our 5th thanksgiving at the centenarian

This year marked our 5th Thanksgiving celebration here in Seattle at the Centenarian.  It was once again most excellent - see AJ's menu below.  As always, we missed our family and friends all over the US (and world!), but we celebrated with you in spirit with a raucous Seattle crowd!

 The day began with a trio of vegan cheeses and crackers, all homemade.  

AJ made a white sangria with big persimmon chunks in it!

First course, a spicy pumpkin soup with coconut panna cotta and Turkish pretzels.  Taste tested with two steel-aged Washington Chardonnays.

Adrienne prepares to carve the main course, Egglpant Wellington. Taste tested with two Pinot noirs, one from Cali one from OR.

Wild mushrooms over celarac-truffle mash.

The crew!

And then dessert - Indian Pudding and Cardemom ice cream.

And The Blondes made it over for dessert too!

Late night unwinding - conversation and bourbon into the wee hours.

above the trees in the olympics

Adrienne and I had a long list of things to do this weekend around the house, but we scuttled it to take advantage of some rare blue November skies.  It has been cold cold cold lately--all the plants in our garden finally died--which means it has also been crystal clear.  So we headed to the Olympic Peninsula for a hike where we could take in the views.

Our friend Chris picked us up in the darkness at 6:30am to catch an early ferry across Puget Sound.  The sunrise on the boat was stunning and we knew we were in for a good day.  We chose to do the Mt. Townsend hike on the northeast end of the peninsula, a steep trail that climbs out of the forested valleys up to a windswept peak in the Olympic Mountains.  The views start to open up quickly, but the real treat is the view from up top--you can see north to Victoria, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island, and the San Juans; the entire Cascade Range from Canada to Oregon; all the major peaks, including Mt Baker, Rainier, Adams, and St. Helens; and the entirety of Puget Sound and all of its waterways.  Turn around 180 degrees and the Olympic Mountains are right there in front of you!

Below are some pics from the day.  We made the right decision--to leave errands and housework behind and enjoy the days and landscapes that make this place so spectacular!

Mt Rainier over a tranquil Puget Sound at dawn

Arriving on the Kitsap Peninsula - Mt Baker in the background

The Cascade Range coming in to view was we climb out of the valley

Getting up to the higher elevations

Mt Rainier looms large over Puget Sound

 AJ feeling inspired on the summit plateau

Mt Baker and Mt Shucksan

Those are some real mountains!

Winter

The eastern Olympic Range

J and A on Mt Townsend

Beautimus

Chris and John on the summit plateau

Afternoon light on the summit

Steep mountains and valleys

Chris and A gearing up to go back down the mountain

Chris on one of the many dozens of switchbacks

Afternoon light - it looks like dusk, but its only 2pm

making new england forests a bit jealous

The west coast is not necessarily known for its eye-popping fall color.  There are of course a few exceptions – if you’ve never seen a cottonwood tree turn golden yellow, backdropped by the Sierras or Rockies that have been freshly dusted with snow, all under a crisp bright blue sky…well, you need to put that on your bucket list. But overall, most trees’ leaves around here turn to a dull color and then unceremoniously drop to the ground.

That said, I have been continuously surprised by the fall color year after year in Seattle.  Capital Hill seems to be the most spectacular.  And this year, the color has been off-the-charts spectacular nearly everywhere. Even though the city puts on a better show than the country (the Japanese maples and ginkos in people’s yards are especially fantastic), the yellows of the big-leaf maple trees that dominate our western WA forests have been particularly bright this year.

If I had my act together sooner, I would have dedicated a day or two to touring the city with my good camera to catch all of this splendor.  Instead, all I have are occasional snap-shots I’ve taken with my iPhone, mostly from being surprised at the absolute beauty while out walking or running.  Because my iPhone camera is so crummy, I have boosted the color just slightly in these photos to more clearly represent what I saw. Ok, ok – I may have embellished a little bit…but really, not much.

Enjoy!

 This is on my bike trail to work

Neighborhood house

Neighbor's dahlia garden

The footbridge over the park

Grape leaves growing on a garage door

One of the many Japanese maples around here

View from the new dorms on campus

In the park

One of my favorite houses in our neighborhood, made only better with this fall color!

the mushroom hunt to end all mushroom hunts

Our friend Tristan sent me a text two weeks ago stating "My grandparents found 35 lbs of chanterelles at their cabin yesterday!"

That was a call to action for AJ and me.  Our collective best day ever has been four lbs. We had to see this fabled forest that Tristan texts about, the one that supposedly churns out an exorbitant amount of mushrooms.

We piled in the Subaru on this classic, crisp PacNorWest fall weekend and drove to the grandparent's cabin on Hood Canal.  It sits on 100+ acres of pristine forestland and has nearly one mile of waterfront, backdropped by the Olympic Mountains.  The landscape is steep, and the cabin is about 800 sq feet built right into the hillside.  Hood Canal is 50 yards down the hill, visible from all aspects of the cabin through the tall forest.  Nothin fancy, but everything a cabin should be.  Unbelievably fantastic.

The forest was dark, green, wet, but also bright with yellows from the big leaf maples changing color. And the forest floor was absolutely dripping with mushrooms.  Within one minute of being there, AJ found about three lbs of lobster mushrooms.  There were countless other kinds of mushrooms EVERYWHERE.  And there were chanterelles too.

In fact, we found 30 lbs of them. And another 10 lbs of lobsters.  All told, we searched for about three hours, packing up our bags and passing up scores of remaining forest mushrooms on our walk back.  We retired to the cabin, fired up the pot-bellied stove, opened some fantastic wines, and enjoyed a superb mushroom risotto compliments of AJ.  A real PacNorWest fall adventure - what a treat.

 The cabin's deck, perched high above Hood Canal

The top of this white mushroom was the size of a salad plate

Tristan finds the mother load - chanterelles

I find a giant lobster mushroom - weighed about 2 lbs

AJ likes to cut some mushrooms!

Heavy bags, filled with loot

We even found white chanerelles for the first time - this one was the size of a softball

Back to the cabin we go to 

AJ preps the table for our loot to dry

And that's what 30 lbs of chanterelles looks like

Had to get down to the intertidal - beautiful Hood Canal

 Some fall color on the beach

J and A

Salamander!

Back into the forest and up to the cabin for dinner

Gotta start the night with a French red taste test

Mushroom risotto, arugula and red pepper salad, homemade sourdough bread - absolutely delicious

Below are some other pics from the weekend, mostly of mushrooms and the forest.  There are so many types of them - sizes, colors, shapes...these are just a few.

(yes, that's a real mushroom!)

For those unfamiliar with the Hood Canal, its that long hooked waterway connected to Puget Sound.  Blue dot is the cabin.

Now wer're back home and have cleaned and processed all these mushrooms! We set some aside to eat all week, and the rest were sauteed and bagged to go in the freezer.  Now we have enough chanterelles for the year!

  Lobsters and chanterelles - you can see how much bigger the lobsters are, and how they got their name

Mushrooms waiting to be cleaned, two skillets going on the stove, and then after cooling down, into the ziplock they go