Attending the Northwest Flower & Garden Show has become a beloved annual tradition in our family. This year, it took place during the last weekend in February, and we scheduled our late-afternoon Saturday visit around a lecture my dear friend and gardening and home-design expert Debra Prinzing was presenting.

Entitled, Channel Your Inner Floral Designer: Four Seasons of Beautiful Bouquets, Debra spent her alloted hour showing us inspired and inspiring floral arrangements she had photographed for her latest book, “Slow Flowers: Four Seasons of Locally Grown Bouquets from the Garden, Meadow, and Farm.”

Here are some of the photos I snapped as we made our way around the impressive and expansive, award-winning gardens on the main floor, as well as the numerous vendor booths and two of our personal favorites–the Ikebana and Orchid Society displays.

I love the way food is the focus in these gorgeous metal and acrylic vases. I took home a long, tall version, and can’t wait to start experimenting with new floral arrangements!

How serene and calming is this gorgeous yellow-orchid and dark-wood bonsai?!?! How does the flower get water, I wonder?

Gotta love these rose and celadon Cymbidium orchids!

This baby photographed blue, but it was really a deep purple color.

One of the main reasons I like to go to the Flower & Garden Show is to make use of one of my favorite iPhone apps, Hipstamatic. This shot above, Spiky White Orchids, seems so lace-y and dream-like, thanks to Hipstamatic.

The theme of this year’s show was Hollywood, and we were drawn to this homage to The Hobbit in one of the major gardens. This and all the remaining shots were taken with the Hipstamatic app.

I love the sheer whimsy of  Teddy Bear Tea Party.

This is Green Slippers.

As a writer, I just couldn’t resist this shot. I remember the Smith-Corona my mother gave me right before I left for college. It served me well writing many a term paper, as well as short stories and poems. Thanks for encouraging my creativity, Mom!

Hope everyone had the happiest of holidays, and cheers to the New Year!

We will be taking the next few months off to clean out the office, while we noodle around on a new book.

Which means, for the foreseeable future, the Northwest Notes blog is on hiatus. I figure if Seattle Times food writer Nancy Leson could take six months off last year, and Hillary (Clinton) is taking some time off this year, so can I.

Thanks for reading my bl0g over the past many years. It started way back in December 2004 with a recipe for Holiday Crab Boils. . .and wraps up for now, at least, with a total of 707 blog posts as of today.

I will continue to our Recipes of the Month, along with a suggested wine pairing, as recipes are one of the most popular features on the Northwest Wining and Dining website.

And perhaps I’ll write an occasional blog post about a subject of great interest and/or urgency. Got to keep that SEO ranking high as well. J

Please continue to catch up with me on the social-media networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Also please don’t forget that my Pike Place Public Market Seafood Cookbook is available in both print and e-versions. At just $14.95 per copy for the print version (substantially less on Amazon.com), it’s the perfect gift book and/or Northwest souvenir.

Thank you for your support so far, and cheers to the promise of 2013!

Here is a look back at some of our favorite dishes from last year. We are posting a series of Dishes of the Day the next couple of weeks as we take some time away from the office and computer to refresh and relax (our very belated “summer vacation”). 

It has been another great year of wining and dining both around the Pacific Northwest, but in other parts of the United States and Canada.

So I thought it’d be fun to throw up photos of some of my favorite dishes from 2011. Herein are the “winners” on that list in no particular order.

The Seafood Skewer served tableside on Holland America’s m.s. Eurodam.

ART Shrimp Cocktail in downtown Seattle’s Four Seasons Hotel

Shuckers Crab Louie in the Fairmont Hotel in Seattle

Antipasti Plate at The Pink Door in the Pike Place Market

Roasted Beet Salad with Grilled Salmon at Purple Cafe & Wine Bar in Woodinville, Washington

Vietnamese Crepe at Bambuza Vietnamese Cuisine in downtown Seattle (now under new ownership with a new name–920 Pike)

Roasted Chicken Caesar Salad with Cheddar Dressing at Dominion Square Taverne in downtown Montreal, Canada

Crab Tails at Elliott’s’ Oyster Bar and Restaurant in downtown Seattle

Beet and Goat Cheese Salad at Place Pigalle in the Pike Place Market

The Abalone Appetizer at The Oyster Bar along the Chuckanut Drive north of Seattle

The Everything Green Salad with Dungeness Crab at The Pink Door in the Pike Place Market

Grilled Oysters with Cheese at The Inn at Semiahmoo in Blaine, Washington

Octopus and Beans at Lecosho on the Harbor Steps in downtown Seattle

Smoked Salmon Appetizer and Side Salad at Luc in Seattle’s Madison Valley neighborhood

Shrimp and Grits at Joule in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood

Tuna Bowl at Revel in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood

And, just for a bit of final fun:

The Fried Mars Bar with Vanilla-Bean Ice Cream at Garde Manger in the Old City section of Montreal, Canada

Many years ago, when I had been writing about food for just about five years, I attended The Symposium for Professional Food Writers at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

The Symposium was like the holy grail for food writers, as much because of the quality of speakers and attendees as for the difficulty of getting from just about any place in the country to the small, bucolic town where the world-class resort is located.

I remember the journey involved a red-eye flight from Seattle to Pittsburgh on U.S. Airways, an early-morning connector flight to Charlotte, then a puddle-jumper that finally brought a bunch of white-knuckle flyers, including me, to our hallowed destination.

I attended The Symposium several times, finding that I always learned a lot of new tricks of the trade. Plus, it really helped me feel less isolated as a solitary cookbook author and food and wine writer.

But no year matched the very first time, when Julia Child was in attendance. The first day our group convened for class, under the able guidance of writing coach, mentor, and (now) long-time friend Don Fry, I was (understandably) more than a little bit nervous.

Cookbook-author greats were seated around me; food writers whose bylines I recognized from years of reading were reading over their syllabuses; Julia Child seated right down the row from me.

Don used passages from actual writing samples the participants had submitted prior to convening. One of the first ones he read was mine, an excerpt from an article I wrote about a professional tea tasting for Northwest Palate.

As he read passage after passage from my story, I began to get even more nervous.

How would my writing be received by this august group?

I needn’t have feared. Perhaps because they put themselves in my (now) quaking shoes, they praised the passages, with only one rather disparaging comment from a smart-aleck Los Angeles food columnist who said my article (because I made use of fiction-writing techniques) wouldn’t have been suited to his newspaper audience.

I was most shocked and humbled when Julia herself raised her hand and said how much she liked my writing. It was one of the pinnacles of my career, and did so much to instill in me a feeling of confidence moving forward.

Above, you can see the menu from one of the lavish dinners we  enjoyed at The Symposia. It featured five courses from famous “foodies,” including Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Anne Willan, Dorie Greenspan, Shirley Corriher, Andy Schloss, and Julia.

Her unique autograph, which begins with an outsized, loopy “J,” stands beside the course designed in her honor: Ragout of Duck with Twenty Cloves of Garlic paired with a Rombauer 1996 Zinfandel and Chimney Rock 1995 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Ooh-la-la. She really knew how to live large! Cheers to August 15, 2012, which would have been her 100th birthday.

Brennon Leighton, Efesté winemaker at The Last Salmon Dinner at Blueacre Seafood

On July 11, Spencer and I were lucky enough to attend a dinner that every Northwestern resident–heck, every American–should know about.

Held at Blueacre Seafood in downtown Seattle, The Last Salmon Dinner was hosted by chef/owner Kevin Davis and his wife and owner Terresa Davis. The couple’s aim, in addition to feeding a five-course, salmon-centric meal to an enthusiastic crowd of 70 people, was to expose the proposal by Pebble Limited Partnership, a consortium of the world’s second largest multinational mining corporation, to build an open-pit mining complex at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, one of our nation’s last great salmon fisheries.

The proposed mine will span 20 square miles, with containment ponds that will hold between 2.5-billion and 10-billion tons of toxic mine waste.

Needless to say, the environmental impact of the proposed Pebble Mine on the surrounding waters of Bristol Bay would be immeasurable, and irreversible.

So much so that chef Davis, a life-long fisher, posed the question: Will the last wild salmon to leave Bristol Bay please remember to turn off the lights?

Efesté (pronounced F-S-T), was the wine partner, and winemaker Brennon Leighton said he was honored when chef Davis chose his wines to represent this event.

But the dinner was not all environmental hand-wringing and finger-pointing. Chef Davis outdid himself with cooking and presenting Bristol Bay salmon at its finest.

Chef Davis’s Assorted Delicacies of The Sea included crispy smelt, albacore tuna poke, chilled oysters, and geoduck ceviche, paired with Efeste Feral 2011 Sauvignon Blanc. This wine is special because it’s fermented using native, wild yeast–no commercial yeast is added–then it’s aged in two-year-old French Oak barrels.

I’ve rarely had such a creative (and beautiful) rendition of gravlax as Davis’s Horseradish-Cured Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon with lovage salad (its lively notes of anise reminded me of fresh shiso leaf), pickled rhubarb, baby yellow and pink beets, and Austrian pumpkin seed oil paired with Lola 2010 Chardonnay, made from 100% Chardonnay and also fermented with native yeast and (refreshingly) not heavily oaked.

A zippy cup of Rainier Cherry Gazpacho with balsamic croutons, lavender goat cheese, and a flurry of edible flowers made a perfect (summery!) pairing with Babbitt 2011 Rosé, made from 71% Syrah and 29% Cabernet Sauvignon, and normally available only at the winery.

A Roulade of Bristol Bay Salmon, morel mushrooms, summer truffles, and sauce cardinal was a mellifluous melding of earth and ocean. It went “swimmingly” with Ceidleigh (pronounced Kay-Lee) 2009 Syrah, a rich, ripe Syrah rife with dried cherries and plum notes.

Vanilla Pound Cake with the season’s best Skagit Valley strawberries and raspberries, mint syrup, and house-made “cool whip” pulled up the rear in grand style.

I left with pages of notes and much to think about, both in regards to the proposed Pebble Limited Partnership Mine, Davis’s culinary prowess with prized Bristol Bay salmon, and winemaker Leighton’s outstanding wine pairings.

Even if you weren’t able to attend The Last Salmon Dinner, YOU CAN HELP!

Write to your local congressman to STOP the building of the Pebble Mine at the mouth of Bristol Bay. And visit the Save Bristol Bay and Bristol Bay Sockeye websites for more information.

It’s been quite some time since I last posted some of my flower arrangements, so expertly and beautifully photographed by Spencer.

It always surprised me that some of the first posts of this sort, which began in September 2009,  continued in November 2009, and concluded in September 2010, solicited lots of interest and feedback.

But you can see for yourself what three fresh Asian lilies from a flower vendor in the Pike Place Market, plus a bit of bear grass, are capable of producing.

Here is a gorgeous yellow orchid from Molbak’s Garden + Home shop, located in Woodinville, Washington, that really looked at home in this simple purple pot I had on hand at home.

We all know that pairing our food with the most suitable wine varietal, microbrew, tea, or coffee has become somewhat of an obsession among foodies during the past many years.

In fact, I’ve based a lot of my career around figuring out what pairs best with what, as highlighted in my Wine Press Northwest columns over the years, and my books including “Pacific Northwest Wining and Dining” and the “Pike Place Public Market Seafood Cookbook.”

But who knew that the type of cutlery we use may also affect how we perceive the flavors in our foods?

A fascinating article in the Financial Times brought forth these conclusions:

Copper and zinc were bold and assertive, with bitter, metallic tastes.

Silver tasted dull in comparison.

Stainless steel had a faintly metallic flavor.

Do you consider the type of cutlery you use when you eat popular “chef-y” foods such as mangoes, tamarind, black cod, or grapefruit? Should you?

Every month, the Italian restaurant chain Il Fornaio presents a regional menu called Festa Regionale in addition to its regular one.

It’s a fun way to “travel” around Italy, learning about the special foodstuffs and wines from each area.

This month we were off to Puglia, which is known for its bread, olives, and vino. In fact, according to Il Fornaio’s Festa Regionale Puglia menu, these ingredients are “the three pillars of the Apulian diet.”

Puglia cuisine is characterized by “pleasant spirit, subtle seasonings, and traditional dishes inspired by an ancient civilization. You’ll find those subtle seasonings mark the dishes, accented with potatoes, asparagus, beans, and tomatoes.”

I really enjoyed this Grigliata di Pesce Misto, a mixed-seafood grill that included salmon, petrale sole, a big shrimp, a scallop, and calamari, all cooked in a light lemon-flavored olive oil.

I asked for double veggies instead of the Yukon gold potatoes, and was pleased with an ample portion of sautéed baby carrots and broccolini.

We celebrated this dish and the Roasted Chicken (Spencer’s favorite item from Il Fornaio’s regular menu) with a bottle of 2001 Amarone, which had aged perfectly.

Il Fornaio’s selections of wine from Puglia included a 100% Chardonnay and a 100% Fiano (a medium-bodied white variety with crisp aromatics), a Primitivo, and interesting-sounding red blends made from varietals such as Negroamaro, Primitivo, Malvasia, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Sorry to say that the Puglia menu ended on May 20; stay tuned for the next Festa Regionale menu that will feature Veneto from June 4 to 17.

We always love going to the Northwest Foodservice Show because it’s like old-home day; we get to see people we don’t see the rest of the year, and make new friends along the way, as well.

Held in Seattle a few weeks ago, at this year’s show we ran into our old buddy Keith Johnsen, whose represents Georgian (as in the former Soviet Union) wines. We met Keith back in 2009, tasted the wines, and wrote about them for Amazon.com’s Al Dente blog. We even included a recipe for Georgian Walnut Sauce (Baje).

Now, in addition to representing Georgian wines, Keith is West Coast sales rep for FLASQ wines. These California-grown wines come in three varieties–2009 Chardonnay, 2009 Merlot, and 2009 Cuvée Blanc (an off-dry, slightly spritzy white blend that may just be the perfect hot-tub or brunch wine).

What sets these wines apart–and makes them worth crowing about–is their packaging, in stylish brushed-aluminum, bullet-shaped bottles that contain two glasses of wine (just the right amount!) with a reclosable twist top.

Other desirable features, according to the website, “They are 100% American-made and bottled in eco-friendly, easy-to-handle, easy-to-chill aluminum bottles.”

Keith reports the wines are selling very well, especially at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where savvy wine lovers stock up on a bottle for in-air consumption. At $5 per bottle, FLASQ wines are higher quality and less expensive than the tronk that the airlines sell.

Keith sent good news shortly after the show–that FLASQ Wines had made the cover of Wines & Vines magazine, featured in a cover story on, Novel Materials in Packaging, along with an accompanying article.

Continued success to Keith as he promotes FLASQ Wines for the product’s second spring and summer season (and well beyond).

Volunteer Park Cafe on Capitol Hill offers Sunday suppers once a month

My latest article for The Seattle Times Pacific Northwest magazine, Family-Style Supper’s On at Seattle Restaurants,  featured my reflections on several Seattle-area restaurants that offer Sunday suppers around the communal table to their guests.

It makes me hungry just thinking about the good food and wine we had researching the article. Standouts include Tavolàta’s Roasted Chicken and Pear Bread Pudding during it’s Roman Feast in December and Volunteer Park Cafe’s flatbread with a luscious Lebanese roasted-red-pepper/walnut/pomegranate-molasses spread followed by Chicken Tagine.

The comments on this one were really interesting. . .lots of _itching and moaning about this form of dining being similar to a commune or cafeteria. Think they kind of missed the point!

I was thrilled that the article was picked up by RestaurantSmartBrief, a daily email service that aggregates interesting articles for its nationwide audience.

Photo by Spencer Johnson