Seattle

Well, I spent the last week in Seattle Wa., one of my favorite cities. In fact, if I had to live in a large city, it would be either Seattle, Vancouver BC, or Portland Or. I visited many of the great sights to see such as the famous waterfront market. This place is great, tons of fresh fish, flowers, food, crafts and more fish.





These guys at the market get crazy and throw the fish around. Any kind of seafood you want is here, clams, squid, trout, halibut, eel, you name it.





Of course there is all kinds of street entertainers working for tips. The clown and the silver man was cool. There is also plenty of beggars in the street asking you for change. It actually started to get under my skin being asked 5 different times in one block. I did think the city was safe as we walked all hours of the evening and never felt threatened.




Since I'm in the power industry we had a tour of one of the many hydro dam that generate power for the city of Seattle. This one was built in 1906 and still runs today with many of the old penstock and turbines still in use. Above the dam a beautiful lake and below it water falls.


Some of the places I ate at above. Left picture is the Tillicum village on Blake island where we had salmon cooked by the fire. Center picture is "The Fisherman" where I had some great Halibut and right is Pike Brewery where they serve an excellent spicy Salmon and great dark beer.


Of Course being a glass blower I had to stop at Seattle Glass Blowing Studio where I usually buy my glass color. I ended leaving with a few hundred dollars of color to use in my future work. I am a member of GAS ( Glass Artist Society) and the 2011 convention is going to be held in Seattle. Several of us local glass blowers are talking about attending next year. The following year it will be held here in Toledo where is all started ( the glass movement) in 1962 at the Toledo Art museum.


The other picture is the Seattle Art Museum where I didn't get the chance to visit, maybe next year.

Pasta Sauce

We still have tomatoes and Peppers left in the garden and ended up making some roasted garlic and pepper pasta sauce the other night. The peppers are coated with oil, roasted and the skins peeled. The Garlic has the bottom of the bud cut off and drizzed with oil and roasted. We add tomatoes, several cups of fresh Basil, parsley, oregano and a few other things.



Then it is all cooked down for some time and canned up into pint jars. We made a double batch (10 quarts) and of course had some extra left over to make a great spaghetti dinner with the next night. So the garden is about done with only carrots, a ton of hot and mild peppers and more tomatoes. We hope to can up some hot peppers in olive oil Friday night and Brenda is going to show her friend how to make Salsa next week.

More pears

As of this morning we have 45 quarts and (18) 1.5 pints of pears. We still have some left so this morning we canned some Brandied pears in pint jars. They have a slight golden color to them and have to sit for at least one month to soak the favor in. Bet they will taste great this winter next to a fire with ice cream.

While the pears were processing we canned another batch of tomato soup which makes about 9-10 quarts of soup. We cut up celery, skinned tomatoes, onion, parsley and a few bay leaves. Let it cook down for a bit and then run in through a food mill and sieve. Then is must cook down to thicken and then into the pressure canner.

Pears

What do you do with 4 bushel of pears? Process and can as many as you can tolerate. Dad had a bumper crop this year while we had little in the way of pears. So we have been canning pears for several days now and have about half of them done.






Here is half of the pears canned up along with our other canned goods. So far the list includes tomato soup, roasted garlic / pepper sauce, 3 kinds of salsa, beans, peaches, 2 kinds of beets, 3 kinds of pickles, 3 kinds of peppers, squash relish, salmon and I can't remember the rest. Still have more soup, beets, beans, and apple sauce and butter to do to finish up the season.