Taylor Shellfish – Riveted

Seattle Boat Show

Laura Domela — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 03:59:54 +0000

Tonight, looking back toward downtown from Elliottt Bay Marina (Space Needle on the left):

Our first night at the marina (Thursday) we ran into our friend Sam and hung out with him on his Nordic 37 and had some wine/beer, and then he came over for a late dinner…really a fun evening.

This boat show business is serious up here! We went to the boat show in Portland a few weeks back and it took us about an hour, max. Not so here at the Seattle Boat Show. This is just part of one of the halls:

We signed up for Car2Go before we left Portland, figuring it would be super helpful for us getting around Seattle while we're in town. So far, it's great!

That's the front of our first cute little Smart car. For those of you unfamiliar with Car2Go, you sign up online for something like a $35 initial fee. They check your driving record and give you the green light, and then with a simple iPhone app (from wherever you are in cities that have Car2Go) you can see where the cars are. You can click on one and reserve it for 30 minutes (that means no one else can come take it before you get there as long as it's within 30 minutes). You get to your car, start the rental from your smart phone, the car unlocks, welcomes you, and you start your rental. The cost is .41 cents per minute, with a hourly cap of $14.99 or something. When you're done, you just click "finish rental" and it charges your account. So far, our rides across town have ranged in the 9-11 dollar range. You can park them in all the city metered spots without paying the meter, so it's probably not that much more than paying for parking in the end.

On Friday (the first day of the boat show) we headed over (via Car2Go) to Lake Union for the floating part of the show. We wanted to look at the new American Tugs (one of the contenders when we bought our Nordic Tug). They've done some really great things to the new Americans and they're beautiful. We saw a super cool handmade "Sockeye 45" made by the Devlin Boat Co. here in the PNW. Fantastic, and too hard to take good photos of, so here's its listing. There were some ENORMOUS (and expensive!!) boats over here that we peeked in…pretty cool, but not our thing.

We had some lunch and then took the free shuttle from Lake Union to Century Link Field to the indoor part of the boat show (running through January 31) and, whoa. We hung out a bit with our buddies at the Nordic "booth" (which is really a giant wooden stairway and deck up to a brand new Nordic 39 with a flybridge). Gorgeous boat, and fun seeing and hearing about all the upgrades they're doing (while we think about our second boat wishlist, of course).

We wandered the halls looking at boaty stuff, and stayed for a bit of the opening event "Uncorked" which was basically a scavenger hunt for wine. You get a souvenir wine glass and 6 tokens and a map of where the winery tables are hidden in the maze of boats. We wandered a bit and tasted three wines and then headed back to the boat for some dinner.

The closest Car2Go was about a half mile away up in Chinatown, and it was raining…but we're seasoned northwesters and were dutifully wearing our GoreTex, so not a big deal and kind of a nice walk (after all that…walking).

This afternoon we attended two of four Boat University seminars we registered for: (1) Starting the Trek North through Southern BC: Nanaimo through Cape Caution (something we will probably do in the near future) and then (2) Getting on the Outside: Cruising the West Coast of Vancouver Island (something we'll wait a bit to do). Both talks were interesting and informative.

Tomorrow morning we've got (1) Cruising the Wild & Beautiful Northern BC, and then (2) Understanding the Weather and Cruise Decisiong Making.

Tonight we picked up a Car2Go and headed over to the Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar in Queen Anne for some oysters. SO. DELICIOUS. We had a dozen on the halfshell (two each of Virginica, Shigoku, Kumamoto, Pacific, Olympia, and Kusshi).

We shared a caesar salad, and then finished with two kinds of baked oysters: Oysters Marco (bacon, kale, shallot, cranberry, and parmesan) and Oysters Matsushima (mushrooms, shishito peppers, and miso butter). Also SO DELICIOUS.

Our same Car2Go was still outside when we were finished, so we re-rented it, stopped at Whole Foods for some groceries on the way home (not letting go of our rental yet) and then parked it at our secret (not really) spot at the marina. So far, we've always had a car there in the morning.

On Monday we'll be moving over to the Bell Harbor Marina (much closer to downtown, as shown in this billboard right up the road from us):

That'll be fun! We picked up a local bourbon at Whole Foods to try (2bar Spirits bourbon), and are having a little sip now. It's yum!

Another full day tomorrow, so early to bed!

Exploring Hood Canal

Laura Domela — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:19:22 +0000

We headed out to explore Hood Canal today. We're staying right near the town of Hoodsport on Hood Canal near the Olympic National Forest in Washington. Hoodsport is apparently renowned among SCUBA divers as a staging area to view the giant Pacific octopus (cool!!!)

The shores along the canal are mostly rocks and shells (oyster, clam). Clam season is apparently over, but oyster season is not, and there were plenty of people out doing what looked like gathering shellfish as we drove past.

We were headed down toward Shelton to Taylor Shellfish Farms to pick up some of their Shigoku oysters (our favorite). Shigokus were developed by Taylor Shellfish Farms (right here!) and we were lucky enough to discover them about 1/2 mile from our house in Portland at our local market that happens to carry them most of the time. (But it's still fun to get them right from the source!)

Taylor Shellfish is quite an operation.

The seafood store had everything we wanted (Shigokus, and the tiny Olympia oysters) and we left with four dozen Shigokus and two dozen Olympias. Hey guess what we're having for dinner tonight and tomorrow night??

Shigoku oysters are grown in floating bags that are attached to stationary lines and floats that rise and fall with the tides, so the oysters are tumbled twice a day. This low-energy, low-maintenance method is a variation on British Columbia’s more labor-intensive Kusshi, and it continuously chips off the oysters’ growing edge and forces them to “cup up." The shells end up deep and scoop-shaped.

This results in a small, dense oyster with a light clean taste of cucumber and salt. (My mom does NOT like oysters, and she liked these, so if you're not an oyster fan but want to be, try the Shigokus.) Also, they're super easy to shuck compared to many other oysters.

More scenery along the canal:

The road runs right along the water in most places:

Cute little beach house:

Our next stop was the Hardware Distillery Co. in Hoodsport. I read about this place online and decided we should check it out. The owners, Chuck and Jan, started the distillery a few years ago near their vacation cabin in Hoodsport and it's become quite a little hot spot in town!

Chuck was pouring today, and started us right off the bat with their award-winning aquaivit. (It was great!) He had a special bottle from the freezer out for the folks who were finishing their tasting as we arrived, so in all the excitement we were included in that special moment, and then started at the beginning with the vodka made from peach wine (oh hey, and ended full circle with another tiny pour of cold aquavit).

We bought a bottle of the R Gin and a bottle of the Bee's Knees Plumb. For the R Gin, Chuck takes up about 100 pounds of barley to Hama Hama Oyster Co. (just up the canal a bit) and they cold smoke it in their big smoker. R Gin has a subtle smoky taste, and the name comes from the (discredited) old wives’ tale that oysters are best in months with the letter "R".

The Bee's Knees Plumb is a distilled honey mead, made from 80% honey and 20% plums from Chuck's friend's plum trees. It's good! I'm not sure what we'll do with it yet, but we'll figure it out.

The building housing the distillery used to be the Hoodsport Hardware Store, hence the name Hardware Distillery. They've got a great vibe in there, and the decor is all old hardware and cool distillery equipment. Definitely worth a stop if you're coming through and are into this kind of thing. We also tasted in sequence the white dog, and then the same spirit that had been aged for just a little while in that small barrel…interesting to taste the difference a little wood makes.

Next we headed back up the canal and decided to try the Hama Hama Oyster Bar for lunch.

There's a market where you can buy fresh oysters and clams and other stuff, and outside around the corner they've got a "snack bar" where they're serving up oysters (raw and grilled), crab cakes, steamers, etc. while you sit outside on the water, in the sun, having a totally chill day eating delicious fresh seafood.

Fun atmosphere, great service, nice people, delicious seafood! We had some grilled oysters (since tonight's meal will be mostly Shigokus and Olympias on the half shell), a crab cake, some steamer clams, and a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc. Everything was delicious and we'd come back here in a second!

The grilled oysters with served two sauces: (1) a chipotle bourbon sauce (so good!) and a classic escargot sauce of butter and herbs (also good, but I loved the chipotle bourbon one best).

Hoodsport is a cute little town, and this whole area feels authentic and not too touristy at all. There are several state parks along here that (of course) are pretty dang crowded right now (a sunny weekend in July) but overall the place still feels pretty mellow.

We're just back hanging out at the Airstream now. The RV park here (Glen Ayr Resort) is totally fine. It's nice, right across the road from the water and we're backed up onto what I hear is a small creek (I'd have to go check to verify). We've got full hookups, but their internet is out (we're using our AT&T datacard with router and doing just fine). I'd stay here again, but I might try to see if this place had any waterfront spots first, because it looked fabulously close to the water as we drove past an hour ago.