Wheat is not usually thought of as a seasonal ingredient. It’s not like dark red cherries, perfect peaches or truly vine-ripened tomatoes that, especially here in Western Washington, have a very short window of exquisite flavor, of texture, of color, of all the things. The wheat I use, most of it milled for me, but some I mill myself, does have limited life. Only so much of any one varietal is grown each year. Therefore, there is only so much available to be shipped to the mill or to me. When the organic Edison berries are used up, we all have to make do until the next harvest is on the books ..read more

When Marie-Antoinette [supposedly] stated that the starving people of France should eat cake rather than bread, she was not the first to use such a phrase. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche has been found in writings before the doomed-queen’s time (McNamee). The word brioche is often translated as cake, but seems a far more insidious word choice. We all know cake: light, sweet, often beautifully decorated, a luxury food, especially if made for royalty. Brioche, also light, just ever so sweet, but still bread, would be much more heartless for the queen to recommend to the starving populace. A people ..read more

It’s cheesy anymore to start a post with a definition, but to distill is to “increase the concentration of, to separate, or purify” something else. I can do cheesy. I also feel distilled. I and my crew spent four and a half days cruising the San Juan Islands in a 29-foot Ranger Tug called Serendipity. Our plan was to hit the outer islands: Matia, Sucia and Patos, then Friday Harbor, moving physically closer to our eventual last night’s mooring, before motoring back to Anacortes. Spouse piloted the boat, while Jr and I handled the mooring lines, bumpers, mooring buoys, docks and slips. We figur ..read more

Shopping a Farmer’s Market is something I’ve been doing since I started caring about where my food came from. Reading books such as Silent Spring, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Grub: Ideas for an Organic Urban Kitchen, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal and others, planted seeds into the soil of my heart, soil that had been there since picking veggies from my own family’s big garden each summer. I was raised planting seeds, picking rocks, pulling fresh carrots and routing ruby raspberries straight from the cane in the garden tended, during their off-work hours, by my parents, whose ow ..read more

Where wheat comes from is important to me. I have based my business around the specific wheat varietals grown in Washington and milled by Bluebird Grain Farms and Cairnspring Mills. These varieties are: Emmer, Einkorn, Sequoia, Edison, Yecora Rojo and Expresso. A variety not grown in our region is Turkey Red. Here in the United States, the heirloom wheat Turkey Red is widely grown in the Great Plains region. This hard red winter wheat has been feeding people in the U.S. since immigrants from the Crimea brought it to Kansas in the late 1870s. The grains carefully chosen for the long journey did ..read more

If you bake a lot, if your friends and family are inundated with cookies, cakes, pies and bread, you’re probably a pretty good baker. You might be an outstanding baker. You might already do all the things I’m going to mention here. That is awesome! Being a better baker, besides just a nice alliteration, can happen with practice and consistency. Everyone who’s good at something got there by doing that something a lot! Along with practice, there are a few other items to think about. Know what kind of flour(s) you’re using. Scale ingredients: weight is always more accurate than volume cups. Know ..read more

Shepherd’s Grain started a movement years ago with a campaign enabling consumers to find the farmer who contributed to a particular bag of flour. The collective of Columbia Plateau Farmer-Owners, Shepherd’s Grain was early giving consumers a link to the folks who grow their food. Fast forward to 2022. Rather than call a number on a bag of flour, I can follow farmers, millers and bakers on Instagram. I can subscribe to farmer newsletters, order flour or grain directly or have great phone conversations about where to find their products. One such farm is Moon Family Farm in eastern Washington. I ..read more

My dad was the ninth of ten children. His dad was a clear-eyed, strong, wirey farmer/rancher and his mom a kind, hard-working, straight up woman, whose laugh shook her whole body and whose hugs I can still feel. My dad was an uncle at age 2 and was cared for often by his older sisters with their young families. His older siblings married and/or moved on, he was part of the 3-pack, Joe-Edgar-Jim, a trio he played football, finished high school, worked the farm with. Grandma was a wizard creating meals, but that many mouths during the depression, followed by the War Years, coupled with a strong ..read more

Remember New Year’s Eve 2020, imagining 2021 would easily be a better year than its predecessor? Like most of life, this year has been up and down, frustrating (maybe infuriating), rife with heartbreak and the mundane, but the sun continued to rise, those moonlit nights were perfect, and we learned, again, that western Washington is not meant to live in extreme heat. I’ve experienced deep grief, unexplainable joy, physical pain, subsequent healing, and, among many other things, the pleasure of meeting the amazing people who come to my bakery popup. Not quite a year in, I am honored to cross pa ..read more

Spend Saturday, September 25, in the Sammamish Valley, celebrating small farms producing great food! Sponsored by the Sammamish Valley Alliance, the Fall Harvest Celebration provides opportunity to explore local farm stands, markets and stores that support local agriculture in the beautiful Sammamish Valley. 21 Acres will be the hub for the day’s activites, with a farm tour, the ever-lovely Farm Market, a few extra vendors and a bluegrass band. The Tiny Kitchen will be one of those vendors, on hand to bring you bread and sweets. If you’ve not been to 21 Acres, make this the day for your first ..read more