Last Saturday, some of Tommy D’s Etta’s folks loaded up our rented Mussel Bus and made a trek over gorgeous Deception Pass and descended on the little community of Coupville for the annual Mussel Fest. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody in the company had to do it!

The day was sunny and fabulous, and we gorged on $5 bowls of mussels, cold beer, and homemade brownies!  Not to mention fabulous ice cream from the mussel man himself, Rawle Jefferds of Penn Cove Shellfish.

The photos:

photo top left: beautiful black shells leftover from our mussels feast!

photo middle left: Etta’s crew

photo middle right: giant pan of mussels cooking at the festival

photo bottom left: the “rafts” where the mussels are raised

Yesterday, Tom was the guest speaker at the Marketing Mixology Conference at Bell Harbor.  While sharing his experience and knowledge on branding and marketing as a successful restaurant entrepeneur, Tom kept everyone in stitches as he entertained us with his escapades as a young and struggling chef during his early years at Café Sport!

In this picture, Tom is breaking down a king salmon (right on the podium!) and explaining how he uses every single piece of it to create delicious dishes, even the collar- that most folks deem useless and simply toss away- is actually the most tasty part!

So the next time you see salmon collar at your local market, grab it and take it home and transform it into a tasty little dish:

Brine overnight in soy sauce, honey, orange juice, star anise, and a little grated ginger, plus a little water, and the next day broil that baby for dinner, yum!

Herschell Taghap, catering cook and demo-er extraordinaire, made a family meal (ie. staff meal) that was absolutely divine! Authentic Chicago style hot dogs!!

All beef dog on a poppyseed bun and here’s exactly what’s on it:

yellow mustard

diced onion

2 slices tomato

kosher pickle

sport peppers

and a fine sprinkling of celery salt

Visit Herschell’s blog here.

Amy Richardson, our catering gal, braved the desert to attend the Catersource catering convention.  She saw many wondrous things and made it back intact.  So look for some fancy parties at the Palace Ballroom.

Food writer Leslie Kelly raves about Tom’s cast iron deep fryer pan with skillet lid on Amazon’s Al Dente blog.

(Note: photo from Al Dente blog)

Little Tastes of Shepherd’s Grain last week was a bushel of fun!

We were joined by Karl, Fred, and their entourage of farmers to learn all about the truly amazing and inspiring journey of building their company with the goal of bringing sustainable, local wheats to market.

In cahoots with the scientists at Eastern Washington U, they have even been instrumental in promoting new strains of wheat with noticeably improved flavor (which seems to come from whatever it is that makes wheat yellow, largely bred out because of the desire for pretty white noodles, etc.  I can’t remember all the details, but it was science-y!)  And that’s just for starters.  Here are the guys…. sans entourage…. avec martinis!

Our head baker, Wendy, talked about various leavening methods we use to bake breads with very different flavors and characteristics with identical ingredients, while Tom Douglas reminisced about bringing grapes from his yard twenty years ago to start our levain “chef.”  How cool!

Brock, our Dahlia chef, had agonized over what to make for the tastes, and finally decided on a brilliantly simple series of preparations based upon the parts of the wheat berry in all its glorious simplicity: wheat berry tabbouleh, bran crepes with goat butter, and wheat germ porridge with fireweed honey.

Please join us for the next Little Tastes featuring World Spice on Tuesday, March 30th!

Can you guess which month these photos of a farmers market were taken?  Even saying it was the Palm Springs farmers market probably won’t help.

What does seasonality mean when midwinter gives you berries, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, asparagus, and citrus?  An embarassment of riches to be sure, but I’ll take Washington’s short growing season any day!

Sean (Operations Manager), Audrey (Corporate Sous Chef), and Kat (Palace Line Cook) rocked the kid/adult healthy family meal class.  The tamale pie was a big hit and so was Sean’s homemade granola.

(Editor’s note: our spring series of kid’s cooking classes is sold out. Keep an eye out for future classes on our events page.)

Following Vulcan’s press release that we will be joining them in their South Lake Union project, we did a catering/demo for the Vulcan real estate folks who are developing and leasing space. We served buckwheat blini with smoked salmon, tingmos, Serious Pie’s potato pizza,  beer, wine and a delicious limoncello cocktail!

It’s going to be incredible! Can’t wait to get started on this project. Here are some details about the new Terry Avenue space from Eater and from Nancy Leson.

Top photo: Chang’s wings

Bottom photo: Momofuku chicken!