Recipe reinvigoration can come in the oddest ways!
In early September my husband and I took a little retreat out in Westport on the Washington Coast. The weather was great and the Pacific Ocean had that telltale fall sparkle. The beach was quiet as all the kids were back in school and I had lots of moments to fuel my creative energy. I beachcombed. I rambled around the small fishing town. I poked around antique stores and beelined to a Church Rummage Sale.
At the sale, I found a few cookbooks and strolled by a long table filled with wine glasses, coffee mugs, drinking glasses, tall Margarita glasses and a vast selection of ice cream cups and sherbet glasses.
At that moment, I didn’t need them so off we went to lunch.
Then at the Blue Buoy, a family owned seafood restaurant, my husband casually ordered shrimp cocktail.
I didn’t think a hoot about it.
Alas, when it arrived my creative juices sprang to life. The pink baby shrimp was mounded generously into a tall chilled ice cream parlor glass. At that moment, I had found a use for those glasses at the rummage sale.
I knew those vintage glasses would be perfect for seafood cocktails made with the local crab and the shrinp harvested from the ocean!
I haven’t given much thought to shrimp cocktail over the years. My dear dad LOVED it when I was growing up but my palate had waned from it. The big farm raised shrimp simply don’t appeal to me. That said with such gorgeous wild and local baby shrimp at hand my taste buds were ready for a reboot!
With little delay I tucked into my husband’s order and seafood cocktail was BACK on my recipe radar. It was cold and perfect! The very pink and petite shrimp, which are also often called Salad Shrimp, were caught by local fishermen just off the Washington Coast. Peeled and fully cooked at the processors, they are the ultimate convenience food.
There were perfectly fresh, tender and full of mild shrimp flavor. They were nestled in the cup with coarsely chopped white cabbage and served with the horseradish laced classic cocktail sauce. I soon told Chris I’d be making that for appetizers that night. I also told him we’d better get back to the Rummage Sale to get some of those glasses because they were perfect for seafood cocktails!
Luckily when I got back to the sale, there hadn’t been a run on that army of glasses (go figure!) so I considered my options and asked the ladies at the checkout.
This is a fishing town and I figured these dedicated grannies would have an opinion on a classic like Shrimp Cocktail. And, of course, they did.
I held up the mini sherbet cup and a large, tall stemmed Margarita glass. Marked at 25 cents each I was leaning towards the thrifty Margarita option. Unanimous opinion pointed to the Margarita glasses as the ladies said they would hold the ingredients perfectly and were a good size. I grabbed the four and told them what I was doing. They cheered me on.
Next up. The Shrimp! Off to Merino’s Seafood Market we went and got two small containers. Chris also got some of their freshly shaken local Dungeness crab so that was added to our cocktail combo.
At home, the glasses got a good scrub. I hauled some white cabbage out of the fridge and chopped it very finely. (The cabbage at the restaurant was very chunky which was one aspect I thought needed refinement.) I then salted the cabbage very lightly and let it sit. The shrimp (which was cooked at the local processing plant) got rinsed with cold water and thoroughly drained in a colander. I then tossed the shrimp and crab with a dash of La Baleine French sea salt and some freshly squeezed lemon.
To arrange, I put the cabbage in the concave base of the Margarita glasses. I then topped that with a squirt of classic cocktail sauce and then dolloped the lemony shrimp and crab on top. Garnished with some lemon wedges and a bit of parsley from my home garden, they were looking great. I set them in the fridge for an hour or so to chill.
The combo was so simple yet perfect thanks to the incredible freshness of the seafood at hand. The finely chopped cabbage offered a fresh and crunchy counterpoint. It really was incomparable to anything we could have gotten at a fancy pants high end restaurant.
It reminded me that fresh, wild, local, in season and retro have NOT gone out of style!
Sourcing: Pacific Salad Shrimp can often be found fresh in season at Costco and it can also be found year round in the seafood freezer cases. Ask for it at your supermarket’s fish counter!
For more about Merino’s Seafood Market, read by blog post on their canned Dungeness crab!
Well, at least that was my theory last Saturday when my husband and I decided to take a spontaneous trip to pick blueberries at 
Our day trip was short and sweet and in the end we carted home a hefty haul of blueberries that are now washed and stashed in the freezer. That said, before I froze all the berries for winter baking, I did bake a beautiful blueberry pie for dessert that night.
Although it opened last May, I hadn’t had a chance to visit until this morning. It’s Julefest weekend at the museum and I knew this would be a great chance to celebrate the season and to see the new digs…for an admission fee of only $7. I purchased my tickets online last night and arrived early at the museum only to find that a line had already formed a half an hour before the 10 AM open!
A Nordic Christmas Celebration, Julefest brings together artisans, purveyors, musicians, and bakers all of whom share a common Nordic legacy in one way or another. When I attended Julefest at the old school house location last year, the event was lovely but crowded and cramped. This year? It was a complete shift.
With the museum’s spacious interior, massive windows, and abundant light, Julefest was lively, upbeat and impressive. My first stop was to peruse the “Goodies2Go” section, which is basically the Scandinavian bake sale featuring Christmas classics such as spritz cookies, rosettes, and krumkake. I bypassed those for caloric reasons (!) and moved on to the purveyors where I found tables heavily laden with vintage Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates, Norwegian sweaters, long burning locally made beeswax candles, handcrafted wooden tools and more.
Next on my list was to do a quick perusal of the permanent collection, located up a sleek staircase. A sharp contrast to the permanent collection at the old museum, which was educational but dated, these galleries were bright, fresh, educational and informative while at the same time displaying many items that ran the gamut from contemporary to historic. There were many nods to the community’s fishing legacy here in the Pacific Northwest, and I really enjoyed seeing some of the vintage items, such as old canned salmon labels and tools of the seafood trade.
Next up? The gift shop which was very sleek and even fashionable might I say. A case of contemporary jewelry and items is right there at the entrance, while books, Norwegian sweaters, and Royal Copenhagen caught my eye.
Nearly last on the list? I had to check out the museum cafe, 
My husband and I have been camping for decades now and one of my side shows while doing so has been to hunt down local specialty items while we are out on the highways and byways. For many years I had a mobile kitchen in our family travel trailer which took our family of five far and wide through the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. This week we had a fully equipped kitchen in a Minnie Winnie which we rented from Great Alaskan Holidays in Anchorage.
The kelp pickles, made in Sitka from local seaweed and seasoned with the iconic bread and butter pickling spices, were ridiculously good. Pickle rings were added to smoked cheese bratwurst carted up from Seattle. They were also tucked on smoked salmon canapés, resulting in a very Scandinavian inspired hors d’oeuvre.
The sliced sourdough was from The Bakery in Girdwood and sadly didn’t last long in my mobile kitchen. Light and flavorful, the bread made great sandwiches and was enhanced even further with sunflower sprouts from the Saturday Homer Farmers Market. It was the bread of choice for breakfast and lunch.
