So, Independence Day, yet again.

You probably thought we Yanks were done with those pesky Brits back in 1776. Wrong. ‘Round these parts, sovereignty didn’t get settled till almost a hundred years later. We blame the pig.

The roots of our story can be traced back to Article III of the Treaty of 1818: the joint occupation of Oregon Country by the United States and Great Britain. How the treaty signers thought two countries vying for land claims and navigation rights would resolve any boundary issues is anyone’s guess, but nevertheless, the increasingly tumultuous Oregon Country free-for-all continued for 28 years, until, in 1846, the two sides determined they’d had enough. They signed the Oregon Treaty on June 15th, set the border between the US and Canada at the 49th Parallel (excepting lower Vancouver Island), and that was that.

Or so they thought.

Trouble is, the folks signing the treaty were, to put it bluntly, cartographically inept. The border between Canada’s Vancouver Island and the US mainland, they said, should lie down the middle of the “major channel” through the islands. Easy to say if there’s one major channel.

Not so easy if there are two.

And not at all easy if both Yanks and Brits are enjoying the resources of the group of islands that lie in the middle.

And so, while politicians squabbled over maps and over which strait was “major” — Haro to the west or Rosario to the east — settlers arrived from other parts of the continent and soon American “squatters” (as the British preferred to call them), had laid claim to land just a stone’s throw from the sheep runs of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Belle Vue Farm at the southern end of San Juan Island.

And for the most part, the sheep ran along their runs, and the handful of Americans eked out a living on their tiny parcels of land (which the British insisted were most decidedly not theirs), and all was, if not calm, at least not explosively tense.

Until the pig entered the picture.

For sheep will trot right past a farmer’s potato patch, even if there’s nothing much for fencing in their way, but pigs, or more specifically Berkshire boars? They’re born for rooting, and when they sense potatoes, they have at it.

And having at it was just what one particular Hudson’s Bay Company pig was doing in Lyman Cutlar’s potato patch on the morning of June 15th, 1859. And Cutlar had had enough. He grabbed his rifle and shot it.

Charles Griffin, Belle Vue Farm’s manager, was not pleased in the least. He demanded exorbitant compensation. Cutlar, being an obstinate sort, refused. Griffin, being equally obstinate, demanded Cutlar’s arrest. A blink of an eye later, the American settlers on San Juan Island (all 18 of them or so) had armed themselves and were demanding military protection.

In July, the first American soldiers arrived. In August, British war ships. By the end of the summer, the count was Americans: 461, British 2,140, and — most happily for all involved — not a single casualty of war.

Except, of course, for the pig.

This peaceful standoff — so peaceful that troops from both sides celebrated holidays together and held sporting events on the prairie at American Camp — continued for 13 years. In November of 1872, the Royal Marines withdrew from English Camp at the north end of the island, not because they’d been defeated in battle, or even because the Crown had called it quits. No, in fact, the American and British governments did what governments do so well in border disputes such as this: they passed the buck. They turned to Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany and said, excuse me, could you figure this one out for us?

And, after a year of meetings by his three-man commission in Geneva, Kaiser Wilhelm did just that, and ruled in favor of the United States.

These days, the Pig War is serious business. We’ve got our two National Parks, the 4th of July Pig War Barbecue, the Pig War Museum, Encampment, over a dozen books about the subject, and no doubt a good forty other things I’ve forgotten. Truly, there’s a bit of a porcine glut in these parts.

Even so, when it came time to commemorate Independence Day (or rather the San Juan Island version with all its local piggy trappings) we couldn’t resist adding our own culinary homage to the mix. And, because we are (as I mentioned in the intro) only 400 yards from where this all happened, I took said homage on a field trip.

Piggy, the Pig War Scotch Goose Egg,
Takes a Field Trip

Here’s Piggy in the car. Are we there yet, he asks. Of course, I tell him, it’s only a quarter mile drive up the county road!

Piggy arrives at the main trail marker for the American Camp interpretive trail. Silly Piggy, blocking our view of the image on the sign. Oh, wait, here it is.

Piggy poses in front of the Officer’s Quarters. The camp’s commander, Captain George E. Pickett, lived there. Yes, that Pickett.

What, they named a fence after him, too?

Piggy checks out the prairie. According to the sign (stop blocking the signs, Piggy!), Pickett’s horse bolted during one of those joint sporting events and all the British soldiers cheered.

Uh oh. Piggy’s rooting radar is on high alert. What’s that beyond the fence?

It’s a potato! (Careful, there, Piggy.) Piggy’s found a meal on the bluff above Griffin Bay. Have at it, Piggy, the H.M.S. Satellite’s got your back!

Not everyone is so lucky to have their own commemorative rock! Here’s Piggy, checking out the rock named for Henry Martyn Robert, the military engineer who built American Camp’s fortifications. Piggy says behave yourselves, or he’ll go after you with a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order!

Ah, Piggy had a grand time at the park! So grand that now he wants to head up to the north side of the island and check out Garrison Bay and the British fortifications!

No, Piggy, I’m afraid that won’t be on our plate this afternoon, because, well…

You are.

I won’t sit still for it.

Not one second.

(Hah. Clever photographer, thinks she can snap photos of me anyway.)

Well.

I can understand leaving the dog behind. After all, dogs are excitable. They freak out, unlike cats who never ever ever freak out. Am I right?

But truly, I must protest! Do I need to point out that cats harbor an undying love for all things shiny and wiggly?

So, why oh why can’t we watch shiny, wiggly things in the sky?

Shiny paper, shiny baubles, shiny bits of ribbon…

Nope. We’re left behind.

Which means I have to raid my female captor’s computer to present the following slideshow: An Evening of Shiny Wiggly Things over Friday Harbor.

I hope you enjoy it. I would have enjoyed it more if they’d let me watch it in person. Silly captors.

As most of you are aware, it was Mrs D’s and my two year anniversary back on Monday, and both she and I had work-related problems with celebrating on the actual date. We did however get a plethora of great suggestions on what to do with our special day (well, except for the whole maid outfit thing).

I decided that I needed to do something very special on Wednesday to make up for our lack of ability to celebrate on the proper date. First, I knew that I had to get Mrs D to the beach, and second, I absolutely had to cook a knock-her-socks-off meal.

These things came together beautifully when I remembered that we had brought up our propane-fueled camp stove and our wonderfully decked-out picnic basket. Soon the ideas for the food started to emerge. I needed at least three courses, and I knew that Mrs D absolutely adores fish, or more appropriately, anything that lives in and/or breathes water. First I thought about halibut, but then I remembered that we had a gorgeous chunk of salmon brought to us by our good friend, Farhad (long time readers might remember him from our post about the potlatch last year). I found it right where I left it in the freezer.

Then I did some more scouring of the fridge and came up with a half-gallon of home-made brown chicken stock, half a bottle of cheap white wine, a log of herb and roasted garlic compound butter, half a Walla Walla sweet onion, some Roma tomatoes, and the piece de resistance, three perfectly ripe mangoes. Next, it was off to the pantry where I found our customary jasmine rice as well as a small bag of wild rice, a bottle of sherry vinegar (left from our very first post… a paper chef entry), a couple heads of garlic, and one last shallot.

The idea solidified, and while Mrs. D was off at work, I went into action.

I drove out to Wescott Bay Sea Farms and picked up a mixed bag of their world famous mussels and clams. Then I was off to our local market to get the last few things: some organic mixed baby greens, a loaf of artisan bread, one bunch of cilantro, a bunch of scallions, and a small pack of sliced almonds.

And what did I come up with?

A lovely three course dinner served in the picturesque environs of San Juan Island’s South Beach.

Speak now…

March now…

Vote now…

…so someday our children may do the same.

Photos: Friday Harbor 4th of July Parade, 2006

Dad.

One year ago today, early on a Monday of a Paper Chef weekend, Dad, the gentlest soul and the best patient a caregiving daughter could ever hope for, breathed his last breath. I was there, by his side, morning medicine in one hand, my other hand on his forehead.

Chopper had to go to work that day and I had to make phone calls, arrange for the funeral home to come from the mainland, and ready Dad for his final journey.

That weekend, in stolen moments between my caregiving duties, we cooked, creating yet another mad collection of dishes for our month-old blog — a blog we’d created as an oasis, a necessary outlet while life around us marched toward its inevitable conclusion.

Dad had pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed in June of 2004, three weeks before our wedding, and for a short while, it seemed we’d have to either put our wedding plans on hold or carry on without my parents in attendance. I couldn’t bear the latter but my parents insisted on it; their concern for our planning efforts taking precedence over their hopes to attend.

Thankfully, Dad’s doctor knew of the situation and did everything he could to declare Dad fit for travel by wedding time. It worked, and because all my siblings knew Dad would be there, even the ones I didn’t expect to see attended. Our wedding became our final complete family reunion.

Six months later, Chopper was nearly through with the on-campus portion of culinary school. All that was left was a six week externship followed by final evaluation and graduation. Dad wasn’t doing all that well — people with pancreatic cancer rarely do well — and we knew Mom couldn’t keep caring for him alone. We also knew I was the only one of my siblings who could leap into the breach. My older brothers and sisters had demanding careers, children to care for, and here I was, working freelance from home with a husband fresh from school. It was up to us.

So, we tossed just about everything we owned in storage, packed what we could, and headed up to San Juan Island, where, on the day following our arrival, Chopper began his externship at a local restaurant and I began my duties as caregiver to my dying father.

The transition was awkward. For the first two and a half months, we lived in a trailer in the turn-around and battled cold nights and an influx of early spring wasps. (Waking up at three a.m. to a wasp on my pillow is not an experience I want to repeat any time soon.)

Dad was amazing: never complaining unless something truly bothered him, making every effort to eat when I gave him food. And working, even. Working on his final book, meeting with colleagues, reading scholarly papers. I was in awe of his perseverance, even on days when he achieved no more than a scant half hour at his desk.

We couldn’t cook much in the house because of Dad’s nausea, and the trailer didn’t provide us with a reasonable cooking sanctuary. One day Chopper attempted Thai curry on the tiny trailer stove, and the fish sauce stunk the place up like sweaty gym socks for weeks on end.

A month before Dad died, his nausea subsided for the most part and it became all about pain management. If we could keep our cooking smells to a minimum, we could cook again. And so, with Dad’s approval, and because I knew Chopper needed an outlet (and because I couldn’t — still can’t — shake the dismay that Chopper never signed on for this sort of duty when he joined my family), I proposed Belly Timber.

It’s a creative outlet, I told him. Something we can do together — and crucial because we really couldn’t do much of anything together, save for those occasional days when I could call a respite worker for an hour or two. (Someday, not today, I’ll write about caregiving, and the wonderful and sanity-keeping thing that is the respite worker.)

It’s vital, I told him. I need to do this — or at least something very much like this — just as I need to care for Dad.

And so Belly Timber was born.

Chopper’s rosemary beer-steamed mussels: the final home-cooked meal Dad loved and could eat. Even when everything else repulsed him, he’d still happily dig in to a plate of Chopper’s rosemary beer-steamed mussels. Some nights, he’d eat five, maybe even six mussels, and we’d count the shells and celebrate. It was the most he’d ever eat in one sitting, and for one tiny moment we could imagine we were in the midst of just another happy family gathering around the dinner table.

It was hard to escape the irony: launching a food blog when Dad’s diet had been reduced to oatmeal and Ensure, but within just a few posts we knew we’d done the right thing, even if it meant, in the midst of grieving and duty, I’d force myself to the computer to type up our entry for that weekend’s Paper Chef.

We’re still here; still caregiving in a way. Our belongings, save for what we hauled up here last year, are still in storage and we’re still cooking in a messy kitchen that we can only claim as our own through the disasters we create there.

In many ways, Belly Timber is still a vital, necessary release, and still an escape from a life that bears more than a passing resemblance to limbo. My freelance career went to hell in a hand basket during Dad’s final months, and I’m just now (at long last) fighting to get it back. Chopper is eager to try more than just island restaurants in his post-culinary school career. He dreams of stages with great chefs, and of travel, lots of travel.

And now, on this year anniversary, and year-plus-a-month (or so) for this crazy blog, we cast a furtive glance or two toward the future and toward leaving this place that’s never quite been our home. We’ll still be here a while — through the chaotic tourist summer at least — but the city beckons, and a life of our own beckons, and Chopper hears the siren call of a kitchen of his own every day.

And oh lordy do I want to unpack our belongings. I roll my eyes and laugh at the triviality of it all, but I miss our silverware. I miss our sake set. I miss my crazy prop collection that would have lent so much more insanity to so many of our culinary adventures.

Trivial, yes, but you know, I think Dad, packrat that he was, would approve. After all, the trolls in the canoe from my Mighty Cheese Warriors post — those were his.

I promised, a long, long while ago, to share a remarkable story about a gift from the Samish tribe in honor of Dad’s legacy. It’s still hard to write about it without getting a little teary, even now, looking back so many months. But, because this day it feels right, here it is:

We live, as many of you know, in orca country. The whales, great pods of them, swim the strait just west of here, and every year when new calves are born, the Whale Museum and their marine naturalists give them names. Not just Pod names like J-14 or K-20, but name names, like Granny and Skana and Spock. Sometimes the names are determined by a vote of museum patrons, sometimes by museum staff, and on special occasions, local tribes are granted the privilege to bestow a name upon a whale in a traditional tribal naming ceremony.

(You can see where this is going, right?)

About a month after Dad died, two women from the Samish tribal council called Mom and asked if they could come for a visit. They had a question for her, they said. Mom extended the invitation, but she was concerned. She hoped they weren’t going to ask her something only Dad could have answered. She braced herself for something obscure, some scrap of knowledge buried in decades of anthropological archives.

The women arrived. They brought Mom gifts. They talked about Dad and about how much he meant to the Samish people.

And then they asked Mom’s permission, if she thought Dad wouldn’t mind, to name a whale calf after him.

Needless to say, Mom said yes. Yes, yes, oh absolutely yes!

This summer, before we leave this place which isn’t quite our home but is very much Dad’s home, we’ll take trips out to the western shore of the island and to the Whale watching park where, if our luck is just right, we’ll see J-pod, and Samish, J-14, and her children, Riptide, J-30, Hy’Shqa, J-37, and Suttles, J-40, or as I like to imagine, Dad, come back as a whale, playing with his family in the waves of the Salish Sea.

Not so long ago, I ducked back into our archives to take a peek at the very first comments left on our infant blog, just over a year ago. Turns out, comment #1 was left by Jen of Life Begins at 30, comment #2 by Kevin of Seriously Good, and comment #3 by Owen of Tomatilla!.

How appropriate is that?

See, here we are, launching into the first Paper Chef since our one year Blogiversary, and not only is Kevin hosting (while Owen takes a much-deserved break), but this month’s theme includes local ingredients, in solidarity with the Eat Local Challenge, organized by Jen! It’s The Circle of Knife Life, Paper Chef style!

Now, some of our more observant readers (okay, okay, everyone) will notice that we haven’t been posting much lately. It’s spring fever, I tell you. It’s going around. The garden calls my name, the pooch begs for serious ball time; who am I to ditch that in favor of slouching at the computer?

But, when Chopper read this month’s ingredients and went on an immediate culinary brainstorm binge, I knew my time away had to end. Chopper cooks and I must blog.

And boy oh boy did he cook this time. Seriously. This food is so damn tasty, I want to head to the kitchen for seconds, thirds, and fourths before I type up another paragraph.

Hang on. Just a sec…

Okay, back.

(Dusts crumbs off keyboard.)

Now, where was I?

Ah yes, the ingredients. For this month, Kevin used his fine scientific skills in Haberdasherdivination to produce these pleasing results:

Lavender
Miso
Chickpeas
Something local

And Chopper, because he loves this style of food (and no, not because we’re trendy, dammit! We’re NOT trendy!), immediately announced his decision to produce a four course tapas extravaganza, with a different local ingredient for each course.

For our local ingredients, we hit three places: the Farmers’ Market, Westcott Bay Sea Farms, and, er, our freezer.

Now, here’s the thing about eating local on the island in May: There’s not a heck of a lot available. The San Juan Island Farmers’ Market (in its weekly, outdoor incarnation) has only been running two weeks now, and at last Saturday’s visit, I counted a grand total of 15 stalls, only three of which were actually selling produce. This time of year, local produce means greens, greens, and more greens, with the occasional baby root vegetable thrown in. Lucky for us, greens at the Farmers’ Market are surprisingly cheap — especially compared to later season vegetables (and to the scary-expensive $6.99/lb bucket of “organic mixed greens” at the grocer’s).

In our short jaunt along the thoroughfare (I’d say main thoroughfare, but at this market, there’s only one thoroughfare), we scored green garlic from Blue Moon Produce, and sorrel and a lovely bunch of baby turnips with greens attached from Thousand Flower Farm. (Total cost for the three bunches: $5.50) Both of these farms are located on Waldron Island, a remote island northwest of Orcas that’s known for its amazing produce. (For a great chapter on the farmers of Waldron, I highly recommend Greg Atkinson’s book In Season: Culinary Adventures of a San Juan Chef.)

Next, it was off to Westcott Bay Sea Farms for clams, because as far as Chopper is concerned a tapas spread just isn’t a tapas spread without clams.

Lastly, we took a trip to our freezer where, among all the other oddities that deny us room for ice cubes, Chopper had stashed a pair of lamb’s kidneys. Yes, local lamb’s kidneys. These particular kidneys came from last year’s farmer’s market and from Local Island Meats, a stand run by the fine folks at Z Lazy J Farm & Feed, which is located just a few miles up the road from us. Chopper had been saving them for steak and kidney pie, but this weekend, they just screamed empanada filling.

Now, how close to home did we find these goodies?

Well, inspired by Tana’s Chefs & Farms map over at Small Farms, I’ve launched Island Local, a map for San Juan County growers and producers of culinary products. So far, I’ve just marked the locations listed above, but I’ll be adding more in the weeks to come. (Now, if I can just get Platial to recognize all these wacky island addresses…)

In case you’re wondering, Casa Belly Timber is just south of the map’s visible area, right below the ©2006.

A quick word about our other ingredients:

We discovered, though it wasn’t much of a shock, that neither of the two grocers on the island carry dried chickpeas, so all of our dishes were made with the canned variety. The miso was from a container of shiro miso paste already in our fridge, lucky for us.

Our attempt to use local lavender in addition to our other local ingredients was thwarted by two things: our own tiny lavender plant that’s not even close to blooming, and the exorbitant price the local lavender farm charges for their culinary lavender. Don’t get me wrong, there are many things I love about the lavender farm, especially in mid-July when the fields are all in bloom, but nine bucks for a container the size of a tin of shoe polish? That’s not one of ‘em. So, our lavender came from an herb and spice distributor and I haven’t the foggiest idea where it’s grown.

Chopper made all four of these dishes at once so we could have a true tapas spread (and I could go a little nuts with the photography). I garnished everything with herbs from our garden, quickly snapped away, and then we dug in. And oh, was it good.

Now, Chopper’s asked me if I have a favorite (his is the spicy clam dish), but to be honest, I can’t make up my mind. The clams are indeed spicy, but perfectly so; the fritters just amaze me in that I can taste the fermented tofu, the smoked paprika, the green garlic, and the lavender; the spread, with that tang of sorrel in it, is something I want in the fridge for snacktime from now on; and the empanadas, well, I think the highest compliment I can offer Chopper is that I, Mrs. D, an admitted hater of organ meats, could taste the lamb kidney in the filling — and I still loved it!

Good lord. Mrs. D. eats kidney without cringing? I’d say this was a hands down Paper Chef success!

Technorati:online event | Paper Chef | eat local

Tuesday Fox blogging?

Alas, Platelicker and The Cat have been usurped by wildlife yet again. It’s not that they weren’t engaged in entertaining and photogenic activities over the weekend — wait a sec, is shedding photogenic? Okay, scratch that last part. What I mean to say is, our domestic critters had every intention of sharing their charms with the world (we understand The Cat had something rather nefarious up her Kaga sleeve for Saturday), but a glitch in the matrix a series of unfortunate events resulted in our entire house being thrown back into the dark ages (about 1988 or so) for what felt like days on end.

Shocking but true: we were without the internet for the entire weekend.

I thought I was going to die. For about five minutes, and then I read a book.

And I cleaned the cat box.

And we took the puppy to the beach.

And, without posting, we quietly celebrated Belly Timber’s first anniversary. (More on that later: the end of the world as we know it minor internet snafu has prompted us to postpone our tedious, introspective golly-it’s-been-a-year post anniversary celebration until later this week, when we’ve recovered from the horrors of sitting down and engaging each other in actual conversation.

(We’ll be fine. Really.)

Meanwhile, about that fox.

Attentive readers might note that this fox sighting and last month’s golden eagle sighting both coincided with trips to the beach. In fact, the two sightings occurred not more than about fifty yards from one another, and near this same spot, we’ve seen hawks, bald eagles, even a great horned owl on a misty moonlit night. So, what makes this barren bluff such a hotspot for carnivorous wildlife? This mid-winter shot of the prairie across the road might offer up a clue or two.

Ah, lapin. Délicieux. Too bad the wild ones are so stringy.

Tuesday bird blogging?

A quick drive up the road and down toward the beach with the dog, and there, sitting just a few feet from the old split rail fence at the top of the bluff, is a huge bird. Dude, quick! Turn the car around, I say to Chopper, and he does, and I scramble to get my camera ready and within a minute we’re parked and I’m stealthily climbing out — or rather, I’m klutzedly attempting to climb out and set the camera’s exposure at the same time.

And the bird, which I now realize is a Golden Eagle, looks at me from about 20 feet away and then takes off. So I point and click and am completely amazed that I managed to get the entire bird in the frame. (So many times I have tried this and failed.)

Needless to say, the beach jaunt that followed was a bit anti-climactic. Leaping dolphins might have helped, you know.

But of course now I’ve got that Steve Miller song stuck in my head and I keep thinking about the opening lines and wondering if it’s something mystical or if it’s just about looking at the calendar and saying Holy Crap, it’s halfway through March, already? Why the HELL does time keep on slipping, slipping into the future?

We’re edging toward tourist season faster than we’d like, and we’re definitely not ready for it. Oh, sure, there’s a plus side. Soon we’ll be adding hours upon hours to our daily work schedules and soon, like so many islanders, we’ll be busting ass to make up for the lean winter months. Bills will get paid, but our leisure time — our time to putter in the garden or play in the kitchen; our blogging time — will dwindle to tiny portions.

Last summer — our first summer here and our first summer of blogging — we struggled and stumbled and I never quite found the balance that allowed me the unexhausted hours I needed to write with frequency or joy. This year, I’m hoping — no, make that striving — to avoid a repeat performance.

In fact, I’ve got nefarious plans in place for that very purpose. Well, almost in place. Providing I can get anything done before tourist season kicks in.

What was that?

I’m working extra hours this week? Already?

Damn.

(Check out Sweetnicks for more Weekend dog blogging!)