Eat All About It

Finalists for the 2009 James Beard awards, the Oscars of the industry, were announced today. Finalists for Best Chef: Northwest are a noteworthy and familiar group: Seattle dominated the field, with Maria Hines of Tilth, Joseba Jiminez de Jiminez of Harvest Vine and Txori, Ethan Stowell of Union, Tavolata, How To Cook A Wolf, and Anchovies & Olives, and Jason Wilson of Crush. Cathy Whims of Nostrana in Portland also made the list here.

For national awards, Tom Douglas is on the list for outstanding restaurateur.

And, to my honest shock and delight, I seem to be on the list for Newspaper Feature Writing With Recipes.

Here is a link to the PI article that was nominated (edited to add link on March 24): 
Super-succulent imports are everything U.S. pork isn’t

I’ll update once I pick my jaw up off the floor. Congratulations to everyone. The winners will be announced May 4 at Lincoln Center in New York. The full list of nominees, including cookbook picks, is here as well.

Just a couple hours until the finalists for the 2009 James Beard Awards are announced. I’ll post them here when we get the news.

In the meantime, whet your appetite by checking out Nancy Leson’s roundup of this year’s semifinalists, who were announced in February.

After just a few days on this site, I can’t say how happy I’ve been to see so many readers from my days at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer join me here. Many of my former colleagues — although I still think of them as just plain colleagues — also have their own blogs and websites and other journalism projects in the works. Here’s a link to see where you can find Andrew Schneider still investigating food safety, Cecelia Goodnow still writing about children’s books, Gene Stout covering music, Meryl Schenker showcasing her photojournalism skills, and many more. Other sites are under construction, and I’ll add them as they go live.

The 5-Spot isn’t letting its specials go for a five-spot, but the restaurants in the Chow Foods group are extending what’s still a strikingly inexpensive dinner deal. It was originally supposed to end by spring.

Endolyne Joe’s, The 5-Spot, and The Hi-Life are all offering blue-plate specials linked to the price of the Dow Jones. Tonight, with the Dow’s most recent closing price at 7,278, the special would rung up at $7.28. The “Bell Ringing” deal runs Sunday through Thursday. Atlas Foods also features a nightly Blue Plate for $9.50, which the Chow folks describe as “simple supper specials like an applesauce-topped pork chop, Chicken-Fried Steak or Spicy Sausage Lasagna,” with sides and coffee. Actually, they say, “with sides and a cup o’ Joe,” because that’s how they talk at Chow. I put up with the schtick because their food is solid (sometimes much better than solid — did you notice that their chef took the title of “Prince of Pork” against the city’s best at Cochon 555?) and I still have fond memories of the Beeliner.

Cakespy art courtesy of www.jessieoleson.etsy.com

Gourmet.com has listed nearly 100 of its favorite food blogs online, not long after the Times of London made a splash with its top 50. A bunch of my favorites are on the Gourmet page, including a bunch of locals — I’m especially glad to see Cakespy, a long-time favorite, get such a prominent national nod. For locals, the alphabetical list also includes The Accidental Hedonist, Cook and Eat, Gluten-Free Girl, A Mighty Appetite, and Orangette.

Of course, you’re asking, how could they forget Hogwash? Where’s Tea and Cookies?” (Fill in your own favorites in the comments.) But even as I write that, I know I’m leaving out some of my own other must-reads too.

Here’s the full list from Gourmet.

Truly, it’s spring. Want proof? We have the opening dates for the area’s farmers markets. Mark your calendars and dream (and remember, the Ballard, Fremont, University District, and West Seattle markets are year-round.)

The Columbia City market is first out of the gate, opening April 29.

Broadway opens May 10.

Madrona opens May 15.

Wallingford opens May 20.

Queen Anne opens June 20, though it will be overseen by QA organizers rather than the Seattle Farmers Market Association, following conflicts over the site plans. Here’s an article from the Queen Anne News when it looked as though there might be no market in 2009; here’s market association president Jon Hegeman’s longer take on the association’s position. The Queen Anne Farmers Market Association posted its version here.

Magnolia opens May 23.

Phinney opens May 29.

Lake City opens June 4.

The Seattle association (Ballard, Fremont, Madrona, Wallingford) will launch blogs for its markets this year, and has a rough guide for what seasonal goods to expect. The Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance posts a weekly “Ripe and Ready” report of what you’ll see at the markets.

Already, it’s talking about fiddlehead ferns.

I feel compelled to chronicle the successes of Mount Townsend Creamery for two reasons: One, the Port Townsend-based business makes great cheese. Two, I once proclaimed that its cheeses are among the best in the country, and I’m always glad to have formal backup for my judgments. This time it’s in the form of the 2009 United States Cheese Championship, which the Associated Press calls “the cheese makers Super Bowl,” where Mount Townsend took first place for its Trailhead Tomme in the category of semi-soft cheeses.

The championship website doesn’t have an overview of the winners, you need to click on each of the 65 categories to see who won. After some excruciating search time, it occurred to me that Oregon-based cheese author Tami Parr had probably already pulled out exactly the information I wanted. And indeed she had, listing all the Northwest winners on her Pacific Northwest Cheese Project site. Tami wrote that “this year’s buzz is all about Tumalo Farms of Bend, Oregon, which took runner up to Best in Show (that’s 2nd place out of 1,300+ cheeses) for its Gouda style Goat’s milk Classico - quite a feat.”

There are various cheese competitions around the world, with different emphases on large producers and small. (I didn’t see Beecher’s, for instance, a big gun in various cheese awards, with any entries at this event.) Parr has this take on it: “While this contest tends to be dominated by cheesemakers from industrial sized cheese plants, artisan cheesemakers often enter the prestigious competition for the chance to be judged by the best experts in the industry.”

When looking at Mount Townsend’s web site just now, I noticed something new — Will O’Donnell, one of the creamery’s three founders, is no longer listed as an owner. Looks like he’s now director of the Port Townsend Farmers Market.

Kurt Timmermeister, who has sold raw milk from his Vashon Island dairy farm for the past four years, is done. In the next few weeks, he wrote, he will give up his license to sell fluid milk and will concentrate instead on making cheese. He’s ordered a cheese vat-pasteurizer from the Netherlands, and a holding/chilling tank from Canada, and will only sell milk until the new equipment is here and hooked up. First on his cheese list is a Camembert, well-suited to the “rich, creamy milk” from his Jersey cows.

Timmermeister has written eloquently about the licensing and health department hassles surrounding raw milk, and its potential benefits and dangers have long spurred debates and lawsuits — but he didn’t invoke the controversies when describing the changeover.

He wrote:

Read more, and keep up with his cheesemaking journey, here.

It seems like just a few weeks ago I was commenting on how well Haggen-owned Top Foods handles the supermarket juggling act between price and quality. Now, its successes — and failures — have been quantified, along with those of other area markets, in a new study by the Puget Sound Consumers’ Checkbook.

Staffers at the non-profit magazine compared prices on 152 items at local supermarkets and warehouse clubs, and also surveyed 4,200 consumers on quality and service. The findings include:

– Among the area’s four largest supermarket chains, prices were cheapest at Fred Meyer. Prices were highest at QFC — and, yes, the spread exists even though both chains are owned by Kroger. The average price for a full market basket at Freddie’s was 6 percent lower than the average at Albertson’s, 10 percent lower than Safeway, and 17 percent lower than QFC. A family spending $150 per week at QFC, the study noted, could save $1,300 per year by switching to Fred Meyer.

– QFC may have been the priciest large chain, but it also received the highest customer satisfaction ratings among the four large chains. Sixty-one percent of QFC customers in the survey rated it as “superior” overall, compared to 52 percent for Safeway, 50 percent for Fred Meyer, and 36 percent for Albertsons.

– The Checkbook credits Haggen for proving “that it is possible to get high ratings for quality and still have reasonable prices.” The Haggen store in Lake Stevens was one of the few stores in the report to win kudos for both, with its score for “overall” quality beating out everyone except the pricier Metropolitan Market and the Town & Country Markets (Ballard Market, Central Market, and Greeenwood Market). Top Foods itself, though, didn’t fare as well, garnering only 69 percent of “superior” ratings in overall quality. That’s better than any of the four large chains, but doesn’t come close to sister store Haggen’s rating of 90 percent, or Metropolitan and Town & Country’s 90+.

– Looking at all the stores in the survey, both large markets and small, PCC and Whole Foods had the highest prices. No real surprise. What was a surprise was that they did not score as high in the fresh produce category (where you’d think they’d share the gold medal) or in the overall results as Haggen, Metropolitan, and Town & Country.

– Trader Joe’s also fared less well than I would have expected, given how thrilled I usually am by my money-to-happiness-to-quality ratios in the checkout line. TJ’s won points (90% “superior” ratings) for its friendly staff, but tanked when it came to fresh produce (25%), parking (35%), keeping things in stock (37%), and convenience of store layout (48%). Come to think of it, those are all areas where I have beefs with the store — and yet my overall sense of the place is still very positive.

Candace Heckman, my former P-I colleague, reported on a 2006 Checkbook survey, and looked into the Fred Meyer/QFC conundrum.

She wrote:

“We’re very separate stores with very separate clientele,” Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for Fred Meyer in Portland, said of the different pricing between Fred Meyer and QFC. “Just because we’re both owned by Kroger doesn’t mean anything.”

A store such as Fred Meyer can sell more items at lower margins because it offers a larger variety of products. It is a department store, jeweler and grocery store combined.

I stopped by Top Foods in Shoreline today anyway, and picked up a pound of wild (previously frozen) halibut for $8.99, a 12-ounce pack of sliced Tillamook Swiss on sale for $3.99, and some crisp, kid-size apples for a quarter apiece. I was more than 69% satisfied.

Per my previous post, Gabriel Claycamp is now confirming on his Facebook page that Culinary Communion has closed.

He wrote: “Gabriel Lee Claycamp is coming to grips with the fact that this rollercoaster has ended. CC is done. We have given our whole lives to this dream and met amazing people. Love you.”

Supporters reported receiving a letter of explanation (below) a few hours later.

The short summary: The final straw for the closure, he wrote, was the city’s requirement that a second exit be built from the building’s basement. He will hold a going out of business sale at CC March 21 to raise money toward paying the staff and refunding tuition. ” It is not our intention to slip away quietly, leaving a pile of debt and bad feelings behind us.” He still plans to operate The Swinery and Lunch Counter (though, if the city does lock the building’s doors, as he references below, I’m not sure how that works.) If you want to help, he wrote, attend the sale, be vocal about good experiences you had with CC — “and, cook. Dig out your recipes and have a dinner party; invite friends or strangers, and come together around the table. Keep the food community alive. ”

Here’s the full letter:

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