh yeah!
That was so fun, how 'bout breakfast? See you at 8 am!

Meatless Mondays...a movement for the future with roots in the past

Yoko Ono does it (and tweets about it), Dovetail Restaurant in NYC does it, even Oxford University in England does it. The 2009 documentary 'Food inc.' listed it as on of the 10 things you can do to change our food system. Meatless Mondays isn't a new idea, originating during WWI as a conservation measure (they also practiced 'wheatless wednesday') and reintroduced during WWII by Herbert Hoover. Actually, according to Frederick Kaufman in his entertaining and informative book "A Short History of the American Stomach' our nation has been fasting regularly since the very beginning for both religious and conservation purposes. As late as the mid 1800's it was a practice sanctioned by the government in the form of communal fasting days. Given all that, just going without meat one day a week seems hardly a sacrifice!

The Meatless Monday Movement began again in 2003 as a nonprofit initiative of 'The Monday Campaigns, inc.' in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health's Center for a Livable Future. It was then endorsed by 20 schools of public health and spread to schools and organizations across the country.
The idea is to use the first day of the week to set healthy patterns and intentions for the week ahead. If you miss one Monday, there's always next week. See healthymonday.org for more on this theory.
Why Meatless? The John's Hopkins initiative was orginally introduced to reduce consumption of saturated fats in the american diet, but the benefits also have a global effect. The Observer wrote in 2008 about the United Nations sanctioning the consumtion of less meat citing these statistics: The meat industry generates nearly 1/5 of the man made greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change. Current large scale meat farming methods contribute half of the pollutants in our rivers and streams. Production of 1# of meat takes 2500 gallons of water (compared to 220 gallons for 1# of soybeans)
This movement is not without it's enemies, the Atlantic Monthly wrote in 2009 about the reaction of the meat industry to public schools declaring meatfree mondays. With their stronghold on goverment subsidies and powerful lobbists, they prove formiddable opponents to the winds of change.

So, for the health of our planet and the health of our people, we want to show our support and join in the movement.
Starting April 5th the bakery will be going meatless on mondays. It's biscuits and mushroom gravy and spinach & cheese danishes for everyone...trust us, this won't hurt a bit.
For more information go to meatlessmondays.com
As an added measure, I know lots of people have adopted a 'fish on friday' tradition. So if you had a vegetarian meal on monday and fish on friday, that would be two days a week of no meat consumtion, think of the difference it would make if we all made the commitment. Not to mention supporting those fisheries working hard to put quality 'sustainable' protein on our collective tables.

Spring Break...scenes from a busy bakery!

I returned from a week of fun with my family to find the bakery busy as can be for mid March in the middle of a recession. The fire was nice and hot, the oven and Sharon pumping out some beautiful baked goods: bread, sticky buns, cinnamon rolls, savory danishes...Mel and I could barely keep up (I think I frosted 5 cakes today, not to mention cupcakes by the dozen!) What with the Homer Winter King Salmon Tourny in full swing today and lovely weather getting everyone else out, it sort of felt like summer for a minute there...

This is killing me!

I am getting rid of the pictures from this post, cause...well, they grossed everyone out. But if you think you can take it, click on the link...go ahead, I dare ya!
Bread Head Bakery
I love it when something just is so amazing that you have that: "Why didn't I think of that?" moment. This is the best thing I've seen since, well, 'sliced bread'! So, Irene, do you think they take externs? I found this via my lil bro' William. thanks, buddy...you made my day!

View from the baking table...snowed in!

The blizzard of 2010 wreaked havoc on Homer last week, causing schools to close not once, but twice in a weeks time (it's been 8 years or so since they closed just once for snow!) and even the bakery had to close last Tuesday because everyone was drifted in and the wind was still blowing 40 mph! By Thursday, though the sun was peaking through and all of Homer rejoiced in a winter renewed. Even our moose friends. The deep snows drive them down to the lowlands, so they are everywhere around the bakery right now!

Feeling the love...

The Homer music scene has always been an eclectic, varied offering. Here at the Bakes we've been big supporters over the years hosting the likes of Michelle Shocked and Dar Williams and feeding many more like John Prine and, my favorite, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. (Their recording "Graceland" with Paul Simon is one great kitchen CD) The hug I got from Bruce Cockburn on my back porch as he was waiting for his cab is also a huge highlight. (I've been a fan of his since my early days ski bumming in the Tetons...all I can say is "Goosebumps!") Now that I really think about it, though, my biggest musical moment came when Ritchie Havens moved into our B&B rooms for 3 days. (once, a bunch of years ago, I went through a huge ordeal to get one of his CD's for my husband's birthday) Normally, performers who stay with us are in and out overnight. We're happy if we get to greet them at the door when they check in and hopefully serve them a latte and sticky bun in the morning before they jet off to the next show. Well, Ritchie was able to dig in and enjoy the scene. He spent his mornings sitting at the counter, just a knee wall away from where I was cooking. On his 2nd morning in town, I had a quiet chuckle as he was being chatted up by my neighbor and local rogue, Billy Sullivan. But then, as I caught on to the conversation, I realized that Ritchie was relating his Woodstock experience to Billy. How he had to keep playing because the band that was scheduled to follow him was late (I believe it was the Who) He improvised this song that became an anti-war cry for an entire era. There I was...chopping mushrooms for soup, afraid of walking away from my station & missing anything he had to say. I could've burned a million pans of whatever, I was gonna stand there until he stopped talking. The next morning he sat in his spot and the line went out the door with people wanting a signed anything from him- talk about feeling the love.
Tomorrow, Thursday, March 4th (7 pm Down East Saloon), another old friend is coming to visit:

The Peter Rowan Trio has graced the Homer stage before. My favorite memory if his first visit: We were in the space the bakery occupied in the Old Inlet Trading Post and he was staying in the rooms above. 'Sister' Kate was fairly new to the bakery and Homer but was a huge fan of Peter Rowan. She hung around all day hoping to meet him. It wasn't until after she left he made his way down the slanted stairs next to the bakery. We were able to exchange a warm greeting and as he was leaving Sharon stuck a flower in the lapel of his mustard yellow jacket, "This is for Kate, she's a really big fan"

Coming this spring: Erin McKeown!

February is over...

Whew. That's all I have to say...oh and: "Happy birthday, John!" You make 53 look pretty darn good.

Inspriration does come from everywhere!

These paintings by Jeanne Young capture bakery life at it's most realistic...



interestingly enough, we had NO idea!

a little cocktail from my valentine

I just have to share my valentine gift from my husband, who just so happens to know what I like.
Behold, the Valentine Martini:
2 parts gin (in this case a small batch called 'Dry Fly' from Washington)
1 part kalamata olive juice
pour over ice in shaker and shake until outside of shaker feels ice cold
strain into a VERY COLD martini glass (these are from our good friend Barb Scalzi at North Wind Home Collection)
garnish with as many olives as will fit on the cocktail skewer...then sit across from your favorite valentine and enjoy.
make sure your close enough to play footsie, that's the best.